The Democratic week began in California, with an argument over whether Harry S. Truman had called Vice President Richard Nixon a "son of a bitch." It moved on to Alabama, where New York's Governor Averell Harriman bagged a wild turkey, and to New Orleans, where Harriman found the political hunting not so good. It covered the Florida peninsula, where Adlai Stevenson, fishing for votes, landed a sailfish and a pair of skin divers. It ended in Oklahoma City, where Democrats converged for the explicit purpose of skewering Republicans.
A Sprinkling of Blanks. Arriving in Los Angeles to speak at a fund-raising dinner for his Independence memorial library, Harry Truman was met at the airport by newsmen who asked what he thought about the chance that the Republicans might nominate Nixon for President. Truman's exact reply is a matter of controversy. The Los Angeles Times, with a liberal sprinkling of blanks, reported that Truman had said: "I don't like the — — -—, and I don't care who knows it." The Los Angeles Examiner, with equal delicacy, quoted Truman as saying: "I don't even want to discuss that — — -—. Don't even mention his name to me." Later, through a spokesman, Truman issued a deadpan denial. "I would never," said he, "say a thing like that about the Vice President of the U.S."
While past-President Truman was generating heat in California, Presidential Hopeful Harriman was setting forth on a chilly, overcast morning in Mclntosh, Ala. (near the spot where New Yorker Aaron Burr was captured in 1807), for a day of hunting with his host, Democratic Representative Frank Boykin, and Alabama's Governor James Folsom. Before breakfast Harriman had shot a 22-lb. turkey; after a quail breakfast, the huntsmen took off to try their skill against the deer on Boykin's 100,000-acre preserve. Although he tried three different stands, Harriman had no luck. That afternoon Harriman spoke to some 500 who had been invited to meet and greet him at a barbecue. He was introduced by Boykin as "the next President of the U.S.—I hope." In turn, Harriman declared that Dwight Eisenhower "wasn't made for the presidency of the U.S."
Next day Harriman flew to New Orleans for a speech before the New Orleans Foreign Policy Association in the half-filled International Room of the Roosevelt Hotel. Harriman charged President Eisenhower with responsibility for the fact that "the lines of the great alliance of free people have been seriously breached" by the Soviet "breakthrough" at the Summit conference in Geneva last summer. When Harriman arrived in New Orleans, he had no known Louisiana supporters for President. When he left, observers could still find none.
From Jacksonville to Gainesville to Ocala to De Land to Sanford to Orlando to Miami, Adlai Stevenson was politicking in Florida and shaking hands with all the pumplike precision, but not the gusto, of an Estes Kefauver. In Gainesville he wandered about the University of Florida campus, answered questions from students, replied manfully when a fixed-up coed asked: "Mr. Eisenhower, may I have your autograph?" Grinned Stevenson: "How do you spell it?"