The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-08-19
BIG 1924 FIGHT
 TO BE COMBAT
 OF INDIVIDUALS
Nicholson Says It Is The Most Personal Contest
 Since Roosevelt
By CHARLES MICHELsON

DY NIANE1ELdOOCN
 NEW YORK, Aug. 1S.-"It seems but yesterday" unused Col. Tom Mil Ter, Alien Property Custodian, in the Turkish bath at the Racquet club, ''that us republicans came down Penn sylvania avenue resolved and pledged to clean up Washington"
 "Well," replied Frank Garvin, Alien Property Custodian, of that same far back day, from the adjoining slab, you republicans certainly cleaned up all right"
 This little conversation pretty well epitomizes the issues of the presidential campaign. There are other things, of course, but the fight will be won and lost on Teapot Dome and the Veterans bureau scandals. The democrats will hammer on Fall and Forbes from now until election day, and the republicans will dismiss those episodes as mere stigmata of after-war psychology and dwell on the reduction of the national debt, with no reference to the difference between war and peace budgets; on tax reduction, ignoring the fact that the Mellon plan was junked, and that it was the democratic substitute that was forced on the unwilling President, and on the return of prosperity to the farmer, with no credit to the short Canadian crop that brought back high prices for corn and wheat.
 Combat Of Individuals.
 Actually it is a combat of individuals rather than issues. If the republican campaign managers are able to perpet- uate what the democrats describe as the Coolidge myth-an image projected on the screen of popular perception ot a grave, thoughtful, deliberate statesman, indefatigable in his duty, imperturable, with the reticence of the deep thinker and the final utterances of reasoned and ripened decision-they will probably put him over in spite of everything else. If, on the other hand, the democrats cam paigners are able to convince the people that the gravity is that of humorless man, that the deliberation is inability to make up his mind, that the reticence is the silence of one without anything to say, the imperturability simply stogi- ness and dullness, there is no chance for Mir. Coolidge. These are the two pictures that are to be drawn-super- man and weakling. Actually, of course, Mr. Coolidge is neither, but the citizens will vote in November for one or against the other.
 All three of the candidates are con fronted with incongruities in their stand before the country. Mir. Coolidge has been at outs with the legislative branch of his party on almost every policy he has sought to pursue and has been baked in most of them. Are the re- publicans being appealed to vote for what he urged and didn't get, or what he opposed aad the republican Con gross put Over-the soldier bonus and the tax bill for examples?
 Mi. Davis has his troubles with the League of Nations business. not to men, tion what he stands for and what his running mate has advocated.
 La FOIlette's Position.
 Senator La Toilette is really in the .fAnniest position of the three. The most ardent wet in public life, his main con stitueney western farmers-are the backbone of the dry movement. Himself the most implacable foe of in- ternational cooperation, the other branch of his army, organized labor, has been committed to the League of Nations by every utterance of its lead CTS since the country heard it.
 There hasn't been such personal con test since Theodore Roosevelt led his worshippers and made them believe that the test of right and wrong was where he stood in regard to anything. I
 So by November it will be matter of comparison between Mir. Coolidge and MT. Davis; which is the sounder states man; which the better mind; which the more forceful leader-and which is more able to get things done. La Toilette, affecting the voters as the moon affects the tides, is going to have a lot to do with the decision, for the great attrac- tion he exercises the more votes are de- nected from Mir. Coolidge.
 Criticism Of Adversary Obviously the only way in which this Comparison can be instituted is by criti- cism of the adversary, and it becomes the duty of the supporters of the adver- sary to be shocked and to talk with in- dignation about mud-slinging. Already this Is apparent in the republican recep- tion of Mir. Davis really restrained speech of acceptance. When a President enters the lists for another term in the White House he is no more immune from attack than any other candidate, but Col. Harvey and other defenders of the faith are mortified at Mir. Davis suggestion that the President hung back when the oil corruption was being dragged to light. It's all right to mur- mer at Davis clients, but it is scanda- lous, if not blasphemous, to call atten- tion to the dilatories of MT. Coolidge in the oil and Daugherty episodes.
 The republicans passing their hopes of the election on the quality and charac- ter of the President, and ignoring what happened during his presidency, the democrats naturally train their guns on the picture presented and the clamor goes up that they are blaspheming against something holy. If the republi- cans had taken the tack of making their fight on the basis of legislative accom- plishments and the democrats had gone after that contention, the latter would be accused of doing so because they knew they could not assail the head of the ticket.
 That is how the game is played and always will be played.
 Democrats Late
 The democrats are late in getting to work, due largely to the circumstance that they got a surprise candidate and hence could not really organize until the candidate, himself surprised, should nave ueclueu WHO ne WdHleu III the Key places of campaign authority, while the republicans, whose course was arranged for them by fate, have been set for months. This also accounts for the present popularity of the republican pastime of making up tables of the states to show the certainty of Mir. Coolidges election. All you have to do is to assume that the Presidents popu- laritv in New York and Naw En0Iand insures him those states; that La Fol