POLITICAL NOTES: Michelson to Republicans

The Grand Old Party of Lincoln, McKinley and Harding last week received the ultimate insult. In the American Magazine shrewd old Charles (“Charley the Mike”) Michelson, ace Democratic press-agent whose propagandizing since 1928 gets an owl’s share of credit for returning his Party to power and keeping it there, published a straight-faced article titled My Advice to the G. O. P.

Political observers reacted as sportsmen would if Yale’s football coach, having reduced Harvard to the status of an early-season setup, should publicly advise the Crimson how to come back. Depending on how they assayed his advice, readers guessed: that Pressagent Michelson was having some sly fun with his old enemies, that the wrinkled old battler genuinely longed to match his wits once more with a worthy opponent, or that “Charley the Mike,” with Michiavellian cunning, was deliberately attempting to steer the tottering Elephant over a precipice.

If they could trust his sincerity, Republicans could have found no sager counselor than Charley Michelson. For, as he reminded his readers last week, when National Chairman John J. Raskob hired oldtime Newshawk Michelson as No. 1 Democratic press tactician and speechwriter in 1928, political observers were as ready to inter the Donkey’s carcass as they are now ready to bury the Elephant’s. “I am really trying to think with a Republican’s head,” wrote Charley Michelson as he set about planning a resurrection such as he once helped to accomplish.

After noting the lack of discipline and direction which marked the Republican campaign of 1936, Master Mind Michelson pronounced: ‘The party, in my opinion, needs a Mark Hanna, or a Matt Quay.” First declaring that he does not know Republican National Chairman John D. M. Hamilton well enough to surmise whether he has the requisite “iron in his soul” to ride roughshod over the wishes of this or that segment of his followers, Mr. Michelson indicated his opinion by suggesting another candidate: Herbert Hoover’s Secretary of the Treasury Ogden Livingston Mills. “He is a vigorous fellow, with perhaps the best mind among those who entertain the ultra-capitalistic theories. He has, in addition, that quality of autoappreciation which is variously translated as egoism or self-confidence. That is not a quality which endears a man to his fellows, but the Boss is rarely a friendly fellow.”

What made oldtime G. O. P. bosses successful, says Charley Michelson, was “ignoring the mutterings of the Liberal group of Republicans.” The same principle, he thinks, will work in the future. Only chance for a Republican comeback is to stop straddling the liberal-conservative fence, return to the “rock-ribbed citadel of oldtime, fundamental conservatism.” That is why Alf Landon and John Hamilton, both tainted with Western progressivism, should be tossed overboard. The Republican National Chairman should be an emotional as well as physical resident of Manhattan, should “sit at the feet of the magnates, political and financial, and saturate himself with their philosophy.”

If that sounded like political suicide, Author Michelson reminded his readers that farmers are traditionally conservative when times are good, that they may sometime be won back to the “party of substance and solemn sedateness.” But that, he trusts, will not happen in 1940, or even in 1944. Abandoning all hope of a na tional victory in 1940, the G. O. P. should concentrate on replenishing its treasury, rebuilding its shattered local organizations, electing Congressmen enough to “decrease the defeatist psychology of the party,” picking and electing Governors “eminent in commerce or finance, for the reason that in 1948 the Republicans are likely to need a Presidential candidate of that description.”