Men A-Plenty

(See Cover) The most passionate enemies of Franklin D. Roosevelt would not deny that he is a leader. His most passionate friends think he has led the U. S. to the verge of a Promised Land--which, to opponents, looks more like Hell. But whether Mr. Roosevelt is Moses or Lucifer, he is a leader. To many people he has been their leader so long that they find it hard to imagine anyone else in his place. A divinity doth hedge a U. S. President, no less than a king; and in seven years a White House incumbent can easily come to seem more than lifesize.

Last week, as the U. S. prepared for the great act -- now only seven months away -- of choosing its next President, it became apparent, notwithstanding such beliefs, that U. S. citizens have no dearth of potential Presidents to choose from. Whoever is elected President next November 11, the heavens will not fall, the sun will rise, the nation will very probably not go to the dogs. All this is comforting to many a plain citizen getting ready to witness the hottest political campaign in years.

In neither party was the candidate a foregone conclusion; no more so the election. Since 1920 no G. 0. P., since 1924 no Democratic convention promised to be so exciting; since 1916 no election appeared to be so close. Of so many candidates, so many leaders, none was really inconceivable as a U. S. President. Buckle on the weakest the diamond-studded championship belt, surround him with patronage, brass bands and ceremony, show him intent up to his knees in a trout stream, give him powerful speeches to make--and there would go the 33rd President of the U. S., beloved of the people until he tries to do or fails to do what he promised. The visible possibilities, likely and unlikely, make not a bad roster:

John L. Lewis. Long since 1937 the U. S. stopped thinking of C. I. Oligarch Lewis as a potential candidate; and few "influences" in U. S. political history have seemed so uninfluential. Of 40 Congressional candidates he blasted at in 1938, 39 were promptly elected; in Pennsylvania his support was politically fatal. Yet John Llewellyn Lewis, 60, shag mane, miner's pallor, pompous oratory and all, might be a forceful, effective, and sur prisingly conservative President.

Few remember that Calvin Coolidge, of all people, once wanted him as Secretary of Labor in his Cabinet. Last week, out of hundreds of columns and editorials condemning Lewis' threat of a Third Party, only Columnists Ernest Lindley (Washington Post) and Ludwell Denny (Scripps-Howard) realized that Mr. Lewis was really talking about 1944, that he believes the politically disinherited U. S. groups must have some point to rally on.

Wendell Willkie. Thoroughly Presidential is Utilitycoon Willkie, the home spun Indianian who makes sense on any subject (New Dealers would except TVA). Mr. Willkie, 48, no Tory, is brilliant, countrified, adept in controversy and, to many minds, the best domestic brain on politico-economics. He has two serious handicaps--he is associated in the public mind with utilities; he is unknown politically west of the Mississippi.

Thomas Edmund Dewey. Unaccustomed as the U. S. is to youth in the White House (youngest President: Theodore Roosevelt, 42 ; average inaugural age, 54), last week many a citizen at last faced the possibility that 38-year-old District Attorney Dewey might actually be come President (see p. 18).

Robert Alphonso Taft. Months ago (TIME, Dec. 18), the U. S. settled back to enjoy the Adventures of Robert in Bumbledom, decided that one of Mr. Taft's most attractive qualities was his knack of apparently muffing things. Industrious, hopeful, comfortable, the Dagwood Bumstead of American politics, Ohio's 50-year-old Senator was unprofessional, artless, refreshingly without a workable cure-all for every ill. By last week he had already rounded up more delegates than "Buster" Dewey will have at convention time, even if Mr. Dewey sweeps every primary in sight.

Joseph Martin. The leathery little pub lisher of North Attleboro, Mass., his heart long set on the Speakership of the House, last week was still an ideal compromise candidate. Able, shrewd, plain as an old shoe, Joe Martin, 55, is obviously a clearheaded, sobergoing New Englander, as familiar as apples and Biblical proverbs, a man who would bring honest humility to the White House.

