Mahout

REPUBLICANS (See Cover)

The big beast was no longer skinny and bag-kneed; its once limp and drooping trunk now swayed with menacing promise. But the G.O.P. elephant mostly drowsed or shifted from foot to foot. Every time the Party seemed about to wake up, a red-faced, elderly mahout named Harrison Spangler tiptoed up and made quiet, shushing nursery-noises until the pachyderm was soothed and drowsy again.

The G.O.P. was not only a pachyderm but a power. Everywhere west of Manhattan's PM and the New York Post, more & more of the U.S. was becoming Republicanland. In the Solid South, hatred of the New Deal was bitterer than anywhere else. In 26 states Republican Governors administered the affairs of 66% of the U.S. people. Since 1938 more & more citizens in 38 states had consistently voted Republican.

The Republican Party, age 90, stood uncertainly, somnolently before a crisis in its history, and a bigger crisis in the nation's history. It had less than five months to pull itself together. In Chicago next June, the G.O.P. must try to choose a Presidential candidate and architect a Party platform which U.S. voters will like better than they like Franklin Roosevelt and the late New Deal.

What made the Party crisis important not just to politicians but to plain people was the deepening need for leadership in the land. The President's leadership had been repudiated again & again by Congress, and the people's only answer to complaints from the White House about Congress was to send more & more Republicans to Washington, to repudiate that leadership further.

This search for leadership was just as deep in Congress itself. Republicans and Democrats alike were casting about for the man or men who could set forth a program of principles which they could follow, in all conscience. These, the very men supposed to generate leadership, were leaderless. The spectacle of Congress thrashing about was a significant index to the national need.

One plain evidence of the need was the abnormal national interest, nine months before Election Day, in the doings and movements of politicians. Almost in spite of itself, with a kind of shuddering fascination, the people daily absorbed an amount of political news unprecedented for the February before the conventions.

For this reason the polls were of little weight: bearing in mind all the ifs, buts, and possibilities of the year (If the war is over in June? August? October? etc.), it was safe to guess that few thoughtful Americans knew absolutely today for whom they would vote in November.

The people were not yet prepared to drop Pilot Roosevelt, but they were on the lookout for a new pilot. Inevitably their eyes turned to the Republicans, to see what leadership could be found there. The voters asked: Where is the Republican leadership?

The first Republican object their eyes fell on, to his considerable discomfort, was Harrison Spangler.

Who Is Spangler? Harrison Earl Spangler is an old-fashioned politician who happens to be Chairman of the Republican National Committee. He was described by the Willkie-minded New York Herald Tribune, after careful analysis, as "possibly not the most disastrous" front man the Party has ever had. With malicious whoops, critics have called him: 1) "the soft underbelly of the Republican Party;" 2) a spokesman who tries to put both feet into his mouth simultaneously; 3) a fictional character invented by the New Deal's foxy old pressagent, Charlie Michelson.

These estimates are less than just. Wheelhorse Spangler is, in fact, an earnest political mechanic who plugs away at his job. He is an accidental victim of the deep G.O.P. dilemma. Chairman Spangler is a shrewd, behind-the-scenes vote-gatherer on the relatively low political plane of precinct, county and state. By default, he has been forced to scramble on stage, an unrehearsed understudy, in a role that might try the statesmanship of a Jefferson.

Harrison Spangler has few close friends and few whole-souled enemies. A man of determined moderation, his unexceptional life has not even been exceptionally dull. A congenital Republican, he is also an Elk, a Mason, a Presbyterian, a Sigma Nu. He smokes cigarets absently, drinks Scotch socially, golfs casually.

He was born 64 years ago in a white frame farmhouse that punctuated an otherwise unbroken stretch of prairie in Guthrie County, Iowa. His forebears were Dutch-Scottish. The lad known as Earl Spangler was a thickish, indestructible, average boy who soaked up his book learning without much night work.

Stitch In Time. In the springtime, young Earl used to cut willow branches with his pocket knife and whittle whistles. One afternoon he fell off a lurching wagon and almost bit off his tongue. Several quick stitches by the family doctor saved the unruly member for future high-school debating. Iowa speechmaking, and eventual policy-pronouncing from Republican National Headquarters. When he was still a boy, Earl settled on law as his career. He hung around the county courthouse after school, listening with interest to the routine trials of routine lawbreakers. Through his father, Zwingle Spangler, who carried weight in Iowa Republican circles, Earl got his first chance at precinct vote-counting. The job roused in him an insatiable appetite for politics.

