The Key to the White House

In a way, Harry Truman is as embarrassing a campaign problem for the Democrats as Joe McCarthy is for the Republicans. Last week, just by standing pat on his record (and digging in his heels a little), the President squeezed a stream of careful explanations out of his own party's candidate.

It began with Adlai Stevenson's written reply to a question posed by the Oregon Journal: "Can Stevenson really clean up the mess in Washington?" The reply, published in the Journal, read: "As to whether I can clean up the mess in Washington, I would bespeak the careful scrutiny of what I inherited in Illinois and what has been accomplished in three years . . . I can only give my best, with ruthless objectivity."

In referring to a "mess," was Stevenson just repeating the Journal's question or was he, as Republicans gleefully said, admitting that the Truman Administration was a mess of graft? When reporters put this to him at a midweek press conference, Stevenson at first seemed to adopt the second interpretation. Said he: "It's been proved, hasn't it? . . . Several people have been indicted." Then, backing off a bit, he added: "I would think that was probably true of any government, and more or less all of the time. What we want to do is reduce the number of people who abuse the public confidence."

At his weekly press conference, Harry Truman recoiled at the word "mess." He said he couldn't comment on Stevenson's statement because he knew of no mess in Washington. Nor would he comment on Vice Presidential Candidate Sparkman's view that the late steel strike had been "mishandled."

To some reporters, it looked as if Harry was being shot at by both sides. "Do you have any feeling of being a target?" asked the Associated Press's Tony Vaccaro. Of course not, answered the President. He would be a target for Eisenhower and the other Republicans, but he couldn't be a target for the Democrats. Reason: he is the key of the campaign; Stevenson will have to run on the Truman record as well as the record of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The President is all in favor of new blood being infused into the Democratic Party, he said, but Stevenson can't go back on what the Democratic Party has done during the last 20 years.

Next day, Stevenson said that he would not repudiate the record of the last two Democratic Presidents. "Of course I approve and applaud the vast accomplishments for the public good under Democratic leadership," said he. "President Truman or any President is a key figure in a national campaign."

The difference between "a key" and "the key" might turn out to be important. When Truman was asked at his press conference if he liked the way the Stevenson-Sparkman campaign had begun, he replied with two eloquent words: No comment.

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