REPUBLICANS: The Man from Minnesota

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There are few categories of human endeavor in which men are not discouraged by a lack of response from the world around them. But disciples of new prophets, managers of young Dempseys and mothers of prodigies usually experience nothing more painful than lofty anticipation when the public ignores their secret. Last week, by virtue of the same sort of faith in a sure thing, thousands of U.S. citizens reacted like Geiger counters to a completely unradioactive fragment of political news:' Minnesota's Republican ex-Governor Harold Stassen had started on a vacation.

It was not the type of holiday on which most bigwigs of U.S. politics were likely to embark. Involved were no state troopers, autograph seekers, photographers, special trains or big names. Big (6 ft. 3 in., 210 Ibs.), balding Harold Stassen just got into his 1946 Ford sedan and drove from South St. Paul to Lake Michigan's Sturgeon Bay, with his wife, Esther, his children, Glen, u, and Kathleen, 5, and the family dog, Duke. At the end of the six-hour, 321-mile trip, he lugged suitcases into a small rented cottage, changed into faded Navy khaki and settled down for two weeks of loafing, swimming, reading and old-fashioned porch-sitting.

No Crash. There was only one break in this pastoral routine. This week, Harold Stassen flew to Flat Top, W. Va., for a long-planned engagement to address the reunion of the famed Lilly family.* Standing on windswept Flat Top Mountain, he told thousands of Lillyans of his interview last spring with Generalissimo Stalin in the Kremlin. He said Stalin asked him if he expected an economic crash in the U.S. and that he replied: "No, I am confident that we have found the way to improve our system of government. We are determined to find a way to bring prices down and keep wages at their prosperous levels."

Then he flew back to Sturgeon Bay and got back into old clothes again.

What Comes Naturally. Stassen fans, as well as the original Stassen faithful—mostly men & women from Minneapolis, St. Paul and the Minnesota farm lands—applauded this complete absence of foofooraw. They liked to think of their man resting up after the heat wave. It was, after all, the last vacation Harold Stassen was likely to have for a long time. In the months which followed, they were sure he would become leader of what he called a "new, liberal, humanitarian" Republican Party and be elected President of the United States.

The Stassenites were not perturbed by the fact that many in the U.S. thought of them as impractical zealots, or that Stassen's Gallup poll rating had sunk in the last 15 months from 34% to 15%. They listened with patient and slightly puzzled expressions to a question-&-answer joke which politicians of both parties were happily repeating among themselves:

Q. What politician believes Harold Stassen will be nominated?

A. Harold Stassen.