Middle-of-the-Roader

{See front cover)

Topeka correspondents who had seen him scribbling away at it on a big, yellow scratchpad were sure that Republican Nominee Alf M. Landon's acceptance speech last week (see above) was his own composition. But they also knew that that crucial declaration had, as a matter of course, been passed on by the nominee's chief political strategists, Managing Editor Roy Roberts and Kansas Manager Lacy Haynes of the Kansas City Star. They knew, too, that, as he grappled with complex national issues, modest, provincial Governor Landon had gladly turned for help on phrases, facts, ideas to the four advisers who, he insists, are not a "brain trust"--Charles Phelps Taft II, Earl Howard Taylor, Ralph West Robey and Fred Donald Enfield.

The Republican Press found Nominee Landon's maiden campaign speech a closely reasoned, inspiring statement of great truths. The Democratic Press found it vague, uninspired and--with its promises of economy plus adequate relief, of peace for business plus war on monopolies, of increased farm exports plus decreased farm imports--as inconsistent as the Republican platform. Impartial observers were impressed by the temperate tone in which Alf Landon attacked New Deal performance, the forthright manner in which he espoused much of the New Deal program.-- Citizens who expected a summons to a holy crusade against Franklin Roosevelt and all his works were flatly disappointed.

Most observers would have been less taken aback by the Republican nominee's moderation if they had previously familiarized themselves with the views of Charles Phelps Taft, public-spirited son of the 27th U. S. President. Before Young Republicans in Topeka one day last December, this Cincinnati lawyer appeared to discuss his civic lessons as they applied to national government. Governor Alf Landon, mightily impressed by the speech, was glad to shake the Taft hand, talk things over. Their minds met. Charlie Taft went home, expanded his speech into a 111-page book, You And I--And Roosevelt.* To Governor Landon he sent a copy inscribed: "To the man who fits the blueprint set forth in this little book." Cried Alf Landon, placing the tract permanently on his desk: "There is one book I can recommend."

An amiable paragon, strapping, soft-voiced, easy-smiling "Charlie" Taft is a 38-year-old product of his father's public career, his mother's piety, his uncle Horace's Taft School, Yale, the A. E. F. and Cincinnati's Charter movement. At Yale (Class of 1918) he was football tackle, basketball captain, Phi Beta Kappa, winner of the Francis Gordon Brown award for "good scholarship and high manhood." While his classmates were busy getting into officers' training camps, Taft enlisted as a buck private in the Army, got married before sailing for France. Returning a first lieutenant, he finished a Yale law course in 1921, stayed on through football season as a line coach. Back home in Cincinnati, he teamed up with his elder brother Robert Alphonso in the practice of law. Meanwhile his family grew to two sons, five daughters. Busy as he was with the law, Charlie Taft was never too busy to respond to a call for help from practical Christian enterprises. This able, potent, bright-faced member of one of Cincinnati's great families served the Episcopal Church, the Y. M. C. A., the Community Chest, the Colored Industrial School, the Widows' & Old Men's Home with superhuman energy. Of larger importance, however, were his driving efforts to give Cincinnati a new and better form of Government.

In the ensuing tussle Brother Bob, a conservative like his father, lined up with Cincinnati's Republican organization. As a reward for his party regularity, Ohio picked him as its Favorite Son for the Republican Convention of 1936. Brother Charlie, on the other hand, became a leader of the Cincinnatus Association, a group of energetic young men bent on ridding the city of its wasteful, machine-ridden government. They did, by putting over a new charter which created a city manager and proportional representation, making and keeping Cincinnati one of the best-governed cities in the land. Charlie Taft told the story two years ago in City Management: The Cincinnati Experiment./- Out of the fight he carried an abiding hatred of political spoilsmen, an abiding conviction that lasting reform can be achieved only when the electorate has been taught to understand and want it.

Charlie Taft is proud to call himself a middle-of-the-roader, a moderate, a mugwump. Thesis of You And I--And Roosevelt is that to win the 1936 campaign Republicans must appeal to other moderates who like progress but not too much of it, and that much not too fast. Those moderates, he warns, are in sympathy with most of the New Deal aims. He himself likes its tariff policies, its securities and stock exchange regulation, its bank deposit insurance, its handling of strikes and championship of Labor. He approves of public works, regulation of public utilities (including government "yardsticks"), easy farm and home credit and a more equitable distribution of the nation's wealth. Strong for social security, he considers the New Deal's system unjust and impracticable, dislikes its "spendthrift generosity," its currency policies. But the only things which really make him boil are: 1) "must" bills, jammed through without adequate debate by Congress or the nation; 2) waste and politics in relief; 3) the spoils system as practiced by James A. Farley.

