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Show i Behmdji THE:'NEV5 'msi By PaULNALLON JE" Released by Western Newspaper Union. NOVEL CAMPAIGN STARTED BY DEWEY WASHINGTON. Governor Dewey is going about his campaign in a novel way. His tactics seem to be to keep quiet and organize before he lets go. He has gone about it with greater great-er pains than any candidate in my time. Apparently, he has spent every ev-ery minute since his nomination at the task. Mr. Roosevelt's campaign has been indirect and, on the surface, wholly involved with war and peace developments. His role is commander-in-chief. When the Democratic Demo-cratic convention was following directions, he was inspecting an avi-ition avi-ition plant on the West coast. It is impossible to contend war events, which he is leading, have no campaign effect, because be-cause tiiey may be a controlling control-ling factor in whether he wins or loses. For instance, next logical jump from our recently achieved island strongholds in the Pacific is the Philippines. In fact, this is the only place to go except Japan itself. If General MacArthur should happen hap-pen to lead an invasion force back into Manila within the next three months,, the reaction here would be favorable to Mr. Roosevelt's chances. Victory in Europe, unless it happened hap-pened to be entirely a Russian breakthrough, break-through, also might have a profound campaign effect. On the international political side, the Bretton Woods conference has developed the controversial financial bank measure, which Mr. Roosevelt apparently is going to keep out of the campaign by refraining from presenting it to congress until the January session after election. Mr. Hull is arranging a preliminary pre-liminary peace conference here of the big powers, and my guess always has been that this will prepare pre-pare the way for trie President to go to Europe for a big peace conference confer-ence before November. .Awaiting Developments. These developments alone may constitute his campaign, except that designated spokesmen like Senator Wagner and others may make speeches carrying the purely political polit-ical campaign promises, outlining what the President is doing, saying what he proposes to do if elected. Dewey's preparations, on the other hand, so far have been a methodical organization of his party as it has never been organized before while out of the White House. By every move, he has offered the contrast to one-man government. The moment the convention was over, he started on the ground in Chicago with roundups of national committeemen and women in groups of five or. six. He not only conferred with, but he listened to every state chairman chair-man as well. To them he said this campaign was a joint venture. Indeed, he gave Bricker more consideration then and later than a vice presidential candidate can-didate usually gets. Returning to Albany, he started receiving state delegations of congressmen con-gressmen (without their state chairmen). chair-men). He has heard Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Massachu-setts, Connecticut separately so far. Those who attended these meetings meet-ings said they were like lodge meetings. meet-ings. Dewey did not make a speech, but simply devoted the meeting to understanding and organization. His friends always have given him credit for exceptional skill in organization. or-ganization. On his trip west, he called in the Pennsylvania state delegation at Pittsburgh, the Illinois delegation at Springfield, and is getting the 26 Republican Re-publican governors into his organizational organi-zational ring with his planned two-day two-day meeting at St. Louis. After that, the Missouri delegation was brought in. This year with the war likely to break before election, with the peace unsettled, it is probable people may take the election more as a matter of course. Extremely light votes have appeared already in the primaries. pri-maries. In Idaho, at the height of the European invasion, candidates got no crowds and the voters could not be induced to come from farms and war factories and register. In North Dakota, the vote was light de-! de-! spite the warm senatorial contest. In 1 Maryland, Democratic Senator Tyd-ings Tyd-ings found unusually little applause given to a Roosevelt speaker at a Roosevelt pep rally. Obviously, Dewey's game is to concentrate through his organization upon those 26 states which will give him the election hands down, if he can get them. During all this time, the usual :ampaign comments that daily emanate from a candidate have been avoided. When he went west, he had .lot even appointed a publicity manager, mana-ger, the job being temporarily left io Harold Keller, deputy commissioner commis-sioner of commerce on leave from lis state job, who also handled Dewev publicity at the convention. |