DEMOCRATS: Harry's Happy Hour

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From the moment he looked down from his train in Chicago and saw Candidate Adlai Stevenson being gouged and elbowed and jostled in the howling platform mob, Harry Truman was in his glory. Before the week was out, Truman had left candidates' headquarters heaped with bitten fingernails and transformed the 1956 Democratic National Convention from a drab dogtrot into a race of rare and exhilarating drama.

The jockeying for position with Senior Democrat Truman began at the Dearborn Street station, where Stevenson was anxious to be photographed with Harry while Candidate Averell Harriman was still back in New York. But, as photographers tried to line up the ex-President and the leading candidate, India Edwards, an old Truman friend and a queen bee of the Harriman forces, jumped in between. When Stevenson went this-a-way, so did India. When Stevenson went thataway, so did India. Finally, Adlai executed a clever flanking movement and came up alongside Truman while the cameras clicked away. Almost unnoticed was the most important fact of Truman's arrival: his old speechwriter, Judge Sam Rosenman, now a top Harriman adviser, had sidled up to Truman's side, where he was to remain like an outsized shadow all week.

Breaking the Bandwagon. After a ten-minute arm's length chat with Stevenson in Truman's Sheraton-Blackstone Hotel suite, Harry Truman held a press conference, and let go kersplat with his first great crusher of the week. "I will," he said delightedly, "let the people know for whom I stand before the convention meets." A newsman asked if Truman was just trying to baffle every one. Chortled Harry: "That is exactly right."

Averell Harriman's followers, who had based all their hopes on Truman's backing, took immediate heart at another Truman press conference remark: "I am not a bandwagon fellow. Don't get that in your head." Later, Stevenson's supporters found cause for optimism when Truman appeared before the Democratic Platform Committee and recommended a civil-rights plank along Adlai's moderation lines.

Stirring Up Trouble. For the next two days, Harry Truman had the time of his life while politicians beat a path to his door (hardly a news story came out of Chicago that did not note that Truman was "obviously enjoying himself"). Stevenson visited for 30 minutes, left Truman's inner room looking glum, but turned on a brave smile when he emerged into the corridor. Harriman's headquarters soon got the good word: in his talk with Stevenson, Truman had flatly rejected 1) an endorsement of Adlai, and 2) a neutral stance between Stevenson and Harriman. Harriman aides set about preparing a statement, sent it to Truman by way of Sam Rosenman and retired Adman David Noyes, with the suggestion that Truman use it as the basis for his Harriman endorsement. Twenty-four hours later they learned that he would.