Head Start

Hard-running Harold Stassen, who started his race for the 1948 nomination a full year ahead of his rivals, is no man to let the grass grow up under his feet. In a radio interview on Mutual's Meet The Press program last week, the University of Pennsylvania's President Stassen was off to an even longer head start in the 1952 campaign.

Without one direct word of criticism of Tom Dewey, Harold Stassen made it clear that he thought Dewey had missed the boat by not "talking the issues through to the people." The election, said Stassen, thus was not really a defeat of a "liberal Republican program," because such a program had never really been presented to the people. The Stassen formula: "We need to rebuild the party from the people on up . . .to present a warm and humanitarian approach to the people."

There was no doubt about the candidate that 41-year-old Harold Stassen had in mind for the rebuilding job. The word had already been passed along by Lawyer Amos Peaslee, who managed Stassen's eastern campaign last spring: "Harold E. Stassen will be in the political picture in 1952 ... He will surely be in a topflight position among presidential potentials when the time comes for thinking about a successor to President Truman."

Another 1948 candidate who was already laying plans for the future was the Progressive Party's Henry Wallace. At a meeting of his national committee in Chicago, Wallace announced that he was willing to run for President again in 1952--"if it would be the best thing for the party."

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