Earl was teaching school when the Spanish-American War came. He enlisted with Company F, 51st Iowa Volunteers. Typhoid fever laid him low in The Presidio's hospital, San Francisco, and he missed the boat when his outfit sailed for Manila. By the time his temperature had dropped, the war was over.

General Manager. At college (University of Iowa), Earl was neither star quarterback nor honor student but, characteristically, general manager of athletics. In 1905 he took his law degree, began encouraging friends to call him "Harrison." Most Iowans continued to call him "Spang."

In 1908, with shiny new law offices set up in Cedar Rapids, Spang married Fay McIntire. Their only child died in the early years of their marriage. Harrison and Fay Spangler raised fruit trees on the grounds of the sprawling, green-shuttered house just outside Cedar Rapids, and eventually took up as a serious hobby the breeding and exhibition of Irish terriers. Wherever ribbons were being awarded, from Madison Square Garden to Cleveland, the Spanglers were likely to be on hand with the pride of their kennels. Often they went home with the gold or blue ("Best of Breed") ribbons. When Mrs. Spangler died in 1941, Spang's friends worried about him for months. Finally he disposed of all but two of the dogs, squared his jaw, and threw himself, arms flailing, into politics.

Today, in the law offices of Sargent, Spangler & Hines, in the twelve-story Merchants National Bank Building (Cedar Rapids' tallest), one desk is closed. Partner Spangler is away, bossing the nation's GOParty workers from Washington. Dust has collected on the office pictures : Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, an autographed ("with kind regards") photograph of Herbert Hoover. The two farms (corn; hogs) have tenants. The green-shuttered house with the fruit trees is rented--but Spang puts up for the night in his old room, whenever he comes back to town.

Iowa Wheelhorse. Spang's detractors are inclined to forget that he was, on his home grounds, a politician to be reckoned with. His great asset was that he burned with Party zeal. He sweated up through little jobs to become G.O.P. National Committeeman (1932). In 1936, at the G.O.P.'s lowest ebb, the Republican Party consisted mostly of Maine, Vermont and Harrison Spangler. Of the three, Spang was perhaps the most actively stubborn: he still went on, scratching doggedly through the grass roots on the almost hopelessly arid midwest prairie, planting the seeds for a future Republican crop. He left Iowa with a proud record of able politicking.

National Chairman. In Washington, Harrison Spangler is usually up & stirring before 7:30 a.m. He orders hotel-service breakfast in his small suite at the Mayflower (reception room, dining room, bedroom). Then, dressed in a conservative business suit, his white-grey hair parted neatly on the left, he walks--solidly but not too briskly--the four blocks to the handsome Party headquarters at 1337 Connecticut Avenue. Spang adjusts his white-gold-rimmed glasses, ponders the morning mail. (His office, now painted in robin's egg blue, is the one in which Calvin Coolidge used to have his sinuses treated.)

It is Spang's pride and solemn vow that he will answer every letter that comes into Headquarters. If nothing too pressing turns up, he may put on his hat and slip away to the Hill to confer with G.O.P. Congressmen, leaving a staff of 50-odd researchers, writers, publicity experts, clerks and stenographers to push ahead.

Harmony Man. Like other chairmen, in politics and out, Harrison Spangler was not the G.O.P.'s first choice. When the National Committee met in St. Louis in 1942, the two leading contenders for the post were Washington's Frederick E. Baker, Willkie's candidate, and Illinois's Werner W. Schroeder, candidate of the Chicago Tribune. On the first ballot, each polled 40 votes to Spang's 15. To break the deadlock and keep the Party peace, Committeemen gave the chairmanship to Spang.

Spang had no illusions about his position or his potentialities. Soon after he took over his new job, he said: "I am not a policymaker. As I understand it, the job of a chairman is to build the organization which can win elections." But an organization needs leaders, and the G.O.P. leaders seemed to be more concerned with their own futures than with the party's. Spang, left largely to his own devices, banged away accordingly. Sometimes he seemed to be blazing away for the sake of the noise, with no recognizable target.

One day in a press conference, he criticized Henry Wallace's dreamy internationalism. Reporters pounced: What were Mr. Spangler's views, by the way, on the international situation? Spang, no student of Foreign Affairs, blurted: "My job is to build up an army of voters in the United States to defeat the New Deal, and I don't think there are any votes in China, or Mongolia, or Russia that I can get for the Republicans."

