Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 18

His Plank for the Platform Again 'Colonists1 Good Morning AN INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER JOHN t. KNIGHT. PUBLISHER J. H. BARRY.

GENERAL MANAGER Published avary morning by Knlfjht Nawacapcre. 321 W. Lafayttta Ava Datrolt 31. Michigan. Entarad a tacond clan matter at tha poitoftic ot Detroit, Michigan, unoor the act of March 3.

1879. 1 By Malcolm W. Bingay SUNDAY, JUNE 29, 1952 4 Sec. The Editor's Notebook Presence at Convention Will Help Ike's Chances BT HAMILTON BUTLER Tlit greatest issue facing tha Nation in this election year is not foreign policy. After drifting for 20 years away from the Constitution and toward a government of men instead of the American people must choose between reversing that trend and following it to eventual dictatorship.

Any foreign policy decisions made today will matter little to the next generation of Americans If the rights of the people and the powers of Congress abdicated to the White House since 1932 are not regained by a change of the party in power. The mos- important issue in this year's election Is, therefore, whether this is to remain a Nation of free men and women under law or decline through socialism to totalitarianism and serfdom. ALTHOUGH secondary to that paramount question, the importance of our foreign relations and policies is not to be minorated. As Sir Austen Chamberlain said of Great Britain, we must take a hand in shaping world events or they will be shaped by others possibly to our destruction. The impossibility of our remaining aloof from world affairs is now so, generally and thoroughly recognized by Americans that the revival of "isolationist" as a term of reprobh in the present campaign is the rawest kind of political buncombe.

Who in this Country still believes that it can isolate or insulate itself from the rest of the world and what goes on in it? Who doesn't realize that, from our breakfast coffee to the vital components of atomic bombs, we PRESIDENTIAL HUMOR I was watching that television feature "Meet the Press." The boys and girls were shooting questions at Senator Robert Kerr, the big oil man from Oklahoma, Democratic candidate for President. With unusual skill he answered the sharp questions about that Kerr gas bill, the iniquities of which had been exposed by Senator Paul Douglas. He talked with the serenity of complete assurance. And then, out of nowhere, some one of the boys popped a question at him that left him groggy. He was accused of possessing a sense of humor and was asked if any man could be a good President with such a curse upon him.

A look of horror seemed to come over his large face. It was obvious he was burning with indignation at the accusation. He was angrier at that foul charge than he was over the hint that once he had voted for Herbert Hoover. HE SUGGESTED it was a de-s pi cable Republican plot (the sense of humor indictment) and to get off the hook launched into a passionate glorification of Will Rogers, another great son of Oklahoma. This, to me, was a running broad jump record for a non se-quitur as my almanac does not record that Will ever served as President.

Being a good Oklahoma Democrat (or at least an Oklahoma Democrat) he could not think, off hand, of any President who ever did have a sense of humor. Of course, there was Abraham Lincoln but he was a Republican and, therefore, did not count. There persists a belief that a sense of humor is a handicap to a candidate. Napoleon, master politician of them all, never smiled in public. His role was that of the great tragedian with the weight of the world on his shoulders.

To have laughed would have ruined his act. The gods of Olympus could never stoop so low as to join in the mirth of mortal men. According to both Plutarch and Shakespeare, Julius Caesar feared Cassius for: "Seldom he smiles YET with the possible exception of Washington, the greatest of our Presidents, Lincoln, had such a glorious sense of humor that in our tradition he ranks with are dependent upon other countries for things we need but do not our selves produce Who does not understand that if the "free world" were to come under Soviet domination the raw Washington Merry -Go-Round materials now available to the Medical Lobby's Loud Voice likewise pick their own doctors to examine those applying for welfare aid. But because the Federal Security Administration under Oscar Evring, whom the doctors' lobby BY DREW PEARSON WASHINGTON There was a time when the most powerful lobby in Washington was the prohibition lobby, directed by Bishop James Cannon from the Methodist Building just across from the Capitol. After that, the most powerful lobby became the I hates, was to administer the old-, sters disability examinations, the 0 WHO'5 sot a i doctors scared the wits out of I SEMe HUMOR' labor unions.

