The Evening Star MONDAY, OCTOBER 5, 1936. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES.

Evening Star, Issue 22461, 5 October 1936, Page 8

The Evening Star MONDAY, OCTOBER 5, 1936. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES.

This month will see horse, foot, and artillery brought into action in the American Presidential campaign. Since the selection by their respective parties of Mr Franklin Roosevelt and Governor Landon, of Kansas, as their nominees, the time has been spent in the preparation of plans and the assembling of the party machinery for the conduct of this great contest. A few months ago it was considered certain that President Roosevelt would be elected for a second term. Mow his supporters are not so sure. His opponent apparently has been making considerable ground. Governor Landon has been described as a very pleasing man, of modest and unassuming approach. He is of mixed English and Scottish descent, with a broad streak of Pennsylvania “ Dutch ” thrown in—which moans German. Kansas is a great oil Held. After taking a law degree and working in a bank, the Republican candidate followed his father into the oil business. He has been strong enough to resist the pressure of the big oil companies, and has maintained his independence. This is the

man who has been entrusted with the task of carrying the banner of the party which desires to prevent the election for a second term of President Roosevelt. He was not favoured by the high priests of Republicanism, and at the time of the party convention to select a candidate there was an influential “Stop Landon ” movement, which, however, failed. One writer says: “He represents level-headed, reasonable, middle-class America just as accurately as Mr Stanley Baldwin has seemed at times to represent the typical Briton.” One feature of American elections is the “ straw poll.’’ Several of these tests have been in progress for some time. For about a year an organisation called the American Institute of Public Opinion has been mailing out ballot papers inviting people’s views on every sort of subject. Immediately after Governor Landon was nominated the institute distributed 105,000 papers, carefully spread all over the United States and in every walk of life. This showed a nation-wide swing away from President Roosevelt. In the Middle West, the real battleground in this campaign, there was a general decline in the pro-Roosevelt sentiment, but not necessarily enough to indicate a victory for Governor Landon. A cablegram from New York reports that the results of the straw votes differ, some indicating President Roosevelt’s re-election. On the other hand, it is significant that the ‘ Literary Digest’s ’ poll gives a big majority for the Republican candidate. This ballot is not complete, but it reveals at any rate that Mr Roosevelt has a stern fight ahead of him. It has been pointed out that the ‘ Digest ’ has never yet failed to pick the winner in a Presidential election, and it has been amazingly accurate in many lesser elections. In the matter of policy no marked difference appears to exist between the two parties. Governor Landon declares that practical progressives have suffered the disheartening experience of seeing many liberal objectives discredited during the past three years by careless thinking, unworkable laws, and incompeteut administration. He contends that the nation has not made the durable progress, either in reform or recovery, that the nation had a right to expect. In President Roosevelt’s case the Supreme Court upset much of his New Deal legislation. The suggestion appears to be that he will quietly accept the ruling of that body, and not attempt any serious changes, as had been predicted, in its constitution. It is all a matter of expediency. By adopting this course, which will be called a retreat by his opponents, he will incur the bitter hostility of Mr “ Al ” Smith and of Father Coughlin, Townsend supporters, and other vociferous demagogues. It is hoped by his party that President Roosevelt’s campaigning genius, his oratory, his political resourcefulness, and the enormous Federal and local machines he has in his control will be sufficient to triumph over the forces arrayed against him, which will comprise the Republicans and numerous dissatisfied sections inthe United States.