National Affairs: Hot Time at the Waxworks

“The lack of music, trumpeting and general fanfare became the subject of official notice today. C. Bascom Slemp, national committeeman from Virginia, broke in on a conference of the Hoover board of strategy today to suggest that something be done. ‘Give ’em music,’ Slemp pleaded, ‘and they’ll forget the depression.’ “

Thus the New York Times on the Republican Convention of 1932. The Democratic Convention of 1948 was cut on the same pattern.

After the surging crowds, the loud music, the furious trading and the boastful oratory of the Republican Convention, Philadelphia seemed almost shockingly quiet. The Democrats had not come to town to stage a war dance, but to seek a cure. Their quarrels were concerned with the efficacy of political liver pills, and they looked at each other with the doleful gaze of incoming patients in a hospital.

Not that there was any dearth of trappings. The town swarmed with Cabinet officers, Administration czars and such exhausted sparks of former party glory as Indiana’s Paul McNutt. There was bunting in the streets and bourbon on the table. Democratic headquarters passed out Victory Kits containing whistles, Truman buttons, cigarette lighters. A papier mache donkey—which shook its head and flashed its eyes—was set up on the marquee of the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel to replace the Republican’s sausagey balloon-rubber elephant.

The Lighted Sparkler. The Pennsylvania Railroad’s grey-haired President Martin W. Clement, an arch-Republican, asked Democratic bigwigs to a garden party at the fashionable Merion Cricket Club. But the party seemed oddly like a waxworks exhibition. There, bowing and smiling and real as life, were scores of famous men who had already been politically embalmed.

The Democratic National Committee’s formal dinner in the Rose Room of the Bellevue-Stratford had a fine veneer of gaiety. The joyous little desserts had lighted sparklers embedded in them. But there was little levity or enthusiasm. Welcoming the guests, Pennsylvania’s Senator Francis J. Myers mentioned the name of Harry Truman only once and parenthetically at that. Then he pursed his lips in a graveyard whistle: “Nobody is going to lie down and die just to confirm a report in the newspapers, and neither is the Democratic Party. Who says we’re dead?”

From the gathered politicos, dead on their behinds, came feeble applause. The Empty Elevator. Downtown Philadelphia seemed almost deserted. There were empty rooms in most hotels, and no racketing band music in the lobbies. It was possible to board an elevator in the Bellevue-Stratford without waiting. At 12:30 a.m. on a pre-convention morning, Illinois Delegate “Paddy” Bauler (who once made Chicago history by shooting a cop in the pants during a brawl outside his saloon) stared down the quiet sidewalks of Broad Street and said: ‘We got more excitement in the 43rd ward at 11 o’clock in the morning when the guys is all in church.” Delegates seemed to flinch at signs which read: ALL 48 IN ’48 and KEEP AMERICA HUMAN WITH TRUMAN.

As the convention proper opened, the assembled Democrats seemed really intent on only one thing—getting it over with. They were not stirred by old Senator Alben Barkley’s keynote address.

Memories. He began by refusing to “follow the. example, so egotistically set by our opponents on this rostrum three short weeks ago” of announcing that his party’s candidate was certain to win. He spoke of the past—of the great administrations of Franklin Roosevelt, of the political philosophy of Thomas Jefferson. He spoke of soil conservation and rural .electrification and reciprocal trade. He railed against the Republican Congress and ended with a “humble prayer.”

Said a delegate from Mr. Truman’s Missouri: “This convention reminds me of a funeral we had back home. The man we were laying to rest was a ne’er-do-well, and nobody came to the grave to say anything nice about him. Just as they were getting ready to lower the body, the town barber stepped up and said: ‘I notice no one has said a good word about this man. Before he is covered, I want to say one thing. He was an easy man to shave.’ “