POLITICAL NOTES: Landon Chat

Since Nov. 3, 1936, Alfred Mossman Landon has spent most of his time at home in Kansas, attending to his oil business and building himself a new, white colonial house. Meanwhile, Herbert Hoover has been touring the U. S., addressing Republican groups and proposing a mid-term Republican convention (TIME. Oct. 18). This state of affairs does not conform with the political theory that a defeated Presidential candidate remain his party’s leader for the next four years. Last fortnight, Alf Landon decided the time had come to reassert his position. Exactly seven days after President Roosevelt’s fireside chat on the extra session of Congress, he sat down before a microphone in his office on the tenth floor of Topeka’s National Bank Building, to address a “nationwide mass meeting over the radio.”

As a Presidential candidate, one of Alf Landon’s drawbacks was his oratorical style. Last week, it soon became clear that seclusion has not improved it. He misused and mispronounced words (including “Roosevelt” which he called “Ruse-e-felt”), perambulated through his speech, waved his clenched fists over his desk as a substitute for oratorical fire. Omitting all mention of Mr. Hoover’s proposed convention (on which the Republican National Committee will come to a decision early in November), Alf Landon launched into an earnest catalog of New Deal shortcomings.

Major Landon points were that: 1) social progress lags because of “the failure of the President of the United States to follow our constitutional method of government and his failure as an administrator,” and 2) “the President’s . . . readiness to assume the responsibility of a one-man government in international affairs is far more dangerous than the same tendencies in dealing with domestic matters.” As noteworthy New Deal failures. Alf Landon listed Relief (“a political football”), Taxes (“not just the amount . . . but the confusion”), Social Security Act (“well-intended”), the Wagner Labor Relations Act (“an unworkable, messed-up piece of legislation that will have to be done all over again”) and Hugo Black’s appointment to the Supreme Court (“tradition . . . holds that when a man is to be appointed to an important, nonelective office, he shall be submitted to the scrutiny and white light of public hearings”).

Having called on Congress to defend the Neutrality Act and revise Franklin Roosevelt’s international policy, he proceeded to a denunciation of one-man government that had a ring of strong personal conviction: “It is apparent, that Mr. Roosevelt is going through the same process that transpired in the life of every man in history who was given too much power. Power feeds on power—today, just as it did in the days of Julius Caesar. . . .” To close his speech, Alf Landon had prepared three paragraphs urging a “solid foundation of workable legislation under the air castles which the President is forever blowing.” Just before he reached this flight of metaphor, his 30-min. radio time expired.

This speech won Alf Landon little credit for originality or perspicacity. First reply to it—like the first reply to Franklin Roosevelt’s fireside chat the week before —came from Columnist Hugh Johnson on his conveniently-timed Bromo Quinine program. Not satisfied with disparaging Alf Landon’s argument, he mocked Alf Landon’s pronunciation by repeating a Landon slip: “attackted.” In Manhattan next day, Herbert Hoover said tersely “It was a good speech” but failed to send Alf Landon congratulations.