POLITICAL NOTES: 1940

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With the world's eyes on war headlines, with grave-faced Franklin Roosevelt dominating the U. S. scene (see p. p), 1940 Presidential aspirants had tough going last week. Hardest-hit was New Hampshire's plump New Deal denouncer, Senator Styles Bridges, who had planned a Western speaking tour. Least affected was Thomas Edmund Dewey, New York County's District Attorney, the jug-eared Galahad who smites crime.

Mr. Dewey went home to Owosso, Mich, (pop. 14,500), to see his mother, Mrs. Anne Dewey.* He insisted his trip had nothing to do with politics. So he spent an hour talking to Iowa's G. O. P. boss, Harrison Spangler, sat up till midnight with Missouri's G. O. P. boss, Barak Mattingly and promised him to speak in St. Louis in October; he shook hands with 200 leading Illinois Republicans; on a high school athletic field he prayed for world peace. Each day he was photographed in every front-porch-campaign pose known to the prosaic U. S. press.

Mr. Dewey rigorously followed Rules 5, 6, 7 of How To Become President (TIME, Nov. 24, 1930), by cooperating fulsomely with the Press, by traveling about, by appearing hale and lusty on all occasions. For the camera he let his mother pin a flower in his buttonhole; he vigorously strode up & down Owosso's Main Street; he posed chummily with Farmer Earl Putnam, who once paid him $30 a month to run a cultivator, do chores; he ate Mrs. Putnam's noonday "dinner" of home-cured ham, eggs, new potatoes, corn from the patch, fresh cherry pie. He played golf, suppressing his scores. Less pleasurably, he heard that FBI's John Edgar Hoover had jailed Lepke Buchalter (see p. 12).

>FORTUNE'S September survey deflated all 1940 balloons except Franklin Roosevelt's, found that no honest-to-goodness Republican bandwagon exists. Polices were asked first: If you had your choice in 1940, would you choose Mr. Roosevelt or someone else? Answers: 34.9% would choose Mr. Roosevelt, 53.3% would not, 11.8% didn't know. Who else? was the next question. The polices said: Don't know, 63.8%; Dewey, 9.6% ; Garner, 8% ; Vandenberg, 6.1% and on down to a vanishing point with Taft, Hull, Hoover, McNutt, Landon.

>Associate Justice Owen Josephus Roberts of the U. S. Supreme Court took note of Presidential chitchat in his behalf, announced at Scranton, Pa.: "I am wholly unavailable. I am perfectly satisfied where I am."

>Traditionally Democratic Cleveland, Ohio last week found it must choose as its mayor in the October third primaries one of two Republicans, either incumbent Mayor Harold H. Burton or John O'Donnell of the School Board. Behind this novelty was a pretty piece of Democratic boggling. Two equally powerful party factions fought themselves into the ground, refused to compromise. Desperate leaders turned to the local version of Texas' Maury Maverick, Councilman William C. Reed, begged him to accept the nomination. On a strict "no strings" platform, Mr. Reed accepted tentatively, if a $25,000 campaign fund were raised without macing the utilities, gamblers, contractors, racketeers. Hampered by this restriction, leaders did not find enough funds. Mr. Reed withdrew promptly; filing-day came & went with no Democrats on the ticket.