Handsome Hoosier

One night last week 14 men met in Washington's exclusive Cosmos Club for dinner. Ostensible purpose: to honor bouncing young Herman B. Wells, president of Indiana University. Real purpose: a get-acquainted meeting for Paul Vories McNutt and the Janizariat of the New Deal.

Assembled were such Inner Circlers as Tommy Corcoran, Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, SEComrnissioner Edward ("Big Ed") Eicher, Federal Works Administrator John Carmody, Ernest Lindley, journalist, who helps write the McNutt speeches. Two men arranged the dinner: Economist David Cushman Coyle, Federal Security Counsel Fowler Harper, onetime dean of McNutt's Alma Mater, Indiana Law School.

To Inner Circlers McNutt has been known as: 1) the man with that funny name, 2) a handsome Hoosier Hitler who once called out troops to quash a strike. By last week these New Deal intellectuals could no longer ignore Politician McNutt. What went on at the dinner--which Tommy Corcoran left early--only the guests knew--and they kept mum.

But 290-lb. Frank McHale, McNutt's organizer, could mark off another point reached in the McNutt campaign for the Presidency, which "Oomph Paul" began when he was seven years old. Apparently Mr. McHale had charted last week as "Be-Kind-To-Liberals-Week," for in seven days Mr. McNutt spoke in Lakeland, Fla., in Washington (to the pinko National Lawyers Guild), and to the Janizariat at the Cosmos--each time advocating broad-based, New Deal reform views.

Next campaign step was to un-prettify handsome, snow-crested Mr. McNutt. Mr. McHale ordered new pictures--stern-visaged photos to de-emphasize the platinum hair, the toothpaste smile. With the rest of his candidate's person Mr. McHale was well enough satisfied, and Paul McNutt continued to go about with baggy, overlong pants draping his slightly bowed legs, unshined shoes on his slightly pigeon-toed feet--an appearance politically pleasing to an electorate which traditionally distrusts the too-snappy dresser.

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