"Let's Get Started"

When Bob Taft walked into the high-ceilinged Republican conference room in the Senate Office Building, he faced 230 reporters and 50 photographers--the largest press conference ever held on Capitol Hill. His blue tie slightly askew, the Ohio Senator made his way slowly from the door to a microphone-laden table, stopping to let photographers shoot and chuckling at their antics. "All right, let's get started," he said.. Then he made the announcement everybody expected: he will seek the Republican nomination for President.

Three Main Issues. Asked what the issues will be in the 1952 campaign, Taft was ready: "Well, my feeling is that as far as you can tell at this long distance, there are three main issues. One is the restoration of a program of progress within the principles of liberty rather than the principles of socialism ... I think that that includes the whole field of the Brannan Plan, socialized medicine and all of the other regulatory measures of the Truman Administration . . . We need the restoration of a program to accomplish the continuation of progress that had been made under American principles in the past. Number two, I think, is the restoration of a government of honesty and integrity in Washington, and the elimination of this influence-peddling and corruption which has been shown in so many government departments under this administration. Number three is an attack on the judgment of the present administration's foreign policy as revealed by the fatal mistakes they have made ... in the building up of Russia, and the Korean War and other disastrous occurrences due to their judgment."

After the last question was answered, Taft posed for photographers, his hands clasped above his head like a winning prizefighter. He would conduct a fighting campaign, he said.

He's for Harry. He seemed to have adopted a schedule to prove it. At a National Press Club lunch the day after his announcement, Taft was reminded that Harry Truman said he would like to see Taft as the Republican nominee. "Well," said Taft, "I don't want to make this a mutual admiration society, but if I could choose the candidate on the Democratic ticket, it would be Mr. Truman. That is simply because I think that it would present the issue clearly . . ." Next day, before the Union League Club in New York, he proposed that a new joint military-civilian commission make a complete reappraisal of U.S. military and economic commitments abroad. He charged that no one in the administration has "thought out the exact limitations of what we can do." The same day, on Kate Smith's television show, he expressed the hope that income-tax rates could be cut two years after he became President. Later, on his way home after Congress adjourned, he told New York reporters that he might add two more main issues in his campaign : "high prices and inflation."

Taft is slated to make 16 speeches in October, an equal number in November. Before mid-November, he will travel to Iowa, South Dakota, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Rhode Island, Illinois, Alabama, Missouri, Oklahoma and Ohio. Later, he will go to Wisconsin, where he will enter next spring's primary.

In his own party, Bob Taft's greatest handicap is the familiar talk that he is a great man, but he can't get votes. The "Fighting Bob" role he adopted last week, and his new warmth before audiences, were designed to counteract that feeling. By week's end reporters noted that he was having some success: the "he can't win" talk was fading in Washington. So far, the Taft speedup tactics, designed to get the jump on General Eisenhower, were working well. Republican sentiment, however, would probably not begin to crystallize until January or February.

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