POLITICAL NOTES: End of an Era

As his wife and eldest son sat a few feet away, watching intently, Governor Thomas E. Dewey last week stepped out in front of the television cameras in Manhattan’s barnlike CBS studio 56. At 8 p.m. Dewey began speaking; by 8:02 he had made public a decision that went to the heart of U.S. politics. Said he: “After the most thorough and even painful consideration, I have concluded that the time has come for me to return to private life. I shall not, under any circumstances, be a candidate for any public office this fall.”

Before making his long-contemplated announcement, Dewey, in the orderly, precise manner that characterized his public career, had arranged for the transfer of his power as the leader of New York Republicanism. His chosen heir: Senator Irving M. Ives (see below).

Seven Polls. Three times—once during the 1952 campaign, once at the Eisenhower inauguration, and again in the Senator’s Washington apartment suite last June—Dewey and Ives held lengthy conversations. Each time Dewey said that he intended to retire from politics and told of his plans for the Ives succession as governor. Each time Ives demurred, urged Dewey to change his mind.

Last January, Dewey ordered a series of seven monthly public-opinion polls. How would he run against Averell Harriman, Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr., Robert Wagner Jr.? Far more important, how would Irving Ives—the only man Dewey had even considered as his successor—do against the three most likely Democratic candidates? The polls told Dewey what he wanted to know: either Ives or he could win over any Democratic opposition. In some of the surveys Ives ran even better than Dewey.

Dewey planned to make his decision public in June, but his last talk with Ives and a five-hour session with Attorney General Herbert Brownell (speaking for Dwight Eisenhower) persuaded him to hold off the announcement until this fall.

The date was set for the eve of the Republican state convention, to be held next week in Syracuse. But Dewey heard the outriders of a “Draft-Dewey” movement trumpeting in the distance, and promptly moved up his schedule by two weeks. Two days before he was to make his television appearance, he sat down to write his speech, consulting with Irving Ives by telephone. Between them they made final arrangements, e.g., by selecting an Ives-man to take over as Republican state chairman.

Burdensome Demands. Tom Dewey was turning New York’s Republican Party over to Ives with no strings attached. He was also resolutely closing his eyes on the glimmering mirage of the White House, so long pursued. For despite rumors and guesses to the contrary, Dewey told friends that he clearly intended to retire from active politics. The demands of public life had become burdensome, he said; his job was a “killer.” Moreover, he felt he owed it to himself and his family to better his financial situation (in 1937 he turned down a $150,000-a-year offer from a New York law firm) while his earning powers were still at their height. And he was not swayed by a state constitutional amendment doubling the governor’s salary (to $50,000) and increasing his pension. Said Dewey: “If personal finances ever enter into holding public office, that’s the moment to get out.”

Thus came to an end an era in American politics. Dewey had served three terms as New York’s governor and was twice (1944, 1948) his party’s nominee for President. But of vastly greater importance was his place as an architect of U.S. political thought. Dewey moved up in the Republican Party during its weary, negative years of exile. Through his example as New York’s chief executive, he made the party stand for something positive: good government. This was his achievement, and this was his political legacy.

With the Dewey decision, the Democratic side of New York’s gubernatorial picture became much clearer. The Democratic nomination lay between Representative Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr. and New-Fair Deal Diplomat W. Averell Harriman. The choice was up to Tammany Chief Carmine De Sapio, who. with his fellow Democratic metropolitan county leaders, controls a deciding bloc of delegate votes in the nominating convention next week.

Of the two candidates, there was little doubt that Roosevelt would be the stronger in a general election. Last winter, with De Sapio’s knowledge and tacit approval, Junior started rounding up delegates from upstate New York (TIME, June 21). He succeeded all too well; De Sapio’s palace guards, who had previously encouraged Roosevelt, began to fear that his upstate strength would shift the balance of power away from Tammany. That was enough for De Sapio, who already looked approvingly on Harriman because 1) as an undeviating party regular, he was more susceptible to control than Junior, and 2) with his own vast wealth and that of his friends, the party would have fewer financial headaches during the campaign.

Thus, De Sapio and the Democratic organization picked their man: hardworking, grey-toned Averell Harriman. 62, a well-meaning but ineffectual candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1952, who has never been elected to anything other than a board of directors. Frank Roosevelt—choosing his words carefully so as to avoid a frontal attack on either Harriman or the bosses—cried out that he was still in the race. He was among the few who thought so.