OLD CIRCUS GOES ON, BUT WAR HAS FLOOR
Convention subdued and dull, aware that destiny will determine election
‘Phony’ flush of 1940 gone; party evidences that quest is not for ‘big man’ but the epitome of average man
By Anne O’Hare McCormick
Chicago, Illinois – (June 26)
France was falling as the Republicans met four years ago. It was an hour of defeat for democracy and all the traditional whoopee was turned on to make the delegates forget what the disaster portended for the United States.
The Philadelphia convention was lively, noisy and high-pitched. It was marked by contest suspense and an unexpected turn at the end when Wendell Willkie stole the show.
To an American fresh from the war front, that had seemed phony for so long, the peace at home that summer appeared even more phony in the political circuses staged by both parties in the same old way, the phoniest business of all.
They were like shadow-dancing against a brightly painted asbestos curtain that did not hide the spreading fire on the other side.
This convention is not like that. It has no air of carnival. It is dull. It seems to make a point of dullness. The Republican Party seems bent on making a policy of dullness. When one of the stage managers was asked why no effort was made to brighten up the show, his reply was, “The duller the better. We are not out for fireworks or drama.”
Talk in various state bases
The party leaders seem to have the same idea about the candidate. Listening around the various state headquarters, one gets the impression that the last thing they want is a “big man.” They talk as if the ideal quality in a standard-bearer is mediocrity.
Against “the great leader,” “the man of genius,” “the glamor boy,” the convention evidently wants to nominate the personification of the average man. It will not be surprising if the campaign is keyed to this slogan.
This is a listless but not a frivolous convention. The delegates stand quietly and very soberly around the hotel lobbies as they sat in orderly rows at the opening session this morning – waiting for what they know is going to happen. They don’t expect any surprises, and they’re not likely to get any.
The whole aim, indeed, is to avoid the unexpected, and there is no enthusiasm for the predetermined. There is no enthusiasm for Governor Dewey. Most of the delegates express a sneaking preference for someone else, but they will unite solidly behind him because they are convinced by the Gallup polls that he will gather in the most votes.
But this is not the main reason for the apathy everyone feels here. In its well-dressed, well-fed, cheerful way, it is somehow akin to the apathy the Allied armies met in Italy and are meeting in France.
Know where decision rests
The Republicans gathered this year as Americans fight to free a France that has been held in bondage since the convention of four years ago. They gather as the victory of democracy is assured, but they go through the motions more automatically than usual, because they know very well that the coming election will not be decided by anything their candidate will do or say, or by anything the opposition party will do or say.
For Americans, as for the French, the future will be decided by the progress of the war. The next administration will be swept in or out of office on a great tide of war emotion.
The war has the floor. Under the blazing tent, the old circus goes on, but the war is the key in order. Conventions are always middle-aged, and in this one the gray hairs are accentuated because about the only young folk in evidence are the glamor girls serving as ushers and distributors of Dewey badges and groups of soldiers and sailors wandering through the corridors with the air of sightseers, viewing the relics of antiquity.
The G.I.s get a lot of fun out of the show, and they make the politicians look older, more tired and more crumpled than usual.
Thoughts on sons at front
In the Chicago Tribune Sunday, the Russian offensive was backed off the front page by the convention, but this order of priority was not observed by the city of Chicago or the delegates themselves.
The people in the streets are uninterested in the proceedings. In the stadium, the scalpers cannot sell the unused tickets. As to the delegates, most of them are thinking more of their sons at the front than of the debate in the Resolutions Committee. That is what they talk about under the blare of mechanical music that celebrates the end of each speech.
The atmosphere is heavier but more real than it was four years ago. The ballyhoo, the cavorting, the stale oratory, and the fake stampedes that enliven our quadrennial political festival belong only to the folkways of the United States. Yet even as a show, what is going on in Chicago is as important as any battle and the actors sense it.
“Isn’t this what the battles are for?” said a woman delegate from Minnesota to a soldier boy making sport of the convention songs.
“You said it, Ma,” answered the G.I. “Bring on the calliope. You bet. We’re fighting to be free to choose, elect, and fire our governors in any old way we please.”
