Willkie in the West

Last week Wendell Willkie appeared to justify the miracle of his nomination at Philadelphia. With the gong ringing for the tenth round, with the wise guys yelling "Take him out!", with his defenses battered down, he got up off the canvas, and waded back in, trading punch for punch.

Nearly everything that could go wrong had gone wrong, either through the demonic perversities of politics, or because Wendell Willkie had missed with some haymaker rights & lefts. (Nobody denied he was good at infighting.) Now he knew better what it meant to "meet the champ." For daily Franklin Roosevelt threw a bigger punch in the form of action as President, than Wendell Willkie could muster in the form of argument as Candidate.

At that point last week Pollster Gallup came in with a killer: 55% of the popular vote for Roosevelt, 45% for Willkie; Roosevelt--453 electoral votes, Willkie--78; Roosevelt--38 States, Willkie--10.

It was as if the referee had hit one fighter with a stool. In the corner, Willkie's handlers wept (some of them crocodile tears) or swore. But the bearlike man from Indiana wouldn't admit he was licked. Even veteran newshawks begged him to cut down on his extraordinarily grueling speaking schedule. Smiling, he upped the pace, talked more, louder, longer. More important, he began to say things that bit.

For an amateur getting experience the hard way, Nominee Willkie's Western trip began to seem perfectly planned--in an unexpected way. Last week's political errors were made in rockbound Democratic areas, where Republicans are classed with horned toads as amusing but unessential creatures. He had found his voice again in safely Republican Kansas, to the pretended delight of New Deal partisans (who wisecracked that Nominee Willkie lost a thousand votes every time he said "Presunistace" for President of the United States).

At Tulsa Mr. Willkie drew a tremendous crowd (40,000); at Amarillo, 10,000 hospitable, curious Texans listened lukewarmly to his appeal that they exchange their 80-year-old tradition of voting the straight Democratic ticket for the 160-year-old No-Third-Term tradition.

In back-platform appearances across New Mexico the candidate began to learn to use the microphone. He talked of the New Deal's "drunken orgy of spending"; promised "honest jobs for honest work in honest industry"; and always, everywhere, blasted the Chicago "draft," declaring again & again "I am not an indispensable man."

He went well, generally, although small, presumably, were his vote-getting results in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona.

By plane the challenger entered California. His technique had improved consistently. He had been booed, heckled and hooted at by scattered partisans throughout the Southwest; but had turned off the hecklers neatly on most occasions. He had moved in close to the microphone. He had drawn unprecedented crowds. Still he had flopped repeatedly. Only in California did train observers begin to realize that they had set an impossibly high standard for Wendell Willkie--that they had expected him to leap from political miracle to miracle until he appeared in a burning bush on Election Day.

The amateurs in the Willkie camp were most keenly disappointed when unpolitical Crusader Willkie tried to be political.

Well he recalled that Candidate Charles Evans Hughes's failure to shake Hiram Johnson's hand in 1916 had cost him California, and California had cost him the Presidency. The moment the candidate crossed the California State line he came out with a bellow for that "great, fighting, fearless liberal, Hiram Johnson"--isolationist Senator Johnson, who has opposed much that Candidate Willkie stands for, particularly aid to the Allies. To the Willkie overture Senator Johnson made no immediately audible reply.

The Republican pros grumbled that Willkie should have buttered up old Hiram weeks ago, should now have been able to announce dramatically that Johnson was a 100% Willkie man. "No organization," they humphed, and continued to let their candidate carry on alone.

Through San Diego, Santa Ana, Englewood, Long Beach, motored the Willkie caravan, through huge turnouts of cheering people. Here & there high-school children bronx-cheered or shouted "Hooray for Roosevelt!" One or two of them threw tomatoes, one a wild pitch above the grinning candidate's head.

But when Willkie reached Los Angeles, the city went crazy. Torn paper & ticker tape showered down, a steady, deep-toned roar followed his car for many miles, and at the City Hall the swirling crowd jammed around him so frenziedly that he never got within 50 feet of Acting Mayor Robert Burns and the dignitaries.

That evening, in the clear California night, 70,000 people crushed into the Los Angeles Coliseum, watched a Flag Day parachute bomb shoot up, heard The Star-Spangled Banner, watched the flag raised, chanted the pledge of allegiance to the flag, bowed heads in prayer, roared approval as grizzled G. O. P. Oldtimer Joseph Scott introduced "the next President of the United States."

Out of the Coliseum tunnel moved the Willkie car; a band played "Back Home Again in Indiana," spotlights cut through the dark, and the crowd's cheers settled into the powerful, hypnotic Philadelphia chant of "We Want Willkie!" over & over.

Then something happened. In ten minutes Wendell Willkie had lost his audience. The speech was logical, well-argued, businesslike--but not the stuff for a throng that wanted emotion, excitement, slam-bang oratory. The applause, at first hopeful, then despondent, finally narrowed down to the reserved seats. That night Willkie's shaken assistant kept from him the news of the Friday Gallup poll.

If Willkie was shaken by the Gallup figures, he did not show it publicly. Next day he went on, as hard as ever . . . "the glory of the United States is business." At Fresno and at Stockton boys and young men booed and heckled him. But everywhere the crowds were big--to the pros, unexpectedly big. Day after day the big round-shouldered amateur learned: how to roll with a punch, how to throw a hook. Most important, he never quit. Grudgingly, the newshawks came to respect his bull-like persistence, his obstinate honesty, the deep strength of his convictions, which he could not lay aside each evening as practiced politicians do. "This guy means it," one correspondent wired.

