Calculated Risk

Nothing could be done about the sweltering, 90DEG heat. But the little town of Sapulpa, Okla. (pop. 12,000) had done everything else it could to prepare for the arrival of a home-town girl--Frances Hutt Dewey. The rickety old St. James Hotel was freshly scrubbed. Waitresses and porters sweated in new uniforms; the best suite had been completely done over by a local furniture store. At the Frisco station a crowd gathered to cheer Frances and her husband. New York's Governor Thomas E. Dewey.

Tom Dewey was entranced by Sapulpa's welcome to his wife. He was even more entranced by his own political reception. For four days last week a steady stream of visitors trooped through the St. James, bubbling with optimism. National Committeeman Lew Wentz, an old friend, predicted that most of Oklahoma's 20 convention votes would go to Dewey. Two delegates drove 300 miles from Dallas to report that they were making progress against Bob Taft's forces in Texas. An Arkansas delegation arrived, conferred, departed with the announcement: "It could be arranged for Dewey to carry the delegation." With an eye out for future favors they added: "But it would take some maneuvering."

High Gear. Thus encouraged, Tom Dewey was acting more like a candidate all the time. The whimsy that he was on a vacation had pretty well evaporated. Well covered by photographers, he dashed off autographs for a swarm, of half-clad Sapulpan moppets, who descended on the home of Mrs. Dewey's parents (see cut). Polishing up his grass-roots tactics, he stopped to admire a local farmer's improvised hay bale loader, commented knowingly that it was just what he needed on his own Pawling, N.Y. farm. By the time the Deweys moved on to Kansas City, Tom Dewey was in high gear.

There was no letup. In Kansas City, he. breakfasted with 150 Kansas and Missouri bigwigs, lunched with 175 more, shook hands with 1,500 lesser fry at a reception in the afternoon. There was a small-hours conference with local professionals, and a dinner given by Kansas Governor Frank Carlson. Dewey admitted with a grin that he and his family "have seen more Republicans in the last five days than I ever thought I would see in my life." Answering a question about the Kansas City vote frauds (TIME, June 16), he took a swipe at Harry Truman: "It is a national story--one of the most important in the nation today." Complimenting Kansas City on coming to grips with the Pendergast machine, he said: "With the help of the Kansas City Star, you have been able to bring good government back to this city, and that's some achievement."

Despite some grumbling from Republican rebels (like Oklahoma's Taft-minded Senator Ed Moore), Dewey's Midwest strength looked pretty solid. Then in Kansas City he heard the beat of an ominous drum.

Boom, Boom. It was the throb of a favorite-son boom for Chief of Staff Dwight D. Eisenhower, who in 1948 will become President Eisenhower of Columbia University. Behind the drums were Roy Roberts' potent Kansas City Star and a would-be Eisenhower campaign manager, Alf Landon, who had pointedly stayed away from Dewey doings in Kansas City. A fortnight ago Ike had again denied his political ambitions, but announced: "I haven't the effrontery to say I wouldn't be President." No one knew better than Dewey, beaten by Willkie in 1940, how much spontaneous combustion a name like Eisenhower's might set off among the inflammable delegates in a national convention.

Dewey supporters knew they would have to pile up enough votes to win the nomination on an early ballot, before any such combustion could take place. To that end they tried to parlay a firm core of Dewey delegates into an illusion of Dewey's inevitability, thus roll up an overwhelming slate of backers well ahead of time. The kind of delegates they wanted were stampede-proof, blitz-proof, down-the-line Dewey men.

There was risk in the strategy. There was risk in coming out into the open from the safety of Albany. But Dewey was well aware of the old suspicion in the West that Tom Dewey was just a little too fluent, a little too much the slick Easterner, that actually he was as ardent an advocate of Big Government as any New Dealer. He had to wipe out those suspicions.

Though he was careful to keep his views on both domestic and foreign policy off the record, he outlined his main points in Republican meetings. He was for an even deeper tax cut than Congress' 30-20-10%. He would go up to 50% across the board. He approved the Taft-Hartley Act as an equalizer of the strength of management and labor. He thought the President had bumbled badly on foreign relations. Too many of Harry Truman's appointees in the State Department were patriotic but untrained diplomats, he said.

"Poor Tom?" Back in Washington, other Republican hopefuls took a long, careful look. They counted the stop-Dewey votes. Bob Taft's supporters, already stepping up their campaign, claimed at least 200; Stassenites "claimed another 185; a bobtail of favorite sons controlled another big chunk. His opponents, assessing Dewey's trip, decided that he had blundered. Reports were coming back from politicians who were more riled than anything else by Dewey's attempted blitz. Some experts figured that Dewey had played right into the hands of Harold Stassen, who has long been trying to get Dewey out into the open. Said one G.O.P. Senator: "Poor Tom, he's such a nice fellow."

But as Tom Dewey arrived in Salt Lake City for the governors' convention this week, he was as self-assured as ever. His backers figured that he had 393 sure convention votes of the 547 needed for nomination. Western Republicans were already warning California's Governor Earl Warren that unless he got off the fence soon, western delegates would swing to Dewey. And Dewey men confidently cited the political dogma that, the more Democratic opposition stiffened, the more professional GOPsters would turn to Tom Dewey as the one man who could carry the Republicans into office. They were confident that, by the time he headed back to Albany, the Dewey strategy would have the nomination in the bag.

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