POLITICAL NOTES: Bride’s Bouquet

A man who ran unsuccessfully for Vice President in 1920 is now President of the U. S. In the breast of Charles Curtis, who ran unsuccessfully for re-election as Vice President in 1932, all hope of recovering political prestige is not dead. Last week he allowed his hope of playing a part in 1936 to get the better of him. Like a bride throwing her bouquet,he took careful aim and tossed his Presidential endorsement over the heads of other Republican hopefuls to a man from his native State:

“I’m for Governor Landon of Kansas, if he is a candidate. . . . I’ll never commit myself for anyone else till I know whether Landon is a candidate.”

Governor Alf Landon clutched the bouquet to his bosom where he was already holding one tossed that morning from California (see below). But the Republican enemies of Republicans Curtis and Landon could not let the ceremony pass. Was it, they asked, a bouquet from a bride or a skunk cabbage from a scullery maid? What right had Charles Curtis to speak for Kansas? What right had he to propose a candidate for President? By way of answer, they produced a note written by Mr. Curtis to the tax assessor of Shawnee County, Kans. giving notice that he had transferred his legal residence, as of March 4, 1933, to Washington, D. C. No more was onetime Vice President Curtis a Kansan, and on Nov. 3, 1936, as a resident of the District of Columbia, he cannot even cast a ballot for his favorite candidate.