More significant than the gloom among the sedentary, grumbling Republican professionals was the continued parade of bolters to Willkie, evidencing the belief that this man's cause was just, even if he was a successful businessman.

Biggest bolt was the New York Times supporter of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 and 1936, and a bolter only twice before in its history--both times against William Jennings Bryan, 1896, 1908. The Times gave 2,500 reasoned words for its shift, but to the public and the rest of the press the simple fact was sufficient.

Other bolters-of-the-week: Walter N. Rothschild, director of Abraham & Straus, huge Brooklyn department store; the Oregon Journal, traditionally Democratic Portland paper; Bess Streeter Aldrich, best-selling novelist and Hollywood scenarist; former Democratic Governor Charles H. Martin of Oregon, former Democratic Governor William A. Comstock of Michigan, Roman Catholic Bishop Joseph Schrembs of Cleveland.

With these new seconds in his corner, Willkie came through at San Francisco with a wholly successful speech. This time he struck clean, solid blows. Said he:

"I charge that this Administration has contributed to the downfall of European democracy. I charge it must bear a direct share of the responsibility for the present war. . . ." He flatly accused Franklin Roosevelt of having wrecked the London Economic Conference of 1933: "For a short time after his inauguration he did indeed regard the London economic conference with favor. He did not, however, see it for what it was: A magnificent opportunity for the leader of the world's greatest democracy to do something tangible to rehabilitate the democratic world.

"On the contrary, after his delegates had arrived in London, Mr. Roosevelt, violently and without warning, repudiated the instructions he had given them. Sitting in a boat off the coast of Maine, he hastily adopted a brand-new experimental monetary program for the United States. He denounced the proposal of the conference as a 'specious fallacy.' . . .

"This rash decision wrecked the conference, and put an end to any immediate hope for stabilized international exchange. ... It thus weakened the structure of the democratic world and opened the way to the aggressive designs of Hitler.

"Four years after the London Conference, after Mr. Roosevelt was inaugurated a second time . . . there were two things that the United States should have done. First, we should have assured the domestic recovery that the democratic world was waiting for. And secondly, we should have taken immediate steps to repair the damage in 1933 at the London economic conference. We should have adopted a vigorous policy for the promotion of trade and commerce. We should have set about creating a strong and prosperous era of peace.

"But on Jan. 20, 1937, when Mr. Roosevelt was inaugurated for a second term, what did he undertake as his first great job? A scheme for packing the Supreme Court of the United States.

"And we all remember what happened as a result of that scheme. The totally unexpected and totally unnecessary controversy about the Supreme Court split America in two. . . . While Hitler's power increased from day to day, we presented to the world the spectacle of a great people, the greatest of the democracies, torn asunder by a broil over one of our most fundamental principles.

"That was the time when Franklin Roosevelt had his golden opportunity to save world democracy in the eleventh hour--and don't forget that the very next year was the year of Munich."

He quoted the tellingly apt words which Britain's Winston Churchill had spoken in 1937: "There is one way above all others, in which the United States can aid the European democracies. Let her regain and maintain her normal prosperity. . . . The quarrel in which President Roosevelt has become involved with wealth and business may produce results profoundly harmful to ideals which to him and his people are dear. . .

"Those who are keeping the flag of peace and free government flying in the Old World have almost a right to ask that their comrades in the New World should ... set an example of strength and stability. . . ." Wendell Willkie went on: "The loneliness of the United States is a direct result of the foreign policies of the last eight years. If Britain falls we are utterly and savagely alone. No nation on earth, except Britain, owes us anything but disillusionment and ill will.

"We must--we desperately must--rid ourselves of the fallacy that democracy can be defended with words, with poses, with political paraphernalia designed to impress the American people and no one else.

"We must send, and we must keep sending, aid to Britain, our first line of defense and our only remaining friend. We must aid her to the limit of prudence and effectiveness, as determined by impartial experts in this field.

"In the Pacific our best ends will be served by a free, strong and democratically progressive China, and we should render China economic assistance to that end. In addition I favor exploring the acquisition and development of Pacific air bases for the protection of our interests in that ocean.

"I favor the building of a defense system adequate to protect our soil from aggression from any quarter--a defense system so strong that none will ever dare to strike. . . .

"We are a commercial people, and we must therefore build up the commerce of the world. We are a peaceful people, and we must therefore strengthen peace by giving other peoples--democratic peoples --our economic support. . . ."

The impact of that speech seemed to hit not only his San Francisco hearers but the nation, and hit hard.

North he traveled, into Oregon, State of his antithetic running mate, cool, bourbon Charles Linza McNary. And here he pulled off the first great triumph of his campaign, when he met head-on and without a single weasel word the most dangerous issue he had to face: power--the public power he had fought against even more vigorously than Senator McNary had fought for it.

Said he: "Wendell Willkie will presumably go out here with a spade and dig up Bonneville and Grand Coulee. . . . The United States Government has $270,000,000 invested in Bonneville and Grand Coulee and I have more conception of the value that that investment represents than all the New Deal crew put together and piled up double.

"I have some conception of what $270,000,000 means in the way of concentrated sweat and labor of men. ... It is my belief that the power generated in connection with such projects should be sold for the benefit of the people and that the people of the areas affected should determine whether it should be distributed through privately or publicly-owned local utilities.

"If you people want it distributed through private distribution systems, that is your business. If you want it distributed through publicly-owned distribution systems, that is also your business, and if you want to take over the private utilities, that is your business, too. . . .

"Don't let any bunk artist come along and tell you Wendell Willkie's views are any different from that. And I may say I know how to operate such things for the benefit of those for whom I work and I shall be working for the people of the United States."

Wendell Willkie was learning fast.

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