Inscrutable, Necessary Harry

Harry Truman has had his picture taken with so many visiting firemen that White House cameramen have reduced the rite to clockwork routine. Not a moment was lost when he walked out to the White House rose garden one day last week to be photographed with a group of United States Attorneys and their families. He took a place in the front row, the photographers lifted their cameras, and the visitors quickly stiffened and stood looking as though they were about to be squirted with a garden hose.

But suddenly there was an interruption. The President turned and peered, beaming, over his shoulder. "Where," he asked, "are all those little kids?" The attorneys fell back. Presently, the President stood flanked by children, his hand resting on the shoulder of an especially photogenic little girl. "This," he confided to her, smiling paternally as the flashlights blinked, "will ruin you for life."

It was a neat bit of off-the-cuff campaigning, and was calculated--like his "hope" of making a cross-country give-'em-hell speaking tour this spring or summer--to gladden the hearts of the Democratic bigwigs who met in Denver last week to beat the drums for '52. Politics, like June, was bustin' out all over.

Parry by Harry. At his weekly press conference, the President actually blushed when a radio commentator asked him if he agreed with his Secretary of Agriculture's hope that he would run in '52. But the presidential answer was noncommittal: that is mighty nice of him, and I appreciate what he has to say.

The President went on, apparently with vast enjoyment, parrying questions. He was reminded of his announcement weeks ago that his mind was made up about whether he would run or not. Grinning widely, he said that was still good. At one point, he sarcastically referred to MacArthur as the great General from the Far East; the ruckus over the general had not affected his plans at all, he added. How about talk of Eisenhower getting the Democratic nomination? Something like that, he noted, was going on in '48.

Ed Harris of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch asked: "Has Mrs. Truman made up her mind?" Chuckling, the President replied that she has never been very enthusiastic about my holding office, but she has had to put up with it for 30 years.

He was asked whether he considered this his first or second term, and told his questioner to read up on history--a man's first term is the term to which he is elected.

Just to demonstrate that this weaving and bobbing was an exhibition of skill rather than ring-shyness, Truman topped it off with a short discourse on the fact that columnists were saying he had a "cocky attitude." He thought they meant confident. He added: "I think, however, that the program and policies that the executive has been endeavoring to put into effect are right and I think the people of the U.S. and of the world believe they are right . . ."

It was a deft performance in the one field where Harry Truman has a high deftness average. Hints that he would run had been balanced nicely by hints that he would not run at all.

Democrats in Denver all acted as if he would. Confidence was their password; no matter what happened they seemed certain that the Republicans would bail them out by making mistakes.

A show of optimism--which comes naturally to the tribe--had returned to the Democrats, after the weeks of headlines about corrupt party machines, influence-peddling and the firing of Douglas MacArthur.

The Democrats' greatest assets, cried Secretary of Agriculture Charlie Brannan in the prize tub-thumping speech of the meeting, were four particularly awful Republicans. He named Robert Taft, Congressman Joe Martin, Washington's Senator Harry Cain and Wisconsin's Senator Joe McCarthy ("whose name will live . . . in monstrous infamy . . . Lynch . . . Boycott . . . Quisling and McCarthyism!"). Oklahoma's flamboyant Robert S. Kerr branded the G.O.P. a war party: "They are feeling sicker every day . . . Mac-Arthuritis has set in."

When they could be heard above the din of epithets, all the job holders seemed to be saying they would like Harry back. The standard theme of speech after speech was that "Sure, he has made mistakes, even as you and I" (Kerr), but that "he is as brave as he is humble." In fact, humble--with the "h" silent--was the word for Harry at Denver. It was not the word for the Democrats. Boss Jake Arvey, grinning as the Democrats chose his Chicago bailiwick for the 1952 convention, said: "This isn't a smile of victory, it's a smile of confidence." Bill Boyle, the Democrats' national chairman, announced that "voting trends" and reports from party leaders in every state, "point conclusively to another sweeping Democratic victory in the 1952 election."

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