"Keep It Clean"

Daunted by the outraged uproar which followed their decision to ban TV from national committee hearings, Taftmen did not make the same mistake again. When members of the credentials committee assembled in the rococo Gold Room of Chicago's Congress Hotel on the second day of the convention, they were agreed to work under the eye of the television camera. Through that eye during the next two days millions of Americans saw political infighting in its most instructive form, a moral issue interwoven with highly technical politics.

"The Supreme Court." The first important case history presented was the Georgia delegates contest. Taft members of the credentials committee based their case almost entirely on the decision of a Democratic judge in Georgia (TIME, July 14). Chief Eisenhower spokesman on the committee was the state of Washington's lanky young (32) Donald Eastvold, a former state senator who is his party's candidate for attorney general. Eastvold asserted that the convention was its own supreme court in party matters, and both the 1944 and 1948 Republican Conventions had recognized Georgia delegations led by W. Roscoe Tucker, who now headed the pro-Eisenhower group. Nevertheless, the Taftmen, by a vote of 30 to 21, recommended that the pro-Taft faction be seated at the convention.

Evidence & Audience. The fight put up in the committee by Eastvold and his col leagues was a warning to the Taftmen of what was to come on the convention floor. On the next case -- Louisiana's 13 dele gates-- the Eisenhower group put up an other strong argument. Backed up by an impressive array of charts and witnesses, John Minor Wisdom, chief of the pro-Eisenhower delegation from Louisiana, asserted that John Jackson, head of the Taft delegation, had set up rump meetings and then rigged the state credentials committee so that it was worse than a kangaroo court. Cried Wisdom: "A decent, respectable kangaroo wouldn't be caught dead in such meetings."

Wisdom ended his testimony at 3:45 a.m. When the committee convened again after breakfast, several normally pro-Taft members, doubtless mindful of the television audience, seemed ready to vote with Ikemen on the Louisiana issue. Moving swiftly to convert a rout into a display of generosity, Ohio's ponderous Clarence Brown, leader of the committee's Taft forces, offered to do some trading.

He called the leader of the Eisenhower forces, Massachusetts Congressman John Heselton, into a nearby kitchen. Huddling under a wall sign which read "Keep It Clean," Brown offered a two-part deal: 1) the Taftmen would vote in favor of Ike's Louisiana delegation if 2) the Ike-men would accept Senator Taft's 22-16 split of the Texas delegation.

"There will be no deal," replied Heselton. A few minutes later the credentials committee voted unanimously to seat the Ike delegation from Louisiana.

The Taftmen then threw their creaking steamroller into high for the last time. By a vote of 27 to 24, the committee recommended seating of a Texas delegation split 22 for Taft, 16 for Ike.

"Down the Road." That evening the credentials committee's recommendations were submitted to the full convention for final approval. As soon as Oklahoma's Ross Rizley moved acceptance of the committee's ruling in favor of the pro-Taft group in Georgia, Ikeman Eastvold was on his feet with a counter-resolution proposing seating of the pro-Eisenhower delegates. Again attacking the Taftmen's argument about the Georgia judge, East-void said that there is a saying among lawyers: "Beware a young man with a book." Then he held up a law book and cited a U.S. Supreme Court decision holding that the party convention should make the final decision in delegate contests.

Eastvold's chief opponent was Illinois' oleaginous Senator Everett Dirksen. His pitch: that the members of the convention did not know enough about the Georgia issue to pass on it and therefore should follow the committee majority. This familiar argument overlooked the fact that the delegates could hardly admit that they did not understand a case which millions of Americans understood through the press and TV. Then Dirksen worked smoothly into a bitter diversionary attack on "my good friends from the Eastern seaboard." Said he: "When my friend Tom Dewey was a candidate, I tried to be one of his best campaigners." His voice rose accusingly: "We followed you before and you took us down the road to defeat. Then, shaking his finger at the New York delegation, where Tom Dewey sat smiling fixedly, Dirksen dropped his voice in a final thrust. "And don't do this to us again," he said.

A loud and ugly boo filled the hall-thousands of Taftites booing Dewey. Many another delegate reacted quietly, as the subsequent vote showed, against Dirksen's attempt to hide an issue under a sensational personal attack.

Tension & the Towel. When the roll call began, Pennsylvania's Governor John Fine burst on to the speaker's platform almost incoherent with rage. Quivering from head to foot, Fine accused Temporary Chairman Hallanan of breaking an agreement to grant a 45-minute recess in which state delegations could caucus before the vote was taken. When Hallanan reminded him that the convention had just voted down a motion to recess, Fine bounced out of the hall followed by his delegation. By the time Pennsylvania's vote was requested, however, Fine was back and again trying to get his protest on record. Ruling the governor out of order, Hallanan asked if Pennsylvania wished to pass its vote. "Mr. Chairman," shouted Fine passionately, "Pennsylvania will never pass."

One by one the pivotal states--California, Michigan, Minnesota and Pennsylvania--cast a heavy majority of their votes for the Eastvold motion. When the roll call was complete there were 607 votes in favor of seating the Eisenhower delegation, 531 against.

The vote had another effect: just before it was concluded, a little man* from Puerto Rico arose and demanded the now famous roll call of the three island delegates. The comical interchange which followed swept away the acrimony and strain of the long debate.

Before another humiliating roll-call defeat could be inflicted on them, Taftmen threw in the towel, proposed that the convention unanimously seat the Eisenhower Texas delegation. With that vote, all hope of regaining the offensive went out of the Taft forces, although they still held together with a tenacity and defensive loyalty almost unparalleled in beaten groups at U.S. national conventions.

*Judge Marcelino Romany, a solemn, bald, big-nosed little (5 ft. 1 in.) man who had no intention at all of being funny. Romany is known at home as a stern judge and a man of enormous dignity and great political courage. Until last week he was chiefly famous for throwing Governor Rexford Guy Tugwell's cabinet in jail for contempt during a court action in 1944.

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