The Word

Senator Arthur Hendrick Vandenberg was still not talking, but the word went out last week that he is available for the Republican presidential nomination and that he would accept it. This was, perhaps, the biggest news of the political campaign to date.

Out of the Dark. The tidings swiftly got to Pennsylvania's Governor Jim Duff, who hopes to put most of his state's 73 delegates in the driver's seat of a Vandenberg bandwagon at Philadelphia next month (TIME, May 10). The Senator's strategists hoped that his friends around the country would not start making a big noise about his candidacy. They wanted him to keep his standing as a dark horse, but they also wanted his friends to be no longer in the dark about his willingness to run. They could spread the word quietly to state leaders and delegates; they would not turn on any heat, would make no promises. But there would be no more disclaimers about his interest in the nomination.

To Vandenberg's backers, the strategy looked good. They felt that he was in an enviable position. Unlike Stassen, Vandenberg had trampled on no toes, aroused no vindictive anger among other candidates. In fact, Harold Stassen and Tom Dewey have repeatedly gone out of their way to praise him. Few GOPoliticos believed that either Taft or Dewey would give up for the other to break a stalemate; instead, most believed that they would settle on Vandenberg as the man around whom all G.O.P. elements could most readily unite.

In the Test Runs. Vandenberg's backstage strategists want the nomination to come as a real draft. They had not turned a campaign wheel and did not intend to; but their man was climbing steadily in public popularity. Last week they counted up the nominations of college and university mock conventions,* found that the Senator was far ahead of the field.

A Gallup poll last week reported that he had jumped to third position (behind Stassen and Dewey) in popularity with G.O.P. voters; only Vandenberg and Stassen had gained in the last month. The poll also showed that the Michigan Senator would give President Harry Truman a worse drubbing now than he would have a month ago. Said a southern Senator: "Against Truman, Vandenberg would carry several states of the deep South. He is the one man who would make voting Republican respectable down there."

* Out of 17 known mock conventions Vandenberg has won 13--at Harvard, Washingtion & Lee, Washington University (St. Louis), Notre Dame, Marquette, Oberlin, Wooster, Case (Cleveland), Centre (Ky.), Kalamazoo, Northern Michigan College of Education, Augustana (Ill.) and Lindenwood (Mo.), Stassen was the choice at University of Pennsylvania, Miami (Ohio) and Russell Sage Dewey won at Hiram (Ohio).

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