Landon: A Duty and a Hope

October 15, 1936

THE CRIMSON...advocates the election of Governor Landon and a shifting of the government into a course more suited to the ideals and economic needs of the American people....

The trend of progressivism, far from being an invention of the New Deal, was merely brought further by Roosevelt after a start under the Hoover administration....Governor Landon has given no indication that he desires to abandon the reconstructive measures of Roosevelt. His views on social security, farm aid, conservation of resources, and relief all bear the stamp of a man devoted to the needs of the people. His lieutenants are singularly suited to carry forth a progressive program; they would well merit the name "brain trust," were that name not in such ill repute. And who would not prefer William Allen White and Charles Taft to [Rexford] Tugwell?

The issue is not one of reaction against revolution. Landon is as little Bourbon as Roosevelt is Marxist. The choice is rather between an orderly correction of current abuses in the capitalist system, carried out after mature study and in line with constitutional procedure, and a hit-and-run revision of all existing institutions, carried out by the impulses of one man coupled with the endless grasping of pressure groups of every kind...