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Back in power, Perón did not repeat the mistake of mass-jailing the liberals; instead he launched straight into a steamroller campaign for the presidency. His opponents were ineffective; Perón controlled the radio, and his police and bullyboys broke up opposition meetings. At Christmas the government decreed that employers must pay all workers a 13th month's wage as a bonus. In the opinion of most observers, this assured Perón's victory. When election day came, the months of government intimidation abruptly ceased; after such an efficiently unfair campaign, there could be a free—and legal—election. Perón won 55% of the vote, and captured two-thirds of the Chamber of Deputies.
The Good Helpmate. Soon after moving into the presidency, Juan Perón gave his wife a desk and a few chores to do at the Secretariat of Labor, his old post. Within weeks, the Secretary of Labor was running Evita's errands, and Evita was running the show. Politicians who had ticked her off as a giddy blonde, clinging to Perón's coattails, found instead that she was an energetic young woman with a will of iron, a rudimentary political sense Aid all the nerve in the world.
Picking up the same dawn-to-dark work routine as her husband, she interviewed hundreds of people daily, made speeches at union rallies all over Argentina. Taking over the management of the rowdy descamisados from her husband, Evita tickled them into submission. When the railway union asked for a 40% rise, Evita said: "I think they should get 50%." They did. When the telephone workers asked for 70% in the pious hope of getting half, Evita got them the whole 70%.
The unionists, who knew a good thing when they saw it, acclaimed Eva wildly. Instead of just "Perón! Peron!" the people cried: "Perón! Perón! Evita!" in the big square before the palace. Under her driving command, the big General Confederation of Labor became a docile Pe-ronista instrument, its main function reduced to carrying out orders and staging periodic mass demonstrations in the square. To a friend, Perón confided: "Evita deserves a medal for what she's done for labor. She's worth more to me than five ministers."
Perón's own way in office was to take care of almost everybody. He spent lavishly on the army, kept businessmen busy, granted suffrage to women. He told his nationalist backers that the new Argentina occupied a "third position" midway between the equally despised "imperialisms" of capitalism and Communism. At the same time, he soft-soaped a succession of U.S. ambassadors with private assurances that Argentina would fight beside the U.S. in any new war.