Stokes: Circuit-riding Bricker may be doing ‘a Willkie’
Talking tour through Midwest to coast has been exuberant but unimpressive
By Thomas L. Stokes, Scripps-Howard staff writer
Columbus, Ohio –
Governor John W. Bricker has become almost a stranger in this capital city.
He’s away a good deal of the time in his quest of the Republican presidential nomination. He’s just dashed off on a two-week tour that took him first to Indianapolis, then to Chicago and the West Coast.
The big, handsome fellow is working hard. He is doing on the national circuit what Wendell Willkie tried to do in Wisconsin. Thus far – and it is getting late – there is little indication that Governor Bricker is doing any better.
The Bricker campaign has all the exuberance of a campaign conducted by amateurs, which it is largely.
This is manifest, not only in their methods, but in their current reaction – or professed reaction – that the withdrawal of Wendell Willkie has helped the cause of Governor Bricker. Practical political considerations would, it seems, point in the opposite direction.
Governor Bricker was never more than a dark horse chance, in a deadlocked convention, judging from the analysis of expert politicians. The only chance for a deadlocked convention was a contest between Mr. Willkie and Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York. But Wisconsin ended Mr. Willkie’s candidacy.
Dewey, the unknown
This is not to deny that there are not still, among the GOP leaders, some who are not quite sure of young Governor Dewey. Some would like to have a nominee perhaps a little more tractable, a little less of an unknown quantity. But Governor Dewey has stepped so far out in front, not only in popularity polls but in his showing as a vote-getter in Wisconsin, that these people are hesitant to start anything.
If they were still determined to try to stop Governor Dewey, they would have to find someone to do it.
Governor Bricker doesn’t seem to have the necessary spark to set off public enthusiasm.
Taft is more likely
If the opportunity offered itself where there might be a chance to stop Governor Dewey, the candidate selected to try to job rather would be Senator Taft, runner-up to Mr. Willkie in the 1940 convention, than Governor Bricker, it is believed. He is much better grounded in national and international affairs than is Governor Bricker and enjoys more confidence for this reason.
Governor Bricker is put forward as a Midwest candidate and his appeal would be expected to lie there, to start. But in a tour which covered Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Nebraska, this writer failed to discover, either among the politicians, or among the rank and file, any noticeable enthusiasm for him.
Good governor, but…
In Ohio, his home state, he is well regarded as a governor, but most people here find it hard to consider him as a possible President in these times.
There’s been some talk of him getting the Willkie strength, whatever that is. But it is difficult to see how Governor Bricker would fall heir to any of whatever it is, considering the divergent views of the two men on almost every subject.
