(2 of 5)
The amateurs in the Willkie camp were most keenly disappointed when unpolitical Crusader Willkie tried to be political.
Well he recalled that Candidate Charles Evans Hughes's failure to shake Hiram Johnson's hand in 1916 had cost him California, and California had cost him the Presidency. The moment the candidate crossed the California State line he came out with a bellow for that "great, fighting, fearless liberal, Hiram Johnson"—isolationist Senator Johnson, who has opposed much that Candidate Willkie stands for, particularly aid to the Allies. To the Willkie overture Senator Johnson made no immediately audible reply.
The Republican pros grumbled that Willkie should have buttered up old Hiram weeks ago, should now have been able to announce dramatically that Johnson was a 100% Willkie man. "No organization," they humphed, and continued to let their candidate carry on alone.
Through San Diego, Santa Ana, Englewood, Long Beach, motored the Willkie caravan, through huge turnouts of cheering people. Here & there high-school children bronx-cheered or shouted "Hooray for Roosevelt!" One or two of them threw tomatoes, one a wild pitch above the grinning candidate's head.
But when Willkie reached Los Angeles, the city went crazy. Torn paper & ticker tape showered down, a steady, deep-toned roar followed his car for many miles, and at the City Hall the swirling crowd jammed around him so frenziedly that he never got within 50 feet of Acting Mayor Robert Burns and the dignitaries.
That evening, in the clear California night, 70,000 people crushed into the Los Angeles Coliseum, watched a Flag Day parachute bomb shoot up, heard The Star-Spangled Banner, watched the flag raised, chanted the pledge of allegiance to the flag, bowed heads in prayer, roared approval as grizzled G. O. P. Oldtimer Joseph Scott introduced "the next President of the United States."
Out of the Coliseum tunnel moved the Willkie car; a band played "Back Home Again in Indiana," spotlights cut through the dark, and the crowd's cheers settled into the powerful, hypnotic Philadelphia chant of "We Want Willkie!" over & over.
Then something happened. In ten minutes Wendell Willkie had lost his audience. The speech was logical, well-argued, businesslike—but not the stuff for a throng that wanted emotion, excitement, slam-bang oratory. The applause, at first hopeful, then despondent, finally narrowed down to the reserved seats. That night Willkie's shaken assistant kept from him the news of the Friday Gallup poll.
If Willkie was shaken by the Gallup figures, he did not show it publicly. Next day he went on, as hard as ever . . . "the glory of the United States is business." At Fresno and at Stockton boys and young men booed and heckled him. But everywhere the crowds were big—to the pros, unexpectedly big. Day after day the big round-shouldered amateur learned: how to roll with a punch, how to throw a hook. Most important, he never quit. Grudgingly, the newshawks came to respect his bull-like persistence, his obstinate honesty, the deep strength of his convictions, which he could not lay aside each evening as practiced politicians do. "This guy means it," one correspondent wired.