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First Licks. The Southerners got in their licks first. South Carolina's Senator Olin D. Johnson dropped in to chat with the General at Columbia University, came out certain (or so he told newsmen) that Ike would submit to a draft. "Hummon" Talmadge's machine in Georgia noisily acclaimed Ike, pledged him its 28 votes. Virginia echoed the Georgians. South Carolina's Governor J. Strom Thurmond told his 20 delegates to whoop it up for Ike.
The old New Dealers, largely represented by the anti-Communist Americans for Democratic Action, bombarded every convention delegate by mail, urging a ticket of Eisenhower "and/or" Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.
Up to this point the coalition was merely a loose confederation. The man who made the effort to draw it together was James Roosevelt, who was pledged to Truman himself and who, but three weeks ago, had smilingly posed with a smiling Harry Truman in Los Angeles.
As Democratic state chairman of California, Jimmy telephoned key Democrats the country over, finally got Chicago's Democratic Boss Jake Arvey and New York's Mayor Bill O'Dwyer (who was busy with a political fight of his own) to join him.
Their strategy was bold and open. Out went telegrams to every Democratic delegate inviting him to an all-state caucus in Philadelphia two nights before the convention's opening. There, the coalitionists hoped, they could rally the uncommitted delegates to their cause, persuade enough committed delegates to drop their pledges and thus block a first-ballot nomination of President Truman.
The telegrams did not mention Eisenhower's name. They did state: "No man . . .can refuse the call to duty and leadership." The coalitionists hoped that by dangling Ike's name before the delegates they could at least get them to come to the caucus. If they couldn't get Ike, they hoped at least to use him as a stalking horse, and try to agree on some other candidate later on.
The drive swiftly picked up backers. Leaders from Utah, Nebraska, Kansas, Wisconsin, Michigan, Connecticut, Massachusetts, got behind and pushed. This week it got a shot of jet propulsion. Bald Boss Frank Hague, who helped Harry Truman get his vice presidential nomination four years ago, hastily called a seashore caucus of New Jersey's 36 delegates, walked them off the Truman ship and on to the Eisenhower bandwagon. He would not, said Hague, "force upon the Democrats of the state a man they do not want."
Pudgy Hand. But at week's end the entire Eastern seaboard buzzed with rumors that General Ike was ready to bow himself finally and irrevocably out of the Democratic picture. The pudgy hand of George E. Allen, President Truman's onetime crony and Ike Eisenhower's close friend, was in on the play. Allen spent most of three days with Ike last week. They met in Washington. Then George and Mary Allen and Ruth Butcher (divorced wife of Captain Harry Butcher, the General's wartime naval aide) went up to Manhattan to help Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower celebrate their 32nd wedding anniversary.
Between party and golf, Allen persuaded Ike that if he really meant what he said last January,* he would have to say it even harder now. This week Ike did.