Stokes: MacArthur
By Thomas L. Stokes
Milwaukee, Wisconsin –
The word here is that Gen. Douglas MacArthur is a receptive candidate for the Republican presidential nomination.
“It has been indicated to prominent Republicans that he won’t do anything to get the nomination, but if he gets it, he will accept it,” was the way it was put by Lansing Hoyt, manager of the MacArthur campaign for convention delegates in the April 4 primary in which the general has three rivals – Wendell L. Willkie, Governor Dewey and LtCdr. Harold Stassen, ex-Governor of Minnesota.
Mr. Hoyt added mysteriously:
I can’t tell you how I found that out.
He is hopeful that Gen. MacArthur will roll up such an impressive vote in this state, where he spent his youthful years, that it will set off a national movement that will sweep into the Chicago convention next June. He has so contrived it that the general will have every opportunity for a popular demonstration.
Gen. MacArthur is the only candidate of either party in the primary who is entered also for the presidential preference vote as distinct from the vote for delegates. The popular preferential vote has no relation to the selection of delegates, but a heavy popular vote might make an impression.
Mr. Hoyt was chairman of the America First Committee of Wisconsin and the whole tenor of the MacArthur campaign is to appeal to the isolationist sentiment once so predominant in this state. There still seems to be some latent isolationism.
MacArthur an ‘all-American’
Why are the isolationists supporting Gen. MacArthur?
Mr. Hoyt replied:
Because they think he is all-American. Anybody who’s been out all over the world realizes that the other nations are trying to put it over America. Gen. MacArthur feels the same way, we think. We feel that the United States has to assert its own rights.
Mr. Hoyt, a tall, slender, amiable gentleman with thinning gray hair, a dabbler in Wisconsin politics for years and an engineer by profession, has traveled widely, particularly in the Orient. He has developed a strong anti-British attitude.
With a twinkle in his eye, he related that he was in charge of Wendell Willkie’s 1940 campaign meeting in Milwaukee.
He is directing the MacArthur campaign from three small, sparely furnished rooms in an old office building here. He has no paid staff. The movement is entirely voluntary, he said.
The “native son” angle is being stressed in the campaign. Gen. MacArthur went to grade school and high school here. From here he was appointed to West Point. His grandfather moved to Wisconsin in 1837 and was fifth governor of the state. His father was raised here.
The general is hailed in a campaign dodger widely distributed as a representative of “American interests,” for “his ability to make friends of labor” and as a military man and an administrator. A studied effort is made to meet the argument that the general should remain in command in the Pacific, which Mr. Hoyt labels as “that old New Deal propaganda,” by the counterargument that he should sit in Washington where, as President, he could direct the whole war.
Points to 1940 primary
Mr. Hoyt claims victory for Gen. MacArthur on the basis of the 1940 presidential primary here in which Governor Dewey got 60% of the votes – and all the delegates – and Senator Vandenberg of Michigan got 40%. He expects Gen. MacArthur, he said, to get the Vandenberg 40%, with the other 60% divided among the governor, Wendell Willkie and LtCdr. Stassen.
The former Dewey support, he contends, will be split with Messrs. Willkie and Stassen because Governor Dewey is classed as an “internationalist” on account of his advocacy of a British-American alliance at the Mackinac Conference last September.
With some pride, Mr. Hoyt related how President Roosevelt’s name was withdrawn from the popular preference vote – though a full slate of Roosevelt delegates are entered in the Democratic primary – just an hour after he had filed Gen. MacArthur’s name for the preference vote on the Republican ticket.
“They didn’t want a contrast,” he said.
Democrats are the third party in this state.
