Auguries

In the folklore and custom of politics, Inauguration Day is open season for hearty handshakes, clinking glasses, the rustle of silks, and self-conscious twisting in rented tuxedos. But for the crop of newly elected governors who raised their hands in solemn oath across the nation last week, inauguration seemed more like an augury of trouble and crisis.

P: Connecticut's movie-profiled Republican John Davis Lodge paraded to the State House in midafternoon, found that the Democrat-controlled Senate had refused to show up for the swearing-in as prescribed by law and custom. After a corps of lawyers had scoured the Constitution and legal precedent, Lodge decided he could do without the rebellious Democrats, was sworn in before only the Republican House just nine minutes before midnight.

P: New Mexico's 38-year-old Edwin L. Mechem, the 105th governor in New Mexican history* and the first Republican to crack the state's Democratic machine in 20 years, got wind of an alarming rumor. His Democratic lieutenant governor, scheduled to be sworn in an hour and a half ahead of the governor's inaugural, was planning (so the story went) to rush through a swatch of political appointments before Mechem could act officially. Hurriedly, Mechem took his oath in his apartment before a notary public 15 minutes after midnight, took it again twelve hours later before the chief justice of the state supreme court.

P: New Hampshire's Republican Sherman Adams suggested a canny Yankee solution to the problem of the inflated dollar. Said he in his inaugural speech: "I believe if we all would decide to give half a dollar more work for the dollar we receive, we would all come pretty near getting back the half dollar we are losing because our dollars are only worth half as much."

While most of the nation's governors settled down to ponder and parley after their exertions, New York's Tom Dewey wound up and tossed a bomb shell. He hardly had time to draw a deep breath after his third inaugural before he gave the state a breath-taking demand for emergency powers in case of atomic attack or invasion. Dewey wanted stand-by authority to: make law by proclamation, seize private homes and property, conscript manpower, ration raw materials and finished goods, set up constructions priorities, fire any public officer who refused to obey his order (including mayors and police chiefs). This was not exactly martial law, an aide explained, because the Army would not be in charge, and injured citizens would still have recourse to the courts. Most of the citizenry read it more as the headline in Manhattan's Sunday News set it down: DICTATOR POWER

ASKED BY DEWEY.

* Predecessors: 55 Spanish, 11 Mexican, 2 U.S. military, 4 U.S. civil, 18 territorial, 14 elected.

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