The Vice-Presidency

In a suite atop Kansas City's Hotel Muehlebach, Harry S. Truman heard the big news. He had spent a middling busy day. In the morning, he and his pleasant-faced wife drove from Kansas City to Independence (pop: 16,066) to vote. Then the Trumans drove to nearby Grandview, shepherded the Senator's 91-year-old mother to the polling booth. In the evening, he gathered with old friends in his hotel suite, joked: "Everybody around here is nervous but me."

When first returns from Missouri indicated that the state might go Republican, Truman exclaimed: "Wow! I think that calls for a concert." He slid behind the chrysanthemum-bedecked piano, tinkled out Paderewski's Minuet, followed it with gay waltzes. At 9:30 p.m. Vice President Wallace, whose doggedly devoted campaigning had brought him both sneers ("the Johnny Appleseed of 1944"), and cheers (louder at Madison Square Garden than those for Truman), became the first to "concede" a Democratic victory. But Harry Truman kept his thin mouth closed. When Tom Dewey conceded defeat at 2:15 a.m. (C.W.T.), Truman hailed it as a "grand statement" that showed "American sportsmanship." Not till 3 a.m. did the cautious, homespun man who will be the 34th Vice President feel confident enough to go to bed.

Governor Bricker also had friends around him in his chambers in Ohio's capital. Honest John kept shaking hands all around, passed out cigars. But as the night faded so did the merriment. When Dewey's statement came over the radio, Bricker sat staring at the wall, his teeth clamped hard on his pipe. Twenty-five minutes later, he too conceded defeat. When his term as governor expires Jan. 8, friends expect that John Bricker will go into private law practice.

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