The Telephone Booth Indian - Abbott Joseph Liebling [106]
The great German offensive of 1940 may well have annoyed Howard, as it practically insured the President's nomination for a third term. The publisher, who had looked to 1940 to deliver him from the insubordinate Roosevelt, suddenly found himself in the dilemma of a racing trainer who has to beat something with nothing. Dewey, whose prestige had steadily declined since his defeat by Lehman in the gubernatorial campaign, was too callow for a crisis President. Senators Taft and Vandenberg had demonstrated a remarkable knack of inspiring apathy. The kingmaker was standing on a corner waiting for a hitch on a band wagon when Oren Root, Jr., and Russell W. Davenport, Henry R. Luce, and a group of other men on the staffs of Time and Fortune came along with Wendell L. Willkie. Howard's wooing of the large, talkative Indianan was tempestuous. He appeared so consistently at the same dinner parties Willkie attended that Willkie, trapped once into playing a freeassociation parlor game and suddenly presented with the word “Howard,” answered, “Soup.” “Howard wore those nineteen newspapers in his lapel with that red carnation,” a member of the original Willkie group has said. “He talked about them as if he were going to give them to us.” Howard now says that he is sorry the election provided no clearcut test of public opinion on intervention in the war. When Howard went to the Republican convention in Philadelphia as one of Willkie's most vociferous rooters, Willkie had already declared himself for full aid to Great Britain, but Howard, like many other Willkie admirers, may well have believed that Willkie was not really in earnest. One close friend has said, “Roy doesn't believe anything that is not told to him confidentially.” At any rate, Howard seemed to think of the candidate's later demonstration of consistency as one more betrayal. As in the case of Roosevelt, Howard saw the first sign of ingratitude when he moved to help take charge of his new protege. Davenport, Root, and Luce, discoverers of the new white hope, refused to cut Howard in for a big enough piece. Howard, the TimeFortune people say, seemed to think that about ninetyeight per cent would be right. Howard encouraged General Johnson to make a trip to Colorado Springs, where the candidate was resting, to write Willkie's acceptance speech for him. This was a mistake, because if there is one thing Willkie is sure he can do, it is write. The clash of literary temperaments was intensified by Johnson's insistence that Willkie include a plan for farm relief the columnist had thought up and that he should mention the Virgin Mary someplace in his speech. The Elwood, Indiana, stylist felt hurt, and said so. Johnson returned to the East and wrote a couple of columns calling Willkie's advisers political amateurs. Howard, boarding the campaign train soon after Willkie's first tour had started, remained enough of a businessman to complain that the candidate was timing his speeches to break in morning papers (eighteen of the nineteen ScrippsHoward newspapers appear in the evening). As a political expert, he also gave some constructive criticism about the setup of the train and the itinerary.
Meanwhile, Pegler and Johnson, after the General had recovered from his irritation, wrote columns in boiling oil, invoking the wrath of a just deity who had destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah upon the subversive activities of Mrs. Roosevelt, who belongs to the American Newspaper Guild. They discussed the third term in a clinical style that reminded readers of the Daily News campaign against syphilis. The General fumed over the appointment of Elliot Roosevelt to a captaincy in the army. For comic relief, he went on the radio and told funny stories in Jewish dialect, a lapse which brought a disclaimer of responsibility in the WorldTelegram. Howard, talking recently about the activities