POLITICS: Harnessing a Wave

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Last summer, a Republican Congressman sat across a desk from General Dwight Eisenhower and spoke some unsentimental facts. Said he: "I believe you have the qualities that can hold the Republican Party and the country together. But if you think there's going to be an Eisenhower draft at the convention coming from the grass roots, you're very much mistaken. The men who make up the delegations are professional politicians, and the one thing they dislike is to be made ridiculous. If you're willing to accept the nomination, you've got to say so in advance so an organization can be set up."

Alphonse & Gaston. The Congressman explained that he did not expect a direct reply, and the general made none. But both were aware that they faced a double problem: Eisenhower had to be convinced that the Republicans really wanted him, and Republican politicians had to be convinced that Ike wanted their support. In the old comic strip, Alphonse & Gaston often bumped heads as they tried to bow each other through a door. The Eisenhower campaign is in danger of a similar impasse. To get Ike and the Republican politicians through the door together will be a difficult, tricky job of organization. The man charged with this job is a personable, shrewd aristocrat from Massachusetts, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.

He is off to a slow start. While Ike partisans sweated out the summer (on a thin gruel of hints, hopes and predictions, Taft workers swarmed through the nation, buttonholing politicians, signing up state managers, and thumping urgent drums. The Taft bandwagon, they now tell the hesitant, is already at the finish line, but they are willing to wait another ten seconds for latecomers to get aboard. The Taft followers do not win votes by direct promises of jobs. "We just tell prospective delegates that when it comes time to distribute the patronage, of course we'll want advice from our real friends," explains a top Taft organizer.

The Taft strategy has met with a large measure of success. But Cabot Lodge is elaborately calm. "There's plenty of time," he says. "To me, it isn't late at all."

Names Are Important. Some confident Ikemen recall that Charles Evans Hughes was nominated in 1916 although he was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court and never admitted that he was a candidate until he was officially notified that the convention had nominated him. But there is a major difference between then and now. In 1916, no other leading candidate was in the field, gobbling up delegates.

In the face of the Taft campaign's progress and the attendant propaganda, Lodge has to convince waverers that they can afford to wait, that the nomination is not already tucked in Bob Taft's pocket. Taftmen have already corralled 51 of the 103 members of the Republican National Committee. In a recent poll, G.O.P. Congressmen picked Taft 71 to 54 over Eisenhower. A majority of the Senate's Republicans are Taftmen. As matters stand today, Taft seems to have 400 first-ballot votes out of the expected 1,200 delegate votes (601 will be needed to nominate). In 1940, he started with 189 and in 1948 with 224.