How to Become President

(See Cover)

The Constitutional requirements for President (35, native-born) are liberal. The unwritten requirements, time-honored in U.S. politics, are strict.

A candidate must know and obey the Ten Presidential Commandments. The road to Presidential conventions is strewn with the political skulls of men who have disregarded these rules:

Rule 1. The candidate must have a solid American background—as humble as possible. As birthplace, a log cabin is best, a farm nearly as good, the combination practically irresistible. For parents, the watchword is poor but honest. In the family background, a horse thief is fatal, a millionaire nearly as bad.

Rule 2. He must look good—but not too good—in newsreels and portraits. U.S. voters like their candidates big, broad-shouldered, modestly handsome. Citizens generally refrain from voting for a politician who makes them laugh—unless, like New York City’s Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, the man is obviously an expert caper-cutter. At the same time they suspect any candidate who gestures as if he went to dramatic school, and doubly suspect one handsome enough to inspire a faraway look in their wives’ eyes.

Rule 3. He must be healthy and vigorous. He should be at ease with a fishing rod and shotgun; if possible, he should walk to work. Voters do not like to think of their President as a man subject to such drab ailments as the sniffles.

Rule 4. He must have an attractive wife and children. His wife must look as if she can cook, darn, speak in public modestly and not too much and dance sedately with an Ambassador.

Rule 5. He must be successful—but not too successful. His accomplishments should be solid; they should not be so enormous as to have set him beyond and apart from his fellow men.

Rule 6. He must identify himself with a popular national issue. But he should choose an issue like states’ rights or economy, appealing to a maximum number of voters, outraging a minimum. At that, he should have a few faithful lieutenants on the opposite side of the question.

Rule 7. He must let someone else, preferably the electorate, decide to make him a candidate. Unabashed seeking of the Presidency is still considered immodest. The decent, in fact the only permissible procedure is to be drafted, as Franklin Roosevelt in 1940, even if it taxes all the candidate’s skill to engineer the draft.

Rule 8. He must be acceptable to old-line party leaders.

Rule 9. He must have some well-heeled backers, concealed as carefully as possible.

Rule 10. He must let the voters see him, as often and auspiciously as possible.

Of all the candidates who have come forward (or, in accordance with Rule 7, have been pushed) for 1944, the man who most exactly fits these specifications is Ohio’s Governor John William Bricker. Therefore, he is a formidable force in the jockeying for the ’44 Republican convention. He is strong enough already to make his friends confident and his enemies bitter. Ohio, a Mother of Presidents, is expecting again; and even to anti-Bricker-men Ohio is in an interesting condition.

Ohio, part of the Industrial East and also of the Agricultural Midwest, a barometer standing where all U.S. political currents converge, has already produced seven Presidents: Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, McKinley, Taft, Harding. And John Bricker, who won his third term as Governor last November by a record 374,000 votes, is the greatest vote-getter in vote-getting Ohio’s history.

Background: Perfect. John Bricker’s origins are politically perfect, as American as Main Street, Saturday night in town and church sociables.

He was actually born in a log cabin. His father, Lemuel Bricker, came from a hardy line of farmers who landed in the U.S. from the Palatinate in about the year 1830. His mother, Laura King, was of English-Scotch-Irish ancestry. Neighbors always referred to the Brickers and Kings as “hard-sense” people.

The 50-acre Bricker farm was near Mt. Sterling, on the flat, rich land southwest of Columbus. John Bricker grew up amid fields full of sheep, black-faced lambs, Poland China pigs, sturdy bay work horses, golden wheat and corn that grew go bushels to the acre.

When John and his twin sister, Ella, were six, their mother marched them a mile and a half across the fields to the redbrick, one-room McKendree School. At 14, he and his sister drove in a horse & buggy to the modest high school in pleasant, tree-lined little Mt. Sterling. They took lunch from home, ate it in the buggy on good days, in Ed Snyder’s furniture store on bad days.

Before John Bricker could go off to college, he had to earn some money of his own. He taught in one of Pleasant Township’s one-room schools, walked or rode horseback two and a half miles each day from the farm, earned $45 a month plus $5 for doing his own janitor work. When he got to Ohio State University, he saved money by commuting from home—catching the 5 a.m. train to Columbus, the 6 o’clock back at night.

Appearance: Excellent. In looks, Bricker is nearly as good a candidate as Indiana’s Paul McNutt, without the bril-liantined platinum handsomeness that annoys plainer men. He looks as solid as his reassuring Ohio colleague Robert Taft, without Taft’s embarrassing stiffness. He dresses as well as New York’s Tom Dewey, without seeming the least dapper.

He stands 6 ft. 2½ in., weighs 210 lb., an excellent size for a Presidential candidate. At 49, his hair is solid silver. He has a comfortable double chin, the kind of American nose that looks best under a baseball cap. He likes double-breasted blue suits, decorously striped ties, black shoes. He wears a broad gold Masonic ring, carries a gold-pocket watch, keeps a diamond American Legion pin in his coat lapel.