They dominated the writing of considerable legislation i perfectly unsuspecting Congress aC i I men and almost defeated the Pen A FTER a series of unbelievable blunders, the Eisenhower managers in Denver seem finally to have grasped the idea that in politics, as in war, you have to use aggressive tactics to win. The decision to have the General carry the fight to Senator Taft in Chicago is a sharp reversal of the earlier belief that Eisenhower could hole up in Denver, make a few set speeches and honey the delegates into his camp. Senator Taft changed all that with his confident claim that he had 603 or 604 delegates in the bag and the nomination virtually assured on the first or second ballot. After repeated warnings from political jeaJists that the Eisenhower candidacy was flattening out, some of the high level thinkers around "Ike" finally dropped their syntopicons and picked up shillelaghs. The decision to fight rather than fence was bolstered, too, by the Newsweek poll of Washington correspondents showing Taft in the lead.

A similar poll taken a month earlier had favored Eisenhower by a three to one margin. It is no secret that Eisenhower's homecoming failed to start any noticeable swing of delegates in his direction. "Ike's" original determination "not to seek" the presidency may have been admirably modest but he failed to reckon with (1) Taft's strength and (2) political realities. The General told me in Paris that while he had an insatiable curiosity to see his first big political show, he felt that it would be highly improper for him to go to Chicago for the obvious purpose of shaking hands and rounding up convention votes. His attitude was that if enough Republican delegates wanted him to be their presidential choice, he would be glad to serve, but that he would not wage an active campaign to gain the nomination.

That sort of lofty thinking fitted very well into the Paris atmosphere where friends and well wishers assured the General that he had only to return to the United States and await a call from the Republican convention. It must have come as a rude shock when "Ike" discovered, as part of his political education, that he was slightly less than an even money choice to beat Taft. Obligated to Make Self Available TMSENHOWER will be under some criti-cism for reversing his previous statements that he would not seek the nomination, although his speeches since Abilene and Detroit have amounted to a rejection of his earlier no-direct campaigning strategy. His advisers have convinced him that since he has seen about half of the Republican delegates, he is under a moral obligation to make himself available to the other half in Chicago. This is sound advice, even if one is not impressed by the "obligation" argument.

The cold, hard facts are that Eisenhower can't win the nomination unless he makes a number of converts at Chicago. Delegates are human and they like to meet the candidate face to face, grasp his hand and expose themselves to the blandishments of the man who may be their leader in this all important campaign. I saw how well this worked in 1940 at Philadelphia. While Taft and Dewey were making claims of victory, Wendell Willkie invited hundreds of delegates to his hotel suite. They were obviously impressed with Willkie's tremendous vitality and towering presence.

When I talked with Willkie for a moment As We See It--- sion Bill. HOW LOBBY WORKS Here is what happened: 1 Dr. Joseph S. Lawrence, rep' resentative of AMA and head of labor unions if these high-pressure tactics continue. MEDICAL EXAMS Latest battle of the doctors' lobby was over a relatively insignificant clause in the Old Age Pension Bill providing that oldsters who became disabled would have to be examined by doctors chosen by the Federal Security Administration.

This caused the doctors to se red. Shipping their most potent lobbyists to Washington, they began inspiring telegrams from doctors back home. The cry "socialized medicine" resounded through the lobbies of Congress like a wolf pack in full chase. Actually it was a Republican, able Robert Kean of New Jersey, who inserted this medical examination clause in the Pension Bill. Congressman Kean's father was a Republican Senator, he inherited about a million dollars, is about as socialistic as Winston Churchill.

Futhermore, the Kean clause is similar to that in various Federal laws. Veterans, for instance, must undergo an exam by Government doctors or by doctors chosen by the Government before they can get disability pay. Most states in Kooseveii aay. Anotner powerful lobby today and at all times is the veterans' lobby, which can ram almost anything it wants through Congress. But perhaps more powerful than any of them today is the doctors' lobby.

Directed by the American Medical Association, the lobby has succeeded in scaring the wits out of Congressmen and was able single-handed to delay a pension increase for old folks. The battle cry of the doctors' lobby is "socialized medicine." Their weapon is the threat of getting doctors back home to organize against a Congressman who doesn't conform. Some doctors, incidentally, don't agree with the AMA. They are getting worried about lobbying tactics, fear their profession may be put in the same category as the doctors' lobby in Washington, waited almost a month either because he didn't know what was in the Pension Bill or didn't consider it important. Then he decided to label the clause requiring physical exams as "socialized medicine." He so notified each member of the Ways and Means Committee by telegram.

