DEMOCRATS: Mink & Orchids

With the 1950 elections in the offing, the Democrats swore that their annual Jefferson-Jackson Dinner would be the most stupendous political clambake of all time—a combination revival meeting and war dance calculated not only to inflame the faithful and extract $100 from each, but to terrorize and stupefy the G.O.P. By the appointed night last week, there could be no denying that they had indeed engineered something almost comparable to the Burning of Rome.

Washington’s echoing, four-acre National Guard Armory was bedizened with a staggering yardage of red, white & blue bunting, surmounted by enormous photo murals (including one of the Lincoln Memorial, on the apparent theory that the emancipator was too good for the G.O.P.). The speakers’ table was aglow with the beaming faces of the President and Vice President, Democratic Chairman Bill Boyle & wife, Mrs. 0. Max Gardner, widow of the late Under Secretary of the Treasury, Lever Bros.’ Ex-President Charles Luckman and fourscore or more Cabinet officers, governors and big-shot Democrats from coast to coast. The 523 tables at which 5,300 ordinary diners sat, elbow to elbow on folding chairs, were fitted out with red, white, blue or starred tablecloths, thus creating a huge facsimile of a U.S. flag.

Moth-Eaten Scarecrow. Despite the confusion and the roaring babble set off by the throngs on the floor and in the galleries, dinner was deftly served. To the unconcealed awe of all, the filet mignon was hot when it arrived. The food had been prepared in the kitchens of the Mayflower and Statler Hotels and had been rushed to the armory in special heater-equipped trucks. An army of 625 waiters was on hand to serve it. The serving-men were drilled as meticulously as a troop of light cavalry and they were controlled by an intricate traffic-light system: when the lights turned red, they retired from the floor; when the lights flashed green, they charged forth en masse to clear or serve.

There were a few drawbacks. The armory was so big that the music and entertainment (Singers Phil Regan and Lena Home, Dancers Sally & Tony DeMarco) might have been off in Kalamazoo. It was all but impossible to ogle the dignitaries at the head table. Hundreds of Government executives were forced to parade up & down in front of it so their bosses could see that they had not shirked their political duty by staying home and saving the admission charge.*

But when President Harry S. Truman rose to launch Democratic campaigning for 1950, there was a stirring salvo of applause and whistles from the multitude. The gist of his speech: that the Republican party had “insulted the intelligence of the American people” when they “dragged out the same old moth-eaten scarecrow of socialism” as an issue in the 1950 elections.

Like a Cuttlefish. He set to work to demonstrate that the G.O.P., “the party of negative inaction [which] is always against things,” had been saying the same thing in different words ever since 1933. “Out of the great progress of this country . . . [they] have learned nothing … all they do is croak, ‘socialism.’

“It is perfectly safe to be against socialism,” he said. “But”—looking around at the orchids, mink and dinner jackets in the huge hall—”how in the world can the Republicans persuade people that all you Democrats … are Socialists?

“The Republicans,” he cried, building up to his punch line, “sit around waiting for us to make a proposal. Then they react with an outburst of scare words. They are like a cuttlefish that squirts out a cloud of black ink whenever its slumber is disturbed!”

The President, as was to be expected, sat down to a fine burst of applause. But the speech, one on which his advisers had labored for days (it referred to “the people” 25 different times, and to Franklin Roosevelt only once), did not fire up the crowd the way Harry Truman’s off-the-arm oratory often does. The Democrats, in fact, acted almost as sedately as Republicans throughout the whole affair. But they had given a dramatic demonstration of confidence and well-being and had chipped in $530,000, of which a warming $450,000 went to their already bulging campaign fund.

-The 20% federal admission tax, which 12,000 Republican diners paid at their recent $1-a-box supper, did not apply to the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner. The reason: instead of selling tickets like the Republicans, the Democrats had accepted $100 contributions from the 5,300 guests and in turn had given them complimentary passes to the dinner.