THE TWO MEN

Southland Times, Issue 20527, 2 July 1928, Page 6

THE TWO MEN

Governor Al Smith of New York having been chosen by the Democrats, the presidential contest of the United States will begin in noisy earnest. The convention at Houston, Texas, showed how nervous the party leaders are about the liquor issue. Although the Republicans have come out solidly for the Eighteenth Amendment, the Democrats could do no more than indulge in the criticism that their opponents have failed to enforce the Volstead Act. Political piety of this kind is very thin stuff and only succeeds in disclosing that the

Democrats are anxious to avoid liquor as a prime issue in the contest. Governor Smith, accepting his party’s nomination, however, touched on this question, insisting on the liberty of the States in this matter, an assertion of the policy he followed when New York repealed its laws for the enforcement of the Volstead Act. It is clear that the liquor question is to be kept in the background as much as possible, so that the election of 1928 cannot give any indication of people’s opinion of Prohibition. Confident declarations that the Volstead Act would be repealed after this contest do not now have an impressive sound. The Democrats will attack Mr Hoover through