Headquarters: II

When Eisenhower's headquarters heard that the Taft forces had set up shop in the swank Sheraton-Plaza, the first reaction was:

"Hah. They're probably buttonholing everybody who comes into the lobby."

This didn't prove true. If there was any buttonholing going on at the Copley, it was in the third floor room where Basil Brewer, New Bedford newspaper publisher and chief Massachusetts Taft supporter, was holding private conferences. But Parlor B, just off the main hobby, was a disconcertingly unpolitical place.

Leather chairs, paintings, and drapes with a wine bottle motif, suggested small-scale cocktail parties for Parlor B, and not the official headquarters of the Massachusetts Committee for Taft. On the center hors d'hoeuvres table, were pamphlets telling why "Bob Taft is the GOP's best bet for '52." The pamphlets, a poster of a grinning baby elephant on the wall, a filing cabinet, and Taft-for-President buttons on every lapel signaled the switch from cocktails to politics.

The host in Parlor B was Waker Taylor, a large, gruff-voiced food dealer for whom politics has been an avocation for thirty-five years.

"You know," Taylor said, "one of the biggest arguments against Taft is that he can't win. But what people don't get is that he's never lost an election. The other guy (Taylor almost always referred to Eisenhower as "the other guy) has never even fought an election."

I asked Taylor what chances Taft had for delegates in Massachusetts, supposedly one of the centers of Eisenhower strength.

"The real leaders of the state aren't for him--just a couple of fellows who happen to be Senators. In fact, legally and technically, Taft is the only candidate. The other guy's name isn't even on the ballot."

Taylor speculated that Eisenhower will withdraw from the race within a month. "After all, what would the American people think of him if he were to quit his job in Europe to come back and play politics? He's needed where he is. Why, if he quit the army to run, MacArthur would tear him to pieces. After all, Eisenhower's entire rise was under the Roosevelt and Truman administrations; it's a matter of public record that he only got the job of Chief-of-Staff during the war by telling Roosevelt that he had been a Democrat all his life."

Thoroughly buttonholed, I left Mr. Taylor and Parlor B, and went into the gilt-ceilinged lobby of the Sheraton.