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Then, with the cold introspection that may be his greatest political strength, De Sapio took stock of himself and his situation. "After Pecora," he now says, 'I felt something drastic had to be done to disprove the public impression of me and my organization. As time went on, I could only see that, unless we put our house in order, the Democratic Party in New York would have no value as a party at all. I watched very carefully for the right places to push for or against the right program."
As he continues, the careful, self-conscious diction breaks down, the sidewalk elisions appear. "Either we were gonna get the confidence of the people or perish. I'd been in the business a long time. It was the only one I knew. I figured I'm in so deep I gotta go on."
From this assessment came the postcard polls, the dogged rectitude, the organizational reforms, the constant salesmanship—and, most important, the elections of Bob Wagner as mayor and Averell Harriman as governor.
Arabs & Oaths. He still has problems, scores of them, nearly all deriving from the scarcity of hours in the day. No sooner does he leave his kitchen table in the morning and pass through the Moorish lobby of his apartment building than he is besieged by a horde of political suppliants who have been crouched there like Arab beggars since daybreak. No sooner does he arrive at his office as Secretary of State than in troops a platoon of prospective cosmetology board officials, ready to have De Sapio administer the oath in which, as required by law, they swear to adhere to the Constitution of the United States of America and to the constitution of New York as they supervise the state's hair wavers. Then, moving uptown, he holds forth for at least a few hours each day in his national committeeman's offices in the Biltmore Hotel. On Mondays and Fridays De Sapio holds court across the street in the quarters of Tammany Hall, whose seediness belies their Madison Avenue address.
And all the while he is trying to chart the presidential candidacy of the Governor of New York, Averell Harriman.
"Hard, Hard!" How can Harriman overhaul Stevenson for the Democratic nomination? How, if nominated, could he have a prayer against Dwight Eisenhower? For his answers, De Sapio can only draw on his rugged New York political schooling. In discussing the national situation, he likes to dwell on his experiences with Republican Tom Dewey (De Sapio insists that Dewey, not Candidate Irving Ives, was the real loser in the 1954 gubernatorial election).
"I say that the Eisenhower myth of invincibility in the White House is comparable to the Dewey myth of invincibility in Albany," says De Sapio. "I may be wrong. These are my ideas. I have discussed them hardly at all with leaders from any other state. But my experience beating Dewey here leads me to believe that the situations are closer than people think.