Two days later, various Republican Congressmen, led by Dan Reed of New York, began parroting AMA's charge apparently not knowing that another Republican had introduced the clause. 2 This was followed by a bar between interviews, he suddenly wheeled and said: "Jack, I'm going to win. I can feel the response from these delegates. They're for me!" Eisenhower, like Willkie, is best at the game of human relations. He knows and likes people and radiates the warmth of his personality.

To carry the parallel a bit further, Willkie was a magnificent extemporaneous speaker but did poorly when inhibited by text and the restrictions of radio time. Eisenhower has the same strength and the same weakness. His brief off-the-cuff talk when dedicating the Eisenhower memorial at Abilene was a gem of simplicity and sincerity. Later in the day, his formal address seemed stilted and uninspired. The Eisenhower you have been seeing on TV and hearing on radio is not the Eisenhower his friends know.

He seems subdued and gives the impression of going through an act with which he is not familiar and about which he is not too happy. None of "Ike's" hearty and affable personality shows through. He isn't captivating any delegates by performing on the air like a poorly trained seal. Eisenhower was the first to recognize his own defects as a platform speaker while delivering the ponderous texts that had been written for him. His sudden decision at Detroit to can the ghost writers and "go natural" was astute politics and good judgment.

The Eisenhower the delegates will meet in Chicago will be the real not the synthetic product created by his literary advisers. We don't hear much of Eisenhower's "glamor" anymore but "Ike" has plenty of masculine charm and people who meet him are, almost without exception, favorably impressed. If he can use that quality to best advantage in Chicago, he should bag quite a few hesitant delegates. 'Ike' Makes Gains in Past Week kNE week ago, Taft seemed moving to certain victory. Eisenhower's supporters were glum over their candidate's failure to live up to his advance billing.

Today the situation has changed slightly, but perceptibly in "Ike's" favor. The most dramatic development is Eisenhower's decision to move his delegate hunt to Chicago. But there is considerable significance in a statement by Gov. John S. Fine of Pennsylvania that of the 20 delegates he interviewed following Taft's visit to the Keystone State, a majority seemed to favor Eisenhower.

The suggestion by Sinclair Weeks, Republican national finance chairman, that Taft should withdraw in Eisenhower's favor has helped "Ike's" cause. So has the story in the Buffalo Evening News that Senator Irving Ives of New York would not seek re-election if Taft gets the nomination because he does not think Taft can win the election. And the newspaper polls, for whatever importance you may attach to them, still show that Eisenhower is more popular with the voters than Taft. I am informed in a telephone survey with some of the Nation's leading editors that "Ike's" popularity is resulting in considerable pressure upon delegates from people who are convinced that Eisenhower can win but Taft can't. No Sharp Issues Between Candidates A CTUALLY, the pre-convention fight be-m tween Taft and Eisenhower has failed to develop any real issues.

The two candidates think alike on most domestic issues and the differences between their attitudes on foreign policy have never been sharply defined. Taft claims Eisenhower's views are similar to his own except in emphasis; both "Ike" and Taft believe John Foster Dulles can write a foreign policy plank that will be acceptable and Eisenhower has carefully refrained from making any frontal assaults npon the Ohio Senator. Ironically, "Ike's" refusal to become a prancing demagogue has prevented him from pointing up issues between himself and his chief rival. But Eisenhower is fundamentally too honest and sincere a man to say what he doesn't believe, or resort to sharp political practices. And Taft's record is so well known that there is little that he can add to or subtract from it.

In the absence of clear cut differences in opinion between Eisenhower and Taft, the delegates may turn to the man they think has the best chance of success in November. That is the political merchandise Eisenhower hopes to sell in Chicago. JOHN S. KNIGHT Mark Twain himself. He had the supreme gift of being able to laugh at himself.

"Nobody ever expected me to be President," he said. "In my poor, lean, lank face nobody has ever seen that any cabbages were sprouting." It was this sense of humor and art of story telling which prompted Robert Ingersoll in his famous oratory on the Emancipator to say: rage of telegrams from doctors across the country, protesting to their Congressmen about this "back door" attempt to foist "so Ike Kidnaped by Ghosts I "Strange mingling of mirth and i tears, of the tragic and the grotesque, of cap and crown, of i Socrates and Rabelais, of Aesop land Marcus Aurelius Lincoln, the "arsenal of democracy" would pass to the arsenal of Communism? The mental hospitals of Michigan alone could probably house all the people In the United States to whom the word "isolationist" can honestly be applied in the opprobrious sense intended by those who use it. THE UNITED STATES is on an international hot spot very hot spot. The fashion of recent Administrations, in Washington has been to represent Russia as the only foreign nation that needs watching. The Russian threat is real, of course, but.