For the newsreels, which have broken more candidates than the old two-thirds rule, he can pose without a qualm. Even with an Indian bonnet or a dead fish, the crudest newsreel props of all, he is neither overwhelming nor silly. He can wear striped pants without looking as if 1) they are rented, or 2) he approves of them.

His vigor is almost overwhelming. He was catcher on his varsity baseball team, is a good fisherman, hunts with the sportsman’s single-barreled shotgun, golfs with the natural American combination of a he-man’s long drive and a duffer’s inability to break 100.

His only physical flaw is a technicality: a slow heart that beats 55 instead of the normal 75 times a minute. This kept him out of World War I when he tried to enlist—until his pastor had him ordained so that he could take a chaplain’s commission. Political opponents have tried without success to smear him as a draft dodger. Otherwise the slow heart bothers no one but doctors feeling the Bricker pulse for the first time.

Family and Success. John Bricker’s family qualifies him under Rule 4. His wife, who was his college sweetheart, is handsome, alert, good-humored. She dresses smartly without inspiring envy, dabbles at painting and playing the piano, works earnestly as nurse’s-aide chairman. Their twelve-year-old son is a personable youngster who yearns to be a trapper.

John Bricker qualifies under Rule 5: as Governor he has been a success. By contrast with his predecessor, Tree Surgeon Martin Davey, he has been spectacularly able. Natty, spatty Martin Davey left Ohio nearly bankrupt, with a $40,000,000 deficit and payrolls loaded with spoilsmen.

Bricker took office in 1939. He fired 3,000 Davey employes, cut the state payroll by $3,000,000, smashed the “legal rackets” that Davey’s spoilsmen had enjoyed. He made good appointments. He became known, with reason, as Honest John Bricker. Within two years, he turned Ohio’s $40,000,000 deficit into a $25,000,000 surplus (now $45,000,000).

Just Enough Trouble. John Bricker believes in moderation in all things. He has not been so overpoweringly successful as to frighten away timid voters. He has introduced no startling innovations to Ohio government, has left no legislative landmarks.

He has been in some trouble. Most embarrassing was the Ohio relief crisis of 1939, when he refused to release state funds to help Cleveland take care of its hungry unemployed. His position: the city’s duty was to solve the problem itself. After a few critical weeks when Federal surplus commodities barely tided the city over, Cleveland borrowed sufficient money and the incident ended.

Right Issue, Right Backers. Bricker has his issue (Rule 6) ready made: state’s rights, economy in Government, a minimum of bureaucracy. He has shown, on the record, absolutely no interest in the Republican nomination (Rule 7): he let Senator Taft start his boom.

There is nothing in his past to frighten the old-line G.O.P. leaders (Rule 8), with whom he has worked closely for 23 years. He is supported, but not too ostentatiously, by the wealthy Pew, Du Pont and Columbia Gas & Electric interests (Rule 9). Since the first of the year he has let the voters see him (Rule 10) in speech-making appearances in Chicago, Nashville, Manhattan, Lincoln, Neb.

His speeches have started no prairie fires. He has dutifully damned bureaucrats, high Government payrolls, has praised individualism, sound local government and the State of Ohio. His speeches sound as if they were ghosted by Calvin Coolidge. He has often repeated: “Public money is trust money.” On international relations, he repeats: “We want to live and let live—live and help live.”

Bricker has won his victories with such universally, respected catchwords as honesty, economy, efficiency. In his first try for the Governorship, opponents jeered that he presumably also stood for home, mother and God. He replied: “I respect the Constitution and the flag of my country. I honor my mother and love my home and I revere God. I know of no nobler platform. . . .”

The Silent Road. Last week John Bricker was working away at his job, standing on his record and waiting for the lightning to strike. To newsmen who inquired about his candidacy, about his views on foreign relations, postwar planning, social security, even the farm problem, he had one answer only: no comment.

In the broad fields of national and international policy, no one could be sure what his opinions are. He is of course opposed to the New Deal. On foreign relations, he apparently regards himself as a “nationalist,” but not an isolationist. “Nationalism” might mean world cooperation based on legitimate self-interest—or it might mean letting the rest of the world go hang.

Many a President, including those from Ohio, has followed this silent road right to the White House.

With 14 months to go to convention time, John Backer’s candidacy is in the lap of world events and U.S. public opinion. By next summer, the U.S. will have measured all Republican candidates against the Ten Presidential Commandments. (There is no need to measure the only Democratic candidate: the U.S. is coming to know Mr. Roosevelt’s measurements.) The process will go on with Messrs. Thomas E. Dewey, Wendell Willkie, Earl Warren, Leverett Saltonstall, et al. Then the voters may be happy to vote according to the Ten Presidential Commandments, with no questions asked. Or they may find that the ten rules are part of a less sophisticated political past.