Off the Cuff

¶The C.I.O. Political Action Committee's Jack Kroll, who liked the looks of William O. Douglas before the Democratic Convention, told a union convention in Milwaukee that President Truman "has a new look now, and I must say that the new look becomes him."

¶Ex-Republican National Chairman B. Carroll Reece answered his telephone at 7:40 a.m. in his home at Johnson City, Tenn., confirmed a reporter's hunch that he would run for the Senate. Said Reece: "It is my duty to be available."

¶South Carolina's Governor J. Strom Thurmond, candidate of the bolting Dixiecrats (TIME, July 26), confirmed the birth of a fourth party (the States' Rights Democrats), announced that it would try to get on the ballot in every state. Said he: "We are running for President and Vice President and expect to be elected."

¶Georgia's ex-pretender-Governor Herman Talmadge hitched himself to the same pair of red suspenders his late pappy Gene wore as a political trademark, pitched his "white supremacy" campaign for governor on a new note of sweet reasonableness: "Segregation is best for the white man and best for the colored man." This week "Hummon" had to give up his speechmaking temporarily. In an auto crash near Dublin, Ga., he suffered a cut mouth.