Show co uncertain truman s popularity grows but party itself Is shaky by BAUKHAGE news analyst and commentator th this follows a series on the me men most talked about as candidates for tor the republican presidential nomination washington one sunday last month a friend and I 1 watched president truman unveil a plaque on covenant first presbyterian church the occasion was a ceremony lishing the church as a national house of worship for presby just previously a wreath had been laid on the nearby statue of john witherspoon presbyterian clergyman signer of the declaration of inde pen dence and one time president of what is now princeton there never was a time dent truman sa d in paying trib ute to john witherspoon when we needed more of the backing ol 01 those people who believe in the golden rule and who believe in the teach ings of jesus christ the president was ol 01 course speaking of moral support but he had reason to be rather cheerful be cause of another kind of backing which he had just learned he bad had the kind measured by dr gallup s polls gallup called it one of the most dramatic reversals of political senti ment in history on october 16 of last year the poll reported demo c cratic r a t I 1 c p party a r t y baukhage strength at its low est point in 16 years three weeks later the survey was confirmed at the polls with election of a lican congress but today mr truman s popular ity is way up A year ago the score was 53 to 47 in favor of the re publicans in the last count it was 58 56 to 44 in favor of the democrats on the question do you approve or disapprove of the way mr truman is handling kand ling his job as president 9 the scoreboard said approve 55 per cert disapprove 29 per cent the rest expressed no op nion much water has flowed over the dam since the two polls were taken more will flow and at any rate no poll can measure the im ponder ables facing the democrats they have been going through a whole cycle of hopes and fears the octo ber poll may have been almost as surprising as pleasing to party lead ers they know there must be an end to all things and it is pretty hard to prove that the stream has not been crossed and that the voters who used sometimes to elect re publican presidents still shudder at the danger of changing horses the one biggest abstract obstacle to the election of the democratic pres dent is the fact that the demo brats have just been around too long undoubtedly the biggest con crete threat is general eisenhowe Eisen how er when that atomic boom first threatened to break the president was on the high seas but the de tails were reported to him blow by blow and it was quite a blow probably the next biggest headache is the internal condi tion of the party after long delay and much dissatisfaction a new national chairman sen howard mcgrath dem R I 1 was selected and welcomed in most quarters he ile has a job cut out for him because the demo cratic machine has grown very rusty in the last years and it Is not only rust which has cor erupted nor is it the machine alone that creaks will 0 the wisp wallace with bis his constant threat of a third party is a threat to the democratic party itself nobody believes that a third party patty cand date could possibly be elected as things stand now but d d you ever see that traffic safety slogan don t try to guess what a child will do dof democratic leaders are up against the same thing they don t dare guess what that problem child henry wal lace will do he is quite capable of going ahead and starting a third party with the full knowledge that it couldn coulden t accomplish anything but the election of a republican dent A third party would have not merely a nuisance value but wal lace might dream up a long range scheme of lead ng a political labor movement like brit ams am s after many defeats that turned into a political party which finally attained power and put a social impress on the wallace Nal lace whole british na dional economy so the wallace threat is a very nite one and what about the labor voted it has long been a theory iterated by former boss gompers and until passage of the tatt Taft hartley act reiterated by his successor mr green that there was no such animal fw k k franklin roosevelt claimed there was no labor vote as such former secretary of labor frances perk ins said there was none and in those days there wasn gasn t despite the th e existence of the american labor party in new york city I 1 doubt that there is a la bor vote now despite the s new education and public relations unit and the and their threats to pun ish supporters of the taft hart ley law As a matter of tact fact I 1 understand opposition to the law is cooling except where fires are being artificially tanned fanned and old timers tell me it will a be modified and b be for gotten the fall fail congressional election in the eighth pennsylvania district where such herculean efforts were put forth to make the bill an issue didn dian t prove too much either way except that the highly organized CIO campaign did NOT defeat the re publican candidate party machinery has deteriorated democratic party machinery has deteriorated rapidly since 1938 when it was discovered that roosevelt s coat tails were no longer strong enough to put local cand dates into office gradually precinct city county and state organizations be gan to take tar far more interest in electing local officers than they were in working together as a unit for the nat onal cand date in roose velt s case that was hardly feces sary and the white house got into the I 1 abit of think ng it wasn gasn t nee e sary to do much for the local peo pie either so the gulf w bened it is true that real bell r ng ng was carried on by the left wing or gan zed around the CIO PAC but in some cases this support proved the kiss of death the democratic machine will have to work for the operation cooperation of wallace and the present offshoots of CIO PAC be cause it cannot afford to alienate that type of support gallup a month or so ago reported in a survey cf gf political orientation that 50 per cent of the american people favored a middle of the road policy of course much depends on who becomes the republican candidate for president that is the reason that the pos sibil ity ot of an eisenhower Elsen hower or even a macarthur on the horizon raises jitters in the executive mansion much also will depend on the strength of the big city bosses the kelly mach ne is pretty weak chi cago s new mayor kennelly is div ing the city an administration such as it chasn t had in a long time but he has weakened not strengthened the old kelly outfit however I 1 hear that sen scott lucas a down stater who always fought kelly I 1 the last t me may run for governor of III nois he is strong down state this might help ruman with the illinois delegation how strong will the new kansas city machine be 0 dwyer is re furbishing tammany but the T tiger ger t its old wallop how much the greatly weakened hague ma chine in new jersey can contrib ute I 1 don t know there is one thing to be considered almost all the machines except crump s memphis regulars have been weak ened by the growth of power of the labor bosses what the democrats may gain by the labor bosses mulu ence in attracting some of the lib brals who made up the roosevelt following may be lost in ing some of the old line party work ers |