As the excited belling of presidential candidates drew nearer & louder last week, assorted listeners rose in public to state their choice and take their stand
¶ To H. L. Mencken, who cares for nobody, except for the laughs, the whole race looked satisfactorily scandalous. He described President Truman as a "shabby mountebank," Tom Dewey as a "limber trimmer," announced that Henry Wallace had manifestly lost "what little sense he had formerly, if indeed, he ever had any at all." He grudgingly admitted that Socialist Norman Thomas seemed to have some brains, but wrote him off immediately. He thought Dixiecrat J. Strom Thurmond was "the best of all the candidates," but with a final growl, he warned that "all the worst morons in the South are for him."
¶ Former National Youth Administrator Aubrey Williams, now publisher of the Southern Farmer, called on Henry Wallace to "repudiate the [Progressive Party] and come on back home." His reason: Wallace "is being used to weaken and defeat the efforts of the U.S. to reach an understanding with Russia."
¶ The once-Democratic Baltimore Sun, which supported Wendell Willkie in 1940 and Tom Dewey in 1944, decided to stick with the G.O.P. again, urged its readers to vote for Dewey. Said the Sun: "He is a middle-of-the-road man if ever we saw one."