National Affairs: The Happy Man

Death last week took from the Senate a quiet, kindly, able Southern judge, baggy-kneed, baggy-faced Marvel Mills Logan (TIME, Oct. 9). In jigtime the Senate this week got as his successor the nearest thing to Huey Long since the Kingfish was shot to death in 1935.

For Governor Albert Benjamin Chandler, Kentucky’s happy man, is no mere country clown. A swift and educated brain, a vaulting ambition and one of the sharpest instincts in the U. S. lie behind his automatic incandescent smile, his hot-palmed handshake.

Prancy as a Blue Grass colt, “Happy” Chandler is a natural politician. In politics he has the easy grace of Joe DiMaggio coasting under a long fly-ball, the same talent of making the tough ones look easy. To him handshaking is not a nuisance but a passionate delight. He knows the first name (and even the children’s names) of nearly every person in Kentucky of voting age—not just because it’s good political business, but because he likes to know. To him speechmaking is no grave statement of solemn issues, but a chance to play his own tune on the great harp of an audience. And a harp is what his audience becomes. So infectious is his gifted gab that the soberest observers have found themselves swaying to the roll of it, while the Chandler fans yell “Tell it, Happy boy! Oh, tell it!”

This son of a mail-carrier father, who went off to college with a $5 bill in his pocket, who sings There’s a Gold Mine in the Sky and Mother Machree on campaign platforms, would have been jobless on Dec. 12, if he had not inherited Senator Logan’s seat. No Kentucky Governor may succeed himself. But Chandler’s aide, Lieutenant Governor Keen Johnson, Democratic nominee for the Governorship in the Nov. 7 elections, is a 20-to-1 choice over Republican Nominee King Swope. So Chandler had no unemployment problem, for he could resign at any time before Dec. 12 and still be certain of the job. But, not to seem in undignified haste in rushing to occupy Senator Logan’s seat, Chandler waited six days before resigning.

Now came the tableau for which all Washington waited—the moment when bumbling Senate Leader Alben Barkley escorted down the aisle, to be sworn in as Junior Senator from Kentucky, the very man who opposed him in the bitterest of all 1938 primary fights, the fight which aroused national demand for a ban on politics in the WPA, thus resulted in the Hatch Act. Till next August’s primary, Kentucky’s Happy Man may wear the toga, if not the dignity, of a U. S. Senator.