In California

It used to be said that you can't carry a presidential election without New York. Then, in 1916, Wilson did it. But he carried California, and California was not supposed to go Democratic. This year the Republicans hope to carry New York; they are uncertain about California.

They aren't afraid of the Democrats in California. But there is LaFollette, and it would be very nearly as bad for the Republican cause to lose California to LaFollette as it would be to lose it to Davis.

In Minnesota, the Farmer Labor Senators are for LaFollette. In North Dakota, Frazier and Ladd, nominal Republicans, are for LaFollette. But that isn't serious, because those states are rather expected to go for LaFollette. In Iowa, Brookhart, sympathetic with LaFollette, is sitting on the fence. But he is offset by Cummins. In Nebraska, Norris is sitting on the fence, but the Republicans hope that LaFollette and Davis will split the opposition vote and give the state to Coolidge. All the other Republican Senators have considered it the course of wisdom to hop the Coolidge wagon, hoping that it will soon contain a band--all but Hiram Johnson.

Sullenly, in California, Senator Johnson sits twiddling his thumbs. He isn't aligned politically on the side of LaFollette in the way Brookhart and Norris are. But it happens that in the primaries he pitted himself against Coolidge and was beaten. That has been enough to keep him from casting his lot with Coolidge. "Dog in the manger," some Republicans call him, as they watch him sit by while the LaFollette opposition, which he might check, worries them.

Johnson's aid, if he chose to give it, would be material to the Republican cause. California still looks upon him with favor. First he secured the conviction of Abe Ruef and helped to break up the boodle ring in San Francisco. On the strength of that, California elected him Governor in 1910. Once Governor, he completely broke the Southern Pacific Railway's strangle hold on state politics. His prestige, and his name as Vice Presidential nominee on the Progressive ticket helped to carry California for Roosevelt in 1912. California made him Governor again and then Senator.

His going to the Senate was the beginning of his decline. He was not a brilliant Senator. But then he went on the warpath in 1920, and his power had a renaissance when he unexpectedly carried the Republican Presidential primaries in several states. 1920 was a year of reaching backward, of reaction, and the country might well have preferred to go back to Roosevelt Progressivism, of which he was the representative, to going back to Old Guard Conservatism. In the convention, however, the Old Guard licked him, and then Johnson, sore at his defeat, refused the Vice Presidential nomination that would have made him President to day.

It was ironical and it was typically Johnsonian. He does not forgive. He isn't a good loser and on that account he has been called upon to lose much. It is easy to understand him sulking in California. This parvenu, Coolidge, who took the office he spurned, calls upon him now for aid. It is not easy for him to give. He feels bitter, doubtless. His own state, the California which he dug out of the rut of corruption in 1911, preferred Coolidge to him in 1924. He has the temperament to regard such things as conspiracies against himself, as dastardly schemes to thwart him.

Clinton W. Gilbert, the political correspondent who was responsible a few years ago for The Mirrors of Washington, a book of frank and, in the main, fair but none too complimentary sketches of current political characters, tells an illustrative fact. Of all the men Mr. Gilbert's squirming pen had chosen to poke in tender parts of their anatomy, Johnson was the only one to be angered. "Only from him came "furious letters and threats of action."

Johnson regards opposition as a sign of personal malignity towards him. He would like to rise and on the flat of his feet, waving his great windmill of an arm in a gesture to the cosmos, denounce this fellow Coolidge in a voice vibrating with the passion of his platitudes. Instead, he has kept a moody silence.

There is talk that the Republicans may try to use some of Mr. Hoover's influence in California to help swing the state for them, but that might induce Senator Johnson to open his mouth--for LaFollette. For Hoover is a man whom Senator Johnson does not like. California is not ungrateful for what Johnson has done for her, but he has made the means of expressing her gratitude difficult. In the give and take of politics, he has lacked the capacity for mutual easements and accommodations with his fellows. And in 1924 his 1912 Progressivism is a bit outworn.