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Friends & Enemies. Besides McHale, Elder and Townsend, the Indiana gang behind Paul McNutt now included Sherman ("Shay") Minton, whom they sent to the Senate in 1935; Edmund Arthur Ball of Muncie, member of the rich glass-jar family; and Fred Bays, a dapper, saturnine oldtime dancer and circus man. Him they made Democratic State Chairman, to handle ballyhoo. Besides banners, bands and buttons, Mr. Bays uses tap dancers, a singing cop, contortionists. When the McNutt campaign gets going nationally, the country may see something remarkable.
If Paul McNutt is on a limb, it is not his friends' fault. It is Franklin Roosevelt's—or McNutt's own for trying to block Roosevelt at Chicago in 1932. Ever since then Paul McNutt has been polite to the New Deal, but also ever since then Jim Farley has called McNutt a platinum-haired so-&-so, a feeling which is mutual.
Another man who will be no great help to McNutt is Indiana's senior Senator, Frederick Van Nuys. When the New Deal called for a purge last year, McNutt & Co. tried to read Senator Van Nuys out of their party. When they found Mr. Van Nuys too tenacious, they had to read him back in again, which shamed and embittered Governor Cliff Townsend, who was told off to do both readings.
Assets of Paul McNutt for the Presidency begin with his physical appearance and vigor. He is handsome to a Hollywood degree. Women flock to see him. He has a Texas wife (Kathleen Timolat of San Antonio), as wise as she is charming, and a good-looking, 18-year-old daughter, Louise. He has false teeth but able Dentist B. K. ("Kirk") Westfall of Indianapolis sees to it that they do not impede his public speaking, which is of the best. He can pour it out so dynamically that his eyeballs pop. His radio voice is not pale, even beside Franklin Roosevelt's. Consciousness of his mastery over men gives him a dignity which might be ludicrous had he not also a dazzling smile and the ability to throw his head back, laugh uproariously, especially at embarrassing questions. When asked last week if he would discuss 1940 when he sees Franklin Roosevelt, he roared: "Why not? I always have."
His American Legion connections are nationwide, and the Legion membership is now in its political prime. He has an executive record uncomplicated by such national issues as Relief, Money, Neutrality. Above all he has absolute mastery of Indiana through a machine that is as old-fashioned in its efficiency as it is modern in its setup. Indiana has only 14 electoral votes to offer, only 28 delegates in the National Democratic Convention. But Paul McNutt can count on delivering these white chips with greater certainty than even Cordell Hull can be sure of Tennessee or Jack Garner of Texas. At this stage of the 1940 game, no other candidate except Roosevelt has even one white chip.