Minton for McNutt

In Manila last week, U. S. High Commissioner Paul Yories McNutt, Indiana's onetime (1933-37) Governor, was busy being polite to polite Philippine President Manuel Quezon. During his five months' junket to the U. S. and Europe Commissioner McNutt had attempted to demote President Quezon down the Manila coast list (TIME, May 31). Meanwhile in the U. S., Commissioner McNutt's good friend and political ally, Indiana's Senator Sherman Minton, was busy announcing that High Commissioner McNutt would make in 1940 an ideal candidate for President of the U. S.

Said Senator Minton to the press: "He gave Indiana the best administration Indiana ever had. . . . He has acquaintances all over the United States. There isn't a crossroad that doesn't have someone that knows him. He's a great campaigner, too. There isn't a better one in the country. His views are substantially the views of the New Deal."

When Governor McNutt, forbidden by Indiana's Constitution to succeed himself, went to the Philippines last spring, he left behind him one of the most formidable State political machines in the U. S. Main significance of Senator Minton's sudden McNutt-for-President boom last week was to suggest not only that Commissioner McNutt was still running his machine but that the machine was in good repair. Last month Commissioner McNutt's "administrative assistant" and general factotum, 33-year-old Wayne Coy, flew from Manila to the U. S. A slim, energetic young man, whose eyebrow mustache and rimmed spectacles made him look a good deal like Comedian Charlie Chase, Wayne Coy went first to Indianapolis to testify against two politicians who last spring attacked and beat him in a corridor of the State Capitol. From Indianapolis he went to Washington where he called at the White House, was later entertained by Senator Minton, with whom he used to live.

Before he left the U. S., Commissioner McNutt had picked and seen installed as his successor M. Clifford Townsend, who is currently building a strong political machine of his own. Recently Governor Townsend. like Senator Minton strongly pro-New Deal, predicted that when Indiana's anti-New Deal Senator Frederick Van Nuys came up for re-election in 1938 he would be roundly defeated. Last week Senator Van Nuys seized the opportunity given him by his Senatorial colleague to make it clear that if he was in the bad graces of Governor McNutt's successor, he still hoped to be in the good graces of the High Commissioner. Said he: "'Paul McNutt would make an ideal candidate and an ideal President. . . ."

While one premature Presidential candidacy was starting in the Philippines last week, another one was going on in Poland. In Warsaw, Pennsylvania's Governor George H. Earle. who two months ago in the U. S. plumped loudly for a Roosevelt third term, had a member of his staff give the press a statement describing himself as "the probable nominee of the Democratic Party for the Presidency of the United States."

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