The Face of the G.O.P.

An obvious political fact emerged from the sweltering heat and torpor of the Republican Convention in Chicago last week.

The fact: the Grand Old Party had had its face lifted. It may turn out to be conservative; it may again succumb to the Old Guardsmen. But as the campaign began, the younger men were in the front row.

This was true even before Tom Dewey was nominated and took over the controls. State by State, the G.O.P. is under new management. The 26 Republican Governors, in the main, had cast out the old party reactionaries, had freely replaced them with younger, fresher men. In sum, the party that met at Chicago was not the party that had lost three elections to Franklin Roosevelt. Scores and scores of the delegates had never even attended a national G.O.P. convention before.

In the hall could still be seen the faces of past defeats: Alfred Landon, Henry P. Fletcher, John Hamilton, Joe Pew, Joe Grundy. But, in general, the old men of the party no longer had the power. They did not influence the proceedings; they were dissatisfied with the nomination. But there was nothing they could do.

Much of the time Harrison Spangler sat alone and unheeded. One longtime Hoover man cracked bitterly: "I'm not a delegate--I'm a Republican." Another said: "If you've been a Republican more than five years you're through." Ex-President Hoover, recognizing that his political day was over, formally withdrew from active politics. (For months it has been an open secret that Mr. Hoover's Old Guard advice was not welcome in the Dewey camp.)

One incident was symbolic: a plump little old man, ex-Senator Daniel Hastings of Delaware who has served his Party for 15 years in many high positions, sat below the press box, glumly chewing a cigar, glumly watching the new party bigwigs, Dewey, Warren, Saltonstall, Dwight Griswold, et al. A young blond usherette, with a pageboy bob, strode up to him, said: "Hey, bub, you can't sit here!" Glumly he wandered off, looking for a friendly face, for a Republican who remembered him.

The morning after his acceptance speech Tom Dewey set out to present the new face of the Republican Party to the U.S. To the rear marched old Chairman Harrison Spangler, with a pat on the back, to a post as "General Counsel." Into Spangler's job came Nebraska-born, Yale-educated Herbert Brownell, 40, Dewey's closest political friend, manager of Dewey's winning Governorship campaign in 1942.

The election would be the test. But during the coming campaign the U.S. voter would have time and opportunity to get to know the G.O.P.'s new face, and make up his mind how well he liked it.

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