National Affairs: Back of the Barn

New York’s Governor Tom Dewey paid a neighborly call on Massachusetts last week—his first since the 1944 presidential campaign. The occasion was Springfield’s Eastern States Exposition, New England’s biggest agricultural fair.

To newsmen, Governor Tom explained that he was a guest and it would be discourteous if he said a single political word. He was simply an interested farmer (486 acres near Pawling, N.Y.). “Farming,” said Tom Dewey, “has been the principal interest in my life for the last ten years.” Trim and tanned (he had been getting in his hay, he said), he talked easily about the poor state of the corn crop, the merits of artificial insemination of cattle, and got his picture taken with a prize cow.

But back of the barn, with New England’s Republican governors and others, Tom Dewey got a lot of politicking done. He heard some things he did not like. The governors frankly discussed the great amount of favorable talk for General Ike Eisenhower. Massachusetts’ politically wise Governor Robert Bradford told Candidate Dewey that he would not be a shoo-in for the 1948 nomination; Bradford said he thought an early-ballot nomination was not possible and some of the other governors nodded agreement. Take Massachusetts, said Bradford: its delegates were going to be for Favorite Son Leverett Saltonstall as long as he was in the running. Bob Bradford hastened to add that there was no thought of a stop-Dewey movement. That was all right with Dewey; his mission to Springfield was to sound out New England leaders for second-choice support, to make friends and influence people. He got no promises, and no rebuffs.

But next day he and everybody else got a surprise. In the middle of a casual interview, amiable, angular Senator Saltonstall told newsmen that he was not really a presidential candidate; all he wanted to be was Massachusetts’ best senator. Then he ticked off his own list of “leading candidates.” Tom Dewey was No. 1. The others, in Saltonstall’s order: Warren, Taft, Stassen, Eisenhower, and Speaker Joe Martin. That did not mean that Saltonstall was out as a New England favorite, or that he had given Dewey his blessing. But Farmer Tom left Springfield in a good mood.