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Help from an Old Coat. While most of the top Democrats were out on the road, some organizational problems were still unsettled. Open in Washington were separate offices for Paul Butler's national committee, Jim Finnegan's campaign headquarters and Archibald Alexander's Volunteers for Stevenson-Kefauver. Jurisdictional boundaries among the three had not been decided, and Paul Butler did not help by claiming that his organization would handle "about nine-tenths of the campaign work." Finnegan's role, said Butler, would be simply that of "personal aide to Governor Stevenson in handling the traveling activities." Jim Finnegan held his peace, although he had no intention of becoming a mere travel agent. He will, when and if jurisdictional responsibilities are ironed out, boss Adlai Stevenson's 1956 campaign and go right ahead with Operation Coattails, reverse or otherwise.
And, as is traditional in an election year, no coattail will be ignored. At week's end Harry S. Truman poured a little of his hellfire into the farm country of Iowa, and the Democratic National Committee announced that he would campaign (two or three speeches a week) "in his inimitable way."
* At last month's Republican National Convention, orators usually called the opposition the "Democrat" Party. Last week the G.O.P. National Committee explained that the shortened adjective will be official Republican campaign usage because the "party of the Pender-gasts or Tammany Hall" cannot be considered a democratic party. After a brief flare-up by Democratic National Chairman Paul Butler ("They have no right to change our name"), Democrats cracked that they could not think of any name worse than Republican. At his news conference President Eisenhower treated the subject with all the gravity it deserved. Laughed Ike: "If they want to be known as the Democratic Party, it's all right with me."