The Bogeyman

The bogeyman of the Democratic Party is Vice President Richard Milhous Nixon, and he has more than earned its dislike.

No man in either party can approach his record of work in the 1954 campaign. By Election Day, Nixon will have covered more than 25,000 miles, to make more than 200 speeches in 31 states (not counting revisits). On tour he subsists mostly on tomato soup, milk and hamburgers, drives himself unmercifully 16 to 20 hours a day. The pace has melted fat off his middle and flattened his chipmunky cheeks. Last week the youthful Old Pro was off again in his chartered Convair on his fourth and final cross-country swing of the 1954 campaign.

Energize & Win. Nixon's main task is to prod the Republican organization into action. But he also has given some sort of consistent pattern to a shapeless G.O.P. campaign. The pattern, as it emerged last week: Communism in the U.S.

In Philadelphia he said that all but one of 164 State Department employees fired as subversives and homosexuals since 1952 were holdovers from the Truman Administration. In Pittsburgh the theme was still security, and in Chicago he gave it a new twist. He charged that a "virtual blueprint for socializing America" had been "found in the files when we came to Washington . . ." That night he huddled with Newspaper Publisher John S. Knight, argued that Knight should throw his Chicago Daily News behind the candidacy of Illinois' Joe Meek. All he got was a maybe, but Knight promised to use his Akron Beacon Journal to support Ohio Senatorial Candidate George Bender.

Next day, with Meek trailing along, Nixon spoke at Peoria, Champaign and Rock Island, Ill. Encouraged by what seemed to be an upswing in Meek's campaign against Democrat Paul Douglas, Nixon exhorted the G.O.P. machine to greater efforts. To a crowd of Peoria Republicans he said: "Take off the next ten days. Talk to your friends and neighbors. It will be the best days you ever spent. We've all got to work."

Snowbound. Next day the Vice President was off for Montana and speeches at Billings, Bozeman and Butte. Nixon had planned to fly on to Wyoming for speeches at Worland, Casper and Cheyenne, but an early-season snowstorm left him stranded overnight in Bozeman. The Cheyenne speech, which had already been released to the press, was another attack against "the Democratic Party's left-wing clique, which has been so blind to, and has tolerated, the Communist conspiracy in the United States." It also included something that is almost certain to explode into bitter controversy: a list of twelve security cases (unnamed and listed only as Employee A, Employee B, etc.) taken from Government loyalty files. Nixon's speech included a thumbnail sketch of each employee, added: "Every one of them has been fired."

This week the Vice President's plane headed into Utah, Nevada, Arizona, Idaho, California, Oregon and Washington, and back to Wyoming. On election eve he will wind up with a speech from Sioux City, Iowa. The Democrats would be happy to see a few more snowstorms on Dick Nixon's route.

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