Down with McKinley

The ghost of an old romance kept haunting and embarrassing the Democrats, and it seemed high time for someone to do something about it. Four years ago Ike Eisenhower was the Democratic idol: in 1945 Harry Truman himself promised to help Ike get the presidency if he wanted it, and in 1948 a powerful bloc of Democratic liberals tried to dump Truman and run Ike at the Democratic Convention. Now Ike stood a good chance of getting the Republican nomination in July.

Last week Harry Truman, in rare political fettle, stood up before the fifth .annual convention of the Americans for Democratic Action in Washington and got right to the point. "I understand," he said in reference to A.D.A.'s own 1948 Eisenhower leanings, "that four years ago--along about this time--some of the leaders of A.D.A. were engaged in rather wild fancies about the presidential nomination . . . You were a young political organization and you had not studied the history of conventions. A President of the United States, when he desires and when he wants to be nominated, there isn't anybody in the world can keep him from it."

With forgiveness established, Harry Truman laid down the 1952 line: no matter what Ike Eisenhower may be personally, he would be a prisoner of the isolationists once he became the G.O.P. candidate.

Tar Pits. "When I talk about the Republican Party here tonight," he went on, "I mean the dinosaur wing of the Republican Party--which unfortunately seems to be in control of that party. They are living in 1896 and 1920. They're made up of the Republicans of 1896 and 1920. And they worship William McKinley and Warren G. Harding . . . Even if the Republicans get a presidential candidate with a good record in foreign affairs, he will not be able to drown out the raucous isolationist outcries of the rest of the party."

With whistle-stop abandon, the President went on to track the dinosaur through his favorite tar pit, the Republican Both Congress. There, he said, the G.O.P. proved that it was "after the farmers," "after all wage earners," and "after organized labor." Today the Old Guard is trying "to preserve high profits for the steel companies ('I think they want a strike')," and "prevent wage increases for the steelworkers. That shows exactly where the Old Guard stands. It shows that their hearts lie with the corporations and not with the working people."

He had a special political barb for Ike. Last March Ike lined up with the states which want to transfer the rich offshore oil lands from federal control back to state control. "That is just what the oil lobby wants," said Truman. "Talk about corruption. Talk about stealing from the people. That would be robbery in broad daylight--and on a colossal scale. It would make Teapot Dome look like small change . . . I intend to stand up and fight to protect the people's interest in this matter." Since a bill to return the Tidelands to the states was already on its way from Congress to the White House for signature, this seemed a clear signal that the President would veto it.

Trojan Horse Suggestions. Having slashed at the dinosaur, Harry Truman told the Democrats how to make big broad tracks of their own. "The first rule in my book," he said, "is that we have to stick by the liberal principles of the Democratic Party . . . The people don't want a phony Democrat . . . and I don't want any phony Democrats in this campaign. We are getting a lot of suggestions to the effect that we ought to water down our platform . . . These, my friends, are Trojan Horse suggestions.

"I have been in politics for over 40 years and I know what I'm talking about, and I believe I know something about the business. One thing I am sure of: never, never throw away a winning program. This is so elementary that I suspect the people handing out this advice are not really well-wishers of the Democratic Party." The winning program is still "the New Deal and the Fair Deal," and it includes, he said (to the distress of Democratic National Chairman Frank McKinney, who was trying in Chicago to patch up a compromise with the Southerners), a firm stand on civil rights. "I am sure that the liberal faith is the political faith of the great majority of Americans . . . and that is why, this time, as in 1948, we will win."

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