Evening star., 1948-09-18
Truman Campaign
Is Seen Patterned
After RooseveIt's
Advisers Held at Fault
For 'Low-LeveI' Appeal
To Labor and Negroes
By Frank r. Kent

dlllOuiio Va SAhPeAoP 40 diiCoSoPobiC
in every campaign. All party plat
forms make transparent appeals to
prejudices and publicity record
promises, the insincerity of which is
plain to the discerning. Even the
very best candidates are compelled
to demagogue little.
This is part of the price we pay
for our system of government and,
despite admitted evils, many be-
lieve it not too high. Discouraging
things about the present period are,
first, that demagoguery has in
creased in volume; second, it has
diminished in quality; third, evil
dence that the most blatant dema-
goguery pays in politics has piled
higher than ever before.
Competent and detached observ-
ers of the Washington scene would
find it hard to dispute these facts.
1t is ardently to be hoped that as
President Truman and Gov. Dewey
start West, their utterances will lift
the contest to level that will not
affront the intelligence nor degrade
the high Office they seek.
Gov. Dewey has done no oratorical
campaigning and therefore cannot
be Justly charged-as yet-with
such unsavory political strategy,
though there has been a certain
tendency in that direction on the
part of one or two not greatly re-
l. h
Campaign on Low Level.
Unfortunately, this is not true OF
tine Democrats. Perhaps it was
inevita BILE that, based on the Roose-
welt lines, their campaign should be
on q low plane, as no presidential
candidate ever more calculatlngly
exploited the ignorance and pas
sioxs Of the unreasoning than Mr..
Truman's predecessor. Neverthe-
less, the spectacle Of the President
of the United States going the
shameful limit (even if only as an
imitator) in the effort to sway
special groups of voters, regardless
of how great the misrepresentation
involved or what the effect upon
the country as a whole-is really
dismaying.
The antics and speeches of the
inhamed and unbalanced Mr.. Wal
lace and his Communistic third
party, though disgusting, may be
dismissed as unimportant. But, so
far as revealed, the character OF the
campaign made by-and for-Mr.
Truman cannot be so dismissed. 1t
Is easy-and truthful-to say he is
simply, If ineptly, following Mr..
Roosevelt, but that does not excuse
1t.
For one thing, Mr.. Truman Is
not the natural and highly skilled
demagogue Mr.. Roosevelt was.
Nothing excuses it-not even its
failure. Actually, Mr.. Truman al
ready has gone such lengths in his
struggle for the backing of organ
ized labor on the one hand and the
Negroes in the big Northern cities
on the other as to merit almost un-
animous rebuke from the independ-
ent press of the country.
The contention of those who be-
heve the Truman tactics stupid as
we'll as bad is that he might have
won this fight If he had just been
himself. Instead he has been per-
suaded by the cheap little politicians
around him that the only way he
can be elected is by coralling the
labor union and Negro votes, in the
way and to the degree that Mr..
Roosevelt did. Only by travelling
that road, he has been told, can he
gain the support of the Roosevelt
element" as represented by his
widow, his sons. his daughter and
the more conspicuous New Deal eX-
jobholders.
These aliegedly smart advisers
have overlooked three important
things-first, that lacking his con-
genital demagogic talents, Mr.. Tru-
man cannot perform along the in
dicated lines as convincingly or Ell
fectively as did Mr.. Roosevelt; sec
ond. that that old Roosevelt game
of both ends against the middle has
been played out. 1t is no longer
possible to reassemble what was
called the Roosevelt combination.
Even Mr.. Roosevelt could not do 1t
now. Third, it isn't necessary for
Mr.. Truman to placate the "Roose-
welt element" as the Roosevelt
element" as above described has
no choice except to give him luke
warm support, which is all they are
giving him anyhow. However, Mr..
Truman appears to have taken the
advice of his poorest advisers.
At any rate, along with blanket
denunciation of the Republican
Congress, so far his campaign has
been largely a transparent appeal
to these two groups-organlzed Ia
Dor and the Negroes.
Labor Act Repeal Promised.
To the labor bosses he promises
repeal of the Taft Hartley Act and
uses their own adjectives in de-
nouncing It, utterly ignoring the
fact that a majority of the Demo-
Gratis in Congress voted for it-and
the people as a whole favor it. To
the Negroes, through one of his
closest aides and advisers. Oscar
r. Ewing, head of the Federal
Security Agency, he recently made
an appeal in Richmond so crude
and absurd that the Negroes them
selves resented it.
Among other things, they were
told by Mr.. Ewing that the Repubi-
can party is plotting to take his
rights" away from the Negro and
that any Negro who does not vote
for Harry Truman is "betraying his
race" because Harry Truman would
make 1t impossible for anyone ever
again to call him slave
It is difficult to see how you coulo
put a campaign on a lower plane
Long before the election it Is clear
this strategy has lost Mr.. Truman
the electoral vote of several indis'
pensable Southern States and ar
rayed against him not only bis
business but little business-ane
without getting anything like th'
solid labor support for which he Ii
30 desperately bidding.
It is also doubtful whether HI