As I Was Saying . . .

As I was saying ...

There was no harm in talk, so almost every candidate and near-candidate was talking:

General Ike Eisenhower ducked Washington's pinpricking Gridiron Dinner, went off to Manhattan to make an innocuous speech to the Pennsylvania Society. He might as well have stayed in Washington. When he finished speaking in New York, the master of ceremonies asked: "Is it any wonder that we are proud and happy to have this man as the next president--" The audience broke into wild applause, after which the master of ceremonies finished, lamely: "--of Columbia University?"

General Omar Bradley, asked whether anybody had approached him to be a candidate for President, said: "Nobody has . . . and nobody ever will."

James V. Forrestal, Secretary of Defense, erased himself from Democratic dopesters' tickets. He took back publicly what he had privately told some friends--that he would be glad to be Harry Truman's vice-presidential candidate (TIME, Aug. 25). Said Forrestal: "I've never taken myself seriously as a political glamor character. Even with both ears to the ground, I've never heard the faintest suggestion of even a distant drumbeat."

Mon Wallgren, Washington's jowly governor and Harry Truman's good friend, had no trouble hearing drumbeats. Sure, he said, he would accept the vice-presidential nomination--"but I'm not trying to get it."

Texas' Senator "Pappy" O'Daniel could hear even more distant rumblings. He thought it would be a fine idea to form a third party--"The Jeffersonian Constitutional Party"--to run General Douglas MacArthur for President. Pappy would be happy to be the general's running mate.

Henry Wallace, sounding out third party sentiment by sounding off in upstate New York, kept Democrats jittery, Republicans happy and newsmen jumping.* Said he: "If it is apparent that the Democratic Party is a war party, I will do all I can to see that there is a third party. . . ." He hammered hard at Harry Truman, said that as between Bob Taft and "Truman-of-the-moment," it would be Taft who would get his vote. Next day he took it back; he was just "playing a game of make-believe. . . ."

Senator J. Howard McGrath, Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, took Henry Wallace very seriously indeed. He visited New York City, hotbed of the American Labor Party and other red-hot Wallace followers. Of the man whom President Truman fired from his Cabinet, he said: "We certainly would like to have Mr. Wallace's support."

* At the Gridiron Dinner, Henry Wallace was impersonated as a slightly hurt politico who rushed on stage and sang:

"I wonder who's hissing me now, I wonder who just showed them how. . . ."

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