DEMOCRATS: The Spoilsman

In Washington on the last day of October 1948, burly William Marshall Boyle Jr., one of Kansas City’s smartest local politicians, pushed aside a pile of statistics and predicted flatly that Harry Truman would carry 29 states. He was wrong on only one state: Maryland went for Tom Dewey (by 8,293 votes).

Washington is thronging with deserving Democrats who are sure that they won the election for Harry Truman. Bill Boyle, more than any other man, knows which ones had nothing whatever to do with it. He himself had quite a bit. He is the man who plotted every inch of Harry Truman’s 32,000-mile itinerary.

Through Illinois by Bus. A man with a memory like Jim Farley’s, easygoing Bill Boyle knows thousands of wardheelers by their first names. He saw to it that the boss shook the hands and slapped the backs of as many of them as possible. His biggest coup of the campaign: routing Truman by bus and car through five downstate Illinois counties that had not gone Democratic in 50 years. Truman carried them all, took the state.

Last week Bill Boyle came to his reward. Democratic Chairman J. Howard McGrath, who is loyal but no mover and shaker, was called to the White House, gently given the word. Then McGrath announced that Boyle would be executive vice chairman, run headquarters, share in policymaking. There was much more to it than that: Bill Boyle would parcel out, or pass on, the jobs in the lush fields above civil service and below Cabinet rank (among them: judgeships, U.S. district attorneys, key postmasterships). Eventually he would probably take title officially from McGrath. His first goal: to buck for a big registration in 1950, to avoid the off-year election slump that usually hits the party in power. Says Boyle: “A big registration never worries me. I know there are more Democrats than there are Republicans.”

Ward-level thinking came naturally to Bill Boyle. Like Harry Truman, he was a product of Kansas City’s old Pendergast machine. At 16, he was ringing doorbells in the old Fourth (Silk Stocking) Ward in Kansas City, later became leader there, entered the law. He was a police-department secretary in 1939 when his boss followed old Tom Pendergast to jail. Boyle took over the police department for a few months, won the praise even of the opposition for his administration.

Regularity Counts. County Judge Harry Truman took a fancy to the youngster. When Senator Truman headed up the War Investigating Committee, he sent for Boyle to be his assistant counsel. In 1944 Boyle was called in again to help ailing Bob Hannegan run the Roosevelt-Truman campaign. On the side—the patronage boss gets no pay—he makes an unspectacular but comfortable living practicing law in Washington.

Bill Boyle is a stubborn believer in party regularity. Said he: “I want people in the Government who will back President Truman down the line.” Translated this meant: no waverers, no Wallaceites, no Dixiecrats need apply.