Hard-headed Charlie Taft scoffs at the idea of a U. S. autocracy or Fascism. To him Al Smith, Mark Sullivan and Republican alarmists who proclaim the New Deal's march toward dictatorship are simply shadow-boxing with political phantasmagoria of their own making. As for Franklin Roosevelt's broken campaign promises of 1932, he asserts that any politician who maintains complete consistency "assumes his own infallibility and will destroy his country if he stays in power." An invitation to him to deliver a Lincoln's Birthday address last winter was promptly withdrawn after a brief statement of his political views. Explained Republican Taft: "They wanted someone who would damn F. D. R. and all his works. I can't and won't, and some of the Republican orators and candidates who do, give me an acute pain in the neck."

Of a Manhattan newshawk who went to interview him when Secretary Perkins appointed him mediator of Toledo's Electric Auto-lite Co. strike two years ago, Charlie Taft inquired: "What is there about an Ohio lawyer to interest the East?" Last week not even modest Mr. Taft could deny that his views were of interest to the whole nation. A frequent Topeka visitor since December, he largely drafted the Landon planks on relief, social security and civil service reform, went to the Cleveland Convention as Alf Landon's personal representative to see that they got into the platform. Few days later he turned up in Topeka as one of the Landon "researchers."

In 1932 Franklin Roosevelt had his Louis McHenry Howe to steer him through the intricacies of campaign politics, his Raymond Moley to chart its intellectual strategy. Researcher Taft is neither a Howe nor a Moley to Nominee Landon. Still principally responsible for the character of the Landon campaign is that Kansas City Star team, Roy Roberts and Lacy Haynes, who put the Kansas Governor into the running originally and now pack the greatest influence with him. Theirs will be whatever fame or blame accrues to the G. O. P.'s strategy on Nov. 3. Yet smart newshawks who compared the tone of Nominee Landon's acceptance speech last week with the tone of You And I--And Roosevelt did not underrate the position of Charlie Taft in the Topeka setup. Officially this Ohio middle-of-the-roader is supposed to advise the nominee and his campaign strategists only on relief and social security. But if Alf Landon moves into Charlie Taft's boyhood home in Washington next January, he will be indebted to that young counsellor of moderation for a lot more than an ordinary researcher's facts & figures.

In Topeka all the Landon advisers except Ralph Robey, who lives at the Jayhawk Hotel where the others have their offices, are housed next door to the Executive Mansion. Hard-working and closemouthed, they are not seen much outside home, office or State House. Valiantly doing their bit to dispel the impression that Nominee Landon has copied the Roosevelt brain trust, they also keep out of the nation's eye. There have been no more public statements from them since Charlie Taft's comment on the summons to revolt which Al Smith & Co. sent to the Democratic Convention: "It means a lot of money, but damn few votes."

Earl H. ("Zack") Taylor, 45, has been Governor Landon's agricultural consultant since last April. A longtime student of farmers' woes as chief editorial writer for The Country Gentleman, he had hitherto kept aloof from political schemes for their salvation. Short, stocky, argumentative Adviser Taylor was born on a Kansas farm, studied business law at University of Nebraska, worked on the Kansas City Star before going to The Country Gentleman in 1920. There he distinguished himself not only by studying and thinking harder about farmers than anyone else on the staff, but also by keeping on tap some 600 farmers, county agents, rural editors, bankers and merchants whom he wrote to and visited often for first-hand information.

Ralph West Robey is 35 and a bachelor, handsome enough to have kept Topeka's young women in a flutter since his arrival. He advises Nominee Landon on banking and finance. Born in tiny Masontown, W. Va., Ralph Robey learned his economics in Indiana and Columbia Universities, has since expounded his views in the Christian Science Monitor, New York Evening Post, Washington Post and as banking instructor in Columbia's School of Business. An acquaintanceship with Columbia's Professor Raymond Moley put him on the fringe of the Roosevelt brain trust in 1932, but since the Bank Holiday of 1933 he has denounced & deplored New Deal economics, notably in Roosevelt versus Recovery.*

Newest, most pedantic-looking and least-known of the Landon "researchers" is Fred Donald Enfield, thin-faced, bespectacled Los Angeles lawyer and onetime special assistant to the U. S. Attorney General. Disclaiming any specialty, Lawyer Enfield calls himself a Landon "research assistant," publicly airs his opinions only to the extent of letting it be known that he is against the New Deal.

An academic corps of fact & figure men working in Washington under Yale Economist Olin G. Saxon completes the Intelligence Division with which Nominee Landon is moving into his campaign. Republicans who have long sneered at the Roosevelt "brain trust" may be spared some embarrassment by their nominee's tactful word-juggling in referring to his helpers, but the fact remains that he, no less than Franklin Roosevelt in 1932, has been compelled to acknowledge that a Presidential program for the modern U. S. must be the product of many minds. With no other statement in You And I--And Roosevelt can Alf Landon agree more heartily than with Charlie Taft's observation: "The truth is, nothing which concerns this nation of 120,000,000 people can ever be simple again."

* Commented Mrs. Roosevelt in her newspaper column: "My mother-in-law has a radio, so we all listened to Governor Landon's speech. An effective speech, and I could only think of what difficulties success may sometimes bring with it."

*Farrar & Rinchart ($1).

/-Farrar & Rinchart ($2.50).

*Harper ($2).

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