Fiorello Henry LaGuardia. The 103rd Mayor of New York City (second tough est political job in the U. S.) is the greatest paradox of all the leaders. Thought of as an utter New Yorker, the duck-bottomed Little Flower spent his years from three to 20 in South Dakota, Arizona, Florida, is as Western as Nebraska's Norris, Wisconsin's La Follettes, Idaho's Borah. He talks the most direct American language of any leader, speaks Italian, German, Croatian, Yiddish, French, Spanish. Short, rubbery, unmilitary, he is a U. S. Army Air Corps major and a veteran who has actually seen fighting. Denounced all his political life as a radical, his businesslike administration has won the favor of New York City bankers; one of the slickest natural politicians in the country, he has no party, no machine, but rates as a New Dealer in many respects, and is still only 57.

John Nance Garner. Cactus Jack is 71, sound in wind & limb, a hickory conservative who does not represent the Old South of magnolias, hoopskirts, pillared verandas, but the New South: moneymaking, industrial, hardboiled, still expanding too rapidly to brood over social problems. He stands for oil derricks, sheriffs who use airplanes, prairie skyscrapers, mechanized farms, $100 Stetson hats. Conservative John Garner appeals to many a conservative voter.

Charles Linza McNary. Slim, weary-faced, 65, the great Republican strategist is Oregon's Senator McNary, serpent-wise in politics, beloved of U. S. farmers and of connoisseurs of political wisdom. Wanting no higher office, liberal Leader McNary 'would satisfy more than Republican voters; in fact, is one of the few G. O. Possibilities whose nomination would automatically attract otherwise safely Democratic votes.

James Aloysius Farley. Big Jim, 51, 6 ft. 2 in., 215 Ib. of partisan good will, "the man who has done most for Grassy Point, New York" (where he was born), is also the man who has done most for Franklin Roosevelt. Last week Big Jim, still living down his unearned reputation as an out-&-out politician and therefore a low fellow, traveled through Midwest, Border and Southern towns, trying to do for himself in a quiet way what he did so clamorously for his boss. On Mule Day in Columbia, Tenn., Big Jim played Titania to a mule, Prince Hal with the voters, thousands of whom felt the U. S. would be safe in the big hands of Big Jim Farley.

Cordell Hull. Last week the prospects of Secretary of State Hull faded--ironically enough, in the moment of his biggest victory (see p. 18). Not one of the Western Democratic Senators who voted against the reciprocal trade agreements was picayune, stubborn, or merely stupid. They reflected the Western electorate's firm belief that the program hurts cattlemen, farmers, miners. No Democratic boss in the West believed last week that the party could win with Mr. Hull, news almost certainly received gratefully by unambitious Mr. Hull, 68. No one in the U. S. saw anything unPresidential about Mr. Hull except perhaps his age (oldest President: William Henry Harrison, 68, who died one month after inauguration). Mr. Hull represents probably the last chance for U. S. citizens who want to vote for a man born in a log cabin.

Arthur Horace James. Freckly, redhaired, 100% reactionary, Pennsylvania's G. O. P. Governor James, 56, is the ideal President to many Americans. A coal-mine breaker's boy, a small-town lawyer, a Methodist and 33rd degree Mason, he respects hard work, thrift, the Bible and Oilman Joe Pew; likes Welsh singing, duck-shooting, boiled dinners; wears high-top shoes with hooked laces; loathes progressivism in any form but the abstract. Yet there have been U. S. Presidents of less force than Mr. James.

Bruce Barton. Tall, impressively flat-waisted in the House's wallow of paunches, his auburn hair attractively wavy, an honest apple-cheeked smile, Mr. Barton, 53, seems the epitome of the wholesome U. S. businessman. If the 1928 cry for a businessman in the White House (Herbert Hoover) should be revived, Mr. Barton's candidacy would be even more obvious.

Owen Josephus Roberts. The so-called "Swing Man" of the Supreme Court would, as a Republican candidate, be relatively impervious alike to New Dealers or conservatives. Fearless, relentless, 64, of greater physical and mental stamina than most U. S. leaders, he is also a practical farmer, has vast erudition, a natural oratorical voice trained to express sense rather than emotion, impressive presence, and no great desire to be President.