If we Keep our eyes glued exclusively to it, we risk being undone by other nations, which we traditionally regard as friendly. The British and the French, for instance, are working us unmercifully. They used to own a large part of what is now United States. They still regard it as a co.ony in duty bound to come to their support financially and otherwise. Were it simply a matter of financing the British and French peoples themselves we would get off easily.

That's only one horn of our dilemma. They insist also on out' supporting them in holding onto colonies and semi-colonies in Asia and Africa now demanding independence. We can't do that without turning our backs on tens of millions of people who have in the past taken the preamble to the Declaration of Independence literally and looked to the United States as a champion of human freedom everywhere. AS A RESULT we are alienating the friendship and confidence of these exploited peoples and turning their eyes to Moscow. The British, according to the well-informed Washington Bureau of The Christian Science Monitor, are getting ready to drop the whole Middle East in our lap, as they did Greece and Turkey.

They claim they can't afford longer to "defend" this vast area. What that means, if the deal comes off, is that we shall assume the financial burden and the opprobrium, while the British will retain their oil rights. As recently as the Boer War, when Great Britain wanted something that belonged to somebody else, it took it. The French did the same in Asia and Africa. What an outcry there would be not only in those countries but in our own, if we acted upon the same principle today! THE "MORAL CLIMATE" of the world is said to have changed.

That may or may not be true. What certainly has been changed are the rules of the game, at the very moment the United States emerges as the world's most powerful nation. We mustn't take any of France's and Great Britain's excess real estate away from them. We must instead provide the cialized medicine'' upon the Na tion. The telegrams didn't mention that the Veterans Administration and several state agencies are already practicing the same kind of "socialized medicine." 3 On June 13, AMA's No 2 lobbyist.

Dr. Frank E. Wilson, arrived in Washington direct from right have television cameramen got to expect Ike, or anybody else, to squint through the glaring lights and find the camera with the tiny red light, signifying that that is the camera to look at? It has always been my idea that cameramen were supposed to catch action as it naturally occurred. They're supposed to follow the subject with their cameras, not vice versa. Somebody ought to put these upstart television cameramen in their place.

Later, I read the text of Ike's Denver speech. It sounded like him. I think he wrote it. Then, last Thursday he spoke the AMA's Chicago convention, Wilson went straight to Speaker Sam Rayburn and asked him to lift the objectionable clause out BY, FRED TEW My boy, Ike, has disappointed me. You may remember that last week I used the best words I could find in the dictionary to praise Ike for deciding to speak extemporaneously.

Ike's decision in Detroit to throw away prepared speeches and to fire the ghost writers his advisers had hired was the clinching reason for deciding Ike was my boy. And I gave my reasons for attaching so much importance to a decision of a political candidate to say what was in his head instead of mouthing words plucked from a half-dozen other brains. No sooner was my first on national politics on the streets when Ike, down in Dallas, adjusted his specs and read a speech blasting Taft's rustling of the Texas delegation. My boy had double-crossed me! But, I gave him the benefit of the doubt. This cannot be Ike, I of the bill.

Rayburn was suffi ciently cowed to give Wilson the names of key Congressmen he ought to see. One was Congress again from Denver, this time over radio only. Advance stories indi man Wilbur Mills, Arkansas Democrat, who made discreet inquiries afterward to see what could be done to appease the doctors. In the end, however, Mills held firm gentlest memory of the world." The people loved him for his laughter even though they knew him to be a man of sorrows. George Washington was not known for his humor and yet he had that sense.

When a southern editor denounced him for "aping royalty" by standing so stiffly at a reception, Washington replied that he regretted that an attack of lumbago had been mistaken for "a monarchial imitation." Calvin Coolidge will never rank in history as among the great Presidents, but he will always be remembered for his Yankee humor. His answer to his wife that the preacher was "against sin" has become a part of our language. When he was told that Senator Borah Was riding a horse past the White House, he asked: "Are the Senator and the horse going in the same As Lincoln loved the jokes of Artemus Ward, Coolidge delighted in the genius of Will Rogers. They wers wa-m friends. Theodore Roosevelt had the gift of storytelling and FDR had a biting wit.

