Everything to Gain

The biggest political news last week came from Wisconsin. There a group of ex-Willkieites announced that they would enter Chief of Staff Dwight D. Eisenhower in next April's presidential primary. (In Wisconsin a candidate's consent is not necessary to get his name on the ballot.) The Eisenhower boom was officially on.

Ike's backers knew just what they were doing. The scheme had been worked out by a wealthy, politics-wise Milwaukee insurance man named Milton Polland, who stumped the state for Nominee Wendell Willkie in 1940, and again in 1944 when Dewey won both the primary and the nomination. Polland had talked it all over with the Kansas City Star's President Roy Roberts, long a red-hot Eisenhower man.

They figured they had everything to gain and nothing to lose. If Ike walked away with the primary, he would be almost impossible to beat at the Philadelphia convention. Any respectable total of delegates would put Ike just that much farther ahead. And even a complete drubbing might be talked away on the grounds that Eisenhower had not personally stuck his neck out.

This week, while Candidate Eisenhower still kept his neck in, his backers had a niece of cheering news--which was also an indication of how Eisenhower sentiment had grown. Pollster George Gallup reported: 48% of U.S. voters would pick Republican Eisenhower, 39% Democrat Harry Truman. Results of the last comparative poll (taken in July before the Eisenhower hoopla had got under way): Truman, 46%; Republican Tom Dewey, 44%.

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