The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1936-05-20
George Washington
Would Be Shocked
BY RAYMOND CLAPPER

CLEVELAND, May 20--Undoubtedly it is all eX-
~ tremely constitutional yet the founding fathers
would have been surprised and puzzled at prepara-
tions now going here for the Republican national
convention.
In the first place they would have been puzzled
to why any such convention was being held. So
the Republican Party could nominate President?
They expected there would be a Republican
Party or any other party
To be sure, factions existed in their day, but
George Washington and many others deplored them
injurious to the tranquility OF the young republic
The meeting is to nominate candidate for PreSi
dent? Well, this most certainly was not what they
had planned They had worked the Constitution out
with great care to avoid that very thing The people
were to choose electors, not President Voters in
each state would elect substantial citizens of
sound judgment, who would in turn meet some
months later and Electoral College choose the
President and Vice President.
They thought it would never do to let the voters
directly elect the President. That would be little
more than mob rule. Put group of wiser men in
between the voters and the President and thus the
dangerous impulses of democracy would be restrained
and keep the republic pure. Thus the founding
fathers reasoned, and hey thought they had per-
fected strong machinery to that end.
They would have been surprised and bewdered
at many other preparations being made here for the
convention less than three weeks away. Imagine
George Washington, the calm, Virginia planter,
wandering around the Cleveland convention scene.
TTERE is a gigantic hall, seating $4,000 persons,
Il i so vast that he could not have thrown silver
dollar across 1t.
These small, black objects standing scattered
around the hail. microphones for the delegations,
would have been incredible to Washington.
Tell him that through them the farmer out in
Attica, Kas, could hear the mumbled conversation
OF two Ohio delegates discussing whether to jump on
the Landon band wagon and he would have thought
you were crazy. Show him the three huge glass
radio observation cages the platform and the
three broadcastng studios in the basement, and he
never would have understood that the most remote
citizen of the land could, with the aid of these de-
vices hear more of the convention proceedings than
a delegate sitting in the hall, and hear it sooner,
since radio waves travel thousands OF times faster
than sound waves
Show him the machines in the basement by which
photographs snapped moment before, were being
reproduced instantaneouSly in San Francisco news
paper offices. and he couldn't believe it. Neither
would he understand why 796 seats are reserved for
the press. These Gathering telegraph instruments
would remind him only of chirping crcketS at Mount
Vernon.
The keynoterP A Senator from OregonP What
Is Oregon? That he remembered was some vague
country far out the other side of the great desert
Nothing but Indians and bears. You must be mis-
taken TO think it contains quarter many people
as the whole United States that Washington knew.
Women delegates? Do they let women vote now?
That wasn't in the Constitution they drew up at
Philadelphia.
You tell him these workmen painting the hall are
WPA relief workers He looks at you blanky as you
explain that have some 100000 or so out Of
work in the United States-there were fewer than
100000 in the whole country when he last saw it
ana that the Federal government is paying $4,000
TO x up the hall here in Cleveland for the conven-
ton. He could almost have run his whole govern
ment on that
YES" he says, things have changed since was
President. We never dreamed, back in PHILADELPHIA.
that there would be anything like this"