Surprisingly enough Woodrow Wilson had a hobby of collecting funny limericks and dashed them off himself. Some of 'em were rather bawdy, too. NO, BIG BOB need not get sore because he was accused of having a sense of humor. Senator Taft cated he would speak extemporaneously. He didn't.

The prepared speech sounded like Ike and a half-dozen other guys. Frankly, I don't know what to do, now, with my presidential vote. I do know, however, that it is a against AMA. THREAT OF DEFEAT 4 When Wilson ran into unco-oper ative Congressmen, he told them 'strange commentary on our crazy world to attach so much importance to whether a political can- 'thought. He must have written that speech because he had had an I inspiration the night before and wanted to save the message be bluntly that he was sorry, but he would have to get the doctors in their home districts to campaign against them.

Wilson refused to uiuaie speaKs extemporaneously or mouths the words and thoughts of ghosts. It is even stranger that everyone, except me, accepts it as natural and ris-ht that a political can- back down from the "socialized fore it was lost. Disillusionment again. The text of Ike's Dallas speech was elo medicine" charge, and even sug gested privately that the hated didate should hire ghost writers to put words in his mouth. They care clause had been cooked up at a secret meeting by FSA Adminis trator Oscar Ewing's not if his brain is like lead, just as long as his vocal cords are golden.

No wonder our Country is in such a mess! though of course it was written by Republican Kean of New Jer among his intimates, reveals, they sey. say, a aengnuui, quiet Keen wit and Eisenhower's bon mots have become classics. Yet SDeaker Tom Reed riipd in the belief that his Presidential were never taken seriously BY EDGAR A. GUEST i money and guns to suppress na That Democratic Congress AT PORTLAND, Averell Harriman appealed not only for his own election as President on the Democratic ticket but also for a Democratic Congress, which "we haven't had in recent years." Said Mr. Harriman: "Congress has been Democratic in name only.

We have had a phony majority." Yet Harriman boasts that he is "going right down the line" for "the principles of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman." The reason why recent Congresses have been "Democratic in name only" is that the real Democrats have rebelled against many of those principles. This is particularly true in matters of domestic social and economic legislation. The Roosevelt conglomerate was a panic-depression phenomenon, which, from 1940 on, was held together only by foreign alarms.

The attempt by Mr. Truman to jam through measures offensive to great numbers of loyal Democrats has alienated their support in Congress. The Democrats have had a "phony majority" in Congress because they have had "phonies" in the White House, who betrayed their party by bowing down and worshiping the false gods of paternalistic statism. -For just thirty pieces of silver, they say ff. Judas was tempted his Lord to betray? because of his reputation as a wit.

When a Congressman said that "Like Henry Clay, I would rather be right than President," Reed cracked: "Don't worry; you will never be either." quent, too eloquent. It didn't sound like Ike. I am sure he did not write it. A half-dozen other guys had had the "inspiration." Being a glutton for punishment, I then convinced myself that the Dallas delinquency was caused by an emergency. Maybe Ike had been affected by Detroit's heat and his brain was so parboiled that he could get nothing more coherent than steam out of it.

THEN came Denver. My boy, grim and determined, glared at me out of the television screen. He was saying something, but I could hardly hear him. I was too engrossed with the index finger of his left hand it was underlining each printed word on the prepared text of his speech which he read with wooden determination. Then another distraction which further blotted out Ike's voice.

His eyes, besides following that rigid index finger, were frantically searching for the right television camera to find the one that was at that instant sending his picture across the Nation so that he could address his remarks to it. That made me indignant. What And then on a red-blossomed tree chose to die With never a hint or a word telling why. llil Christ was condemned, but Barrabas went free. INTERCEPTED LETTERS Judas the traitor sought death on a tree.

But, oh, what a difference now it had made tive independence movements. We are thus forced into the position of an accessory to outmoded colonialism, after the fact, and without any of the benefits accruing to the colonial powers. The Kremlin loves it. The difference between the so-called "isolationists" and the Atlantic Coast internationalists is that the former stand for a foreign policy that puts the interests of their own Country first, while the later, whose social and financial contacts are with Europe, are inclined to accept the colonial status from which our ancestors escaped. If with a kiss Judas hadn't betrayed.

I say this of Judas: perhaps he was born SENATOR TAFT Washington Dear Bob: TT'S all right to talk about scrapping the Yalta pact, Stalin beat you to it. PIPELINE PETE ii For the kiss that he gave to be branded with scorn, Ml I betray Him he loved, take the silver and flee And, ashamed, hang himself on a red -blossomed tree..