But he learned better. Now Harrison Spangler's main claim to fame is the G.O.P. conference at Mackinac Island last September. On his insistence, Republicans gathered to commit themselves, in a period of special Republican timidity to "responsible participation by the U.S. in postwar cooperative organization among sovereign nations. . . ." This sentiment was more straightforward than anything then proposed by the Roosevelt Administration. But while it was still a vague and hazy stand to most laymen, the declaration was more daring than anything Spang had expected.

Dilemma. Spang's attitude toward the Mackinac Charter was a nigh-perfect illustration of the Republican dilemma. Worried by all the talk of foreign policy, he had dutifully called the Committee, much in the spirit of platform committee meetings, hoping to draft an attractive catch-all that would offend no one. When the result rose a notch above that, in the direction of statesmanship, he was dismayed.

For Spang sees his job clearly and sensibly, as one of collecting votes, and any one vote is as good as any other. Like all professional politicos, he wants Semitic votes and anti-Semitic votes, reactionary and liberal votes, the Russian and the Polish vote, the New Republic and the Public Utilities Fortnightly vote. To catch all types of votes the professional's position must necessarily be as rounded as a billiard ball.

This is why a nation in transition on many fronts, demanding political leadership of a new kind, baffles Spang and other professionals. He does not want to argue about foreign policy, or the Russo-Polish frontier, but to sit back and act as receiver for all those who have tired of Franklin Roosevelt.

The doubts of the citizenry about the Republican Party's leaders or attitudes apparently seem to him to be misplaced or unfair.

But the doubts are there. U.S. voters as yet--although June would be the proper time--were certainly not sold on any one Republican candidate as the obvious and unquestionable Man of the Hour. They were slipping away from Franklin Roosevelt, but they had not yet collected under any one Republican banner.

This was only February. None of the main names--Wendell Willkie, Harold Stassen, John Bricker, Thomas Dewey, Douglas MacArthur, Robert Taft--had caught hold of the people's imagination. This might be remedied in June, by the manner of the nomination, and of the nominee. But meanwhile the doubts were there, and the people unsure and unwilling to commit themselves.

And the doubts were deep. Within the Republican Party itself they were most characteristically reflected in the ranks of the Willkieites. In measured terms, Wendell Willkie stated the doubts at Twin Falls, Idaho, this week. Said he: "I know that there are many who will say, yes, we understand that our armed operations can continue as effectively under a different President. We likewise understand the many hazards involved in one man's long continuance in power. We agree with your criticism . . . [but] can we afford to turn the country over to the Republican Party?

"Will we be sure, if we do so, that it will not return to narrow Nationalism, to economic Toryism, and to a disregard of advancing social obligations? And even if the leader selected and the platform adopted give assurances, can that leader lead his party to forward-looking thinking? Or will he be constantly subjected to defeat and frustration by recalcitrants within his own party?

"I know that during the present crisis some in Congress have failed to grasp the requirement of our times, have clung to old formulas in a world of basic change; that some Republican Party leaders were slow, very slow, to appreciate the fundamental issues involved in the present armed conflict. I know that there have long been in the Republican Party forces which really believe that a political party exists solely for the advancement of private, selfish, material interests, and who would . . . turn back the clock of social progress; that negative and subversive elements flock to the party out of power.

"But I believe that it is demonstrable that every one of these elements is equally prevalent in the Democratic Party. But there is a difference: in the Democratic Party they are entrenched, they are geographically integrated and supported by an ancient prejudice, and by corrupt and brazen political machines. While in the Republican Party they are scattered and unsupported by effective political organizations.

"The Republican Party has been out of power for twelve years--chastened by defeat--new leadership has arisen; 90 million Americans now live with satisfaction under the gubernatorial leadership of Republican governors. And our Congressional representation has recently been refreshed with men unhampered by past records, who know that real social progress, once established, cannot be destroyed: that the Republican Party must represent the future, not the past.

"The Republican Party, today invigorated by this infusion of new blood, has already proven it has an abundance of administrative skill; that it is pregnant with the new ideas; that it has an understanding of America's place in the world.

"Our relations with other nations would be strengthened and clarified through new leadership--leadership not grown too tired and cynical to lead; leadership less enamored by the panoply and show of power; leadership fresh from the people. "For all these reasons and many others, I, with the deepest sincerity, believe that the future welfare of the country is involved in the Republican Party's winning the Presidency in 1944. But to win we must deserve to win."

Without regard to their source, or to the Willkie candidacy, Harrison Spangler, genial symbol of professional Republicanism, could well ponder these words as a considerable answer to the Republican dilemma.

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