Paul Varies McNutt. Wrote observant William Allen White (in the spring number of The Yale Review): "Paul Vories McNutt is merely Garner in a high hat, a white vest, a pongee silk scarf, pumps, and the glamour of a movie hero. Where Garner's lower-caste friends and supporters keep an ever-ready shotgun to enforce their racial superiority, the gentleman from Indiana's friends and supporters have an automatic ready for subversive influences. . . . He represents deep, conscious, black reaction in the Democratic Party, and like his modern prototypes who have grabbed power, he may walk to power as an advanced liberal. Mussolini and Hitler were both socialists. McNutt, youngest of the Democratic candidates I am mentioning, may go a long way to the Left before he turns his corner."

Also Available. Some citizens last week still clung to the old gold standard of Herbert Hoover, 65, who is now recognized as a human being, and whose administration no longer looks quite so terrible as it did in 1932. To the right even of Mr. Hoover, and with a similar political Crossley rating ("poison"), stands Rochester, N. Y. Publisher Frank Gannett, 63, a rock-ribbed loather of the New Deal, now cam paigning the country in his private plane, a solid, stolid, old-school businessman. In the road's middle is Michigan's Arthur Hendrick Vandenberg, 56, still "available," though apparently somewhat relieved that he will probably not get the job he has often called "crucifixion."

Of those candidates not actively campaigning, U. S. Attorney General Jackson, 48, a hardheaded corporation lawyer, a crusading idealist, is the dream boy of the New Dealers, Franklin Roosevelt's idea of the specifications for a truly great U. S. President. Pleasantly normal, he charms fat cats and leftists alike; pale, persuasive, one of the ablest trial lawyers of the last decade, Mr. Jackson thinks the rich are too rich, the poor too poor. He is also Franklin Roosevelt's idea of a great Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, but has a horror of being buried alive. Mr. Jackson is smooth: no handles.

Ohio's Governor Bricker, pet of the Republican Party's chief contributors, is unpopular outside of Ohio because of the Cleveland relief row last winter. The strategy of his supporters is simple: when Mr. Taft is either deadlocked or fails to gain, Mr. Bricker will be unveiled, and the convention will be shown the necessity of carrying pivotal Ohio, fourth in electoral votes (26). Warm-smiling, farm-bred Mr. Bricker, plain-talking, handsome in a luncheon-club way, a no-frills country lawyer, unquestionably stood last week as first-grade, second-rank G. O. P. material.

Burton Kendall Wheeler. Last week a man who was first-grade, first-rank Democratic material returned to Washington after a rapid prowl through California. A lanky, rumpled man who walks with a rapid shamble, smiling quizzically, his glance a friendly, direct glare through octagonal spectacles, smoking a cigar with the superb nonchalance of Groucho Marx, Montana's Burton K. Wheeler is a man of 58 who is not just another cow-country Senator but a Washington landmark.

Carl Hubbell is a ballplayer's ball player; Count Basie is a swing artist's swing artist; bounding Burt Wheeler is a Senator's Senator. Forged in the furnace of Montana politics, in the long fight with Montana's absentee owners, tempered by blows in & out of the Senate that would have long since destroyed anyone of lesser steel, polished by the saving grace of a swift mind that has dwelt long on the ironies of politics--Burt Wheeler has lived a half-dozen lives, every one at top speed, except for brief intervals of catnapping on his office couch. "Nearly everything, except perhaps dinner, seems less important after a nap," says Mr. Wheeler.

From a Massachusetts Quaker family 300 years old came Burt Wheeler, on Feb. 27, 1882. From the start he was on the scramble. Out of Michigan Law School in 1905, he went west, there heard the fabulous tales of attorneys' fees in Butte, Mont., where F. Augustus Heinze, copper baron, and Amalgamated Copper Co. (the "Standard Oil crowd") were at war for control of "the richest hill on earth." But by the time young Wheeler settled in Butte the fight was over and the fees had fled. He became a law clerk, then hung out his own shingle: in a couple of years he had a profitable practice--mostly personal injury cases against the railroads and Anaconda Copper Co.

Lawyer Wheeler sought a bigger arena, was elected to the State Legislature in 1910 as it was engaged (under old practice) in choosing the next U. S. Senator. Wheeler voted consistently for mustachioed, fearless Thomas J. Walsh. Copper legislators beat Walsh, but Burt Wheeler acquired a powerful friend. In 1912 Walsh was elected in a direct primary and in 1913 Woodrow Wilson appointed Burt Wheeler U. S. District Attorney.

During World War I the young D. A. got into serious trouble with war-hysterical citizens. He refused to be "diligent" in prosecuting "pro-Germans" whose crime was mainly their accent. Once at Dillon, Mont., a mob drove him out of town when he tried to speak. On the outskirts he stopped, tried again, again was driven away, heckling his hecklers over his shoulder as he left.

In 1922 Wheeler captured the U. S. Senate seat he has since retained. Bounding Burt was hot stuff from the start. In late 1923, as his colleague Walsh lifted the lid of the G. 0. P.'s Teapot Dome, Senator Wheeler began to pry into the man who made Warren G. Harding Pres ident : Attorney General Harry Daugherty. Daugherty's FBI agents toothcombed Montana for Wheeler dirt; finding none, they made some, concocted a charge that Wheeler had used his Senatorial influence to obtain illegal oil leases for a client. After waiting a year for the case to come to trial, Wheeler was acquitted in ten minutes. As the verdict came in, a tele gram arrived from Washington telling of the birth of a daughter. Wheeler named her Marion Montana, the Marion after "Fighting Bob" (Robert Marion) La Follette Sr. On his 80th birthday, in Colum bus, Ohio, Jan. 26, old man Daugherty said he bore Wheeler no ill will, thought he would probably make a good President.

Burt Wheeler is the most Democrat-Democrat in the party. He believes that the Democratic Party has a great future, but he does not think that that future is necessarily immediate. In 1924, sickened by a party that found John W. Davis the best it could do, he accepted the Vice-Presidential nomination on the elder La Toilette's third-party ticket. Wheeler campaigned with an empty chair on the plat form, representing President Coolidge; he kept asking it blunt questions, getting no more answer from the chair than from the White House.

Back in the Senate, Wheeler began to solidify his friendships with labor, farmers, underdogs. By 1932 he was a For-Roosevelt-Before-Chicago man, helped calm the rising gorge in many a Senatorial breast. As a reward Franklin Roosevelt let Burt Wheeler fight for the toughest bills he wanted sent through the Senate. In 1935 the President asked for the Cohen-Corcoran-designed Public Utilities Holding Company Act. In the hardest fight in all the New Deal, Wheeler far more than any other man got the bill passed intact with its death-sentence clause. But instead of reward, Bounding Burt got less patronage than before. By nature, ability and personal disappointment Burt Wheeler was therefore the natural leader of the opposition to Mr. Roosevelt's court-expansion bill.

Last week, although he and the President had buried the hatchet, there had been no hearty handshake, no Presidential pat on the shoulder. A few weeks before Idaho's William E. Borah died, he named Burt Wheeler as the man the Democrats should nominate, said he would bolt the G. 0. P. to stump for him; and in January Nebraska's independent George W. Norris (who wanted Mr. Roosevelt to run for Term III) named Burt Wheeler as the only thinkable alternative to Roosevelt.

Burton K. Wheeler is certainly Presidential timber, but he is nowhere as a candidate. His only friends are people. His critics are now few--severest still are the Illinois farmer's daughter, Lulu White, whom he married in 1907, his six children. That he could get the Democratic nomination if Mr. Roosevelt would forgive and anoint him as The Chosen, few observers doubt; but no one who knows the President's stubborn vindictiveness against Wheeler for leading the fight against the court-expansion bill expects Mr. Wheeler to be The Chosen.

And One Other. The U. S. last week was still breathlessly aware of another potential candidate, as yet undeclared.

Mr. Roosevelt, lonelier than in years, physically below par, still told friends his health wouldn't stand a third term, still seemed to be waiting, watching for a sign, listening for a word. But Franklin Roosevelt never was an April campaigner; he always waits for September to clap on his grey campaign sombrero, to leave the society of intellectuals and descend, like a man into a familiar bad habit, into the warm company of greasy politicians, sweat-handed citizens, the odorous pleasantries and hot cheery toil of campaigning.

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