Chicago's old Boss Ed Kelly was there, talking to Jersey City's debonair old Boss Frank Hague, who wore a straw boater and flourished a cane. With other Democratic National Committee members, they had gathered in Washington's Mayflower
Hotel. They were there to elect a new national chairman, hand-picked by Harry Truman: smooth, 46-year-old William M. Boyle Jr., a veteran Kansas City politico. And at Boyle's insistence, they were there to expel some fifth columnists from the Party of the People.
The outgoing national chairman, Rhode Island's easygoing J. Howard McGrath, had never wanted...
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