THE CAMPAIGN: Good-Tempered Candidate

• Share

(See Cover)

The special train snaked down the eastern slopes of the green Sierra, its engine backing slowly around the hairpin curves and through the snowsheds. It stopped briefly at Truckee, rolled on across the Nevada line to Reno, on to the Southern Pacific division point at Sparks. As darkness fell, the train picked up speed, racing along the alkali sinks of the bare Nevada countryside.

In his private car (the Aleutian), California's Governor Earl Warren, a man noted for his hearty friendliness, chatted with newsmen, read some pages of Winston Churchill's The Gathering Storm, leisurely drank three bourbon highballs before dinner. By midnight, as the train headed toward Utah, he was asleep.

The 14-car "VicePresidential Special" was off on a 31-day tour. Candidate Warren planned to make 25 speeches and 57 platform appearances in 30 of the 48 states. A politician of considerable consistency, he had set the tone and spirit of his campaign within the first 24 hours.

He was no crusader, setting forth like Wendell Willkie to take the nation by storm. He was no debonair partisan like Franklin Roosevelt, raking the opposition with scornful broadsides.

Friendly, homy Earl Warren was not mad at anyone. He was simply going out to meet the folks and to show himself, his wife and his pretty 20-year-old daughter Virginia to the voters. He wanted to assure everyone that the nation was fundamentally sound, and that the best way to keep it sound was to elect a Republican administration in November.

Stories & Lemon Drops. From the moment that the Warren train pulled out of Sacramento, the atmosphere aboard resembled a good-will tour. The whole first day, in his invariable double-breasted suit, Candidate Warren had roamed informally through the cars, swapping stories, munching lemon drops to keep his voice in trim, inviting newsmen back to inspect his own quarters. He arranged to have lunch with a few newsmen every day "so you can get to know me better."

At every whistle stop he appeared on the back platform, amiable and chummy, to pass the time of day with the little crowds that gathered. He flourished no political banners, viewed nothing with alarm. He waved to his friends, signed autographs, clambered down to shake hands with the air of a man who really liked people, and liked to meet new ones.

He talked mostly about the West, "the greatest place on earth to live." He devoted most of another informal little speech to reminiscing about his father's job on the Southern Pacific, his own early days as a summer roustabout. "I thought I might have been a pretty good railroader," he chuckled, "but my father saw I was a failure and had no choice but to make a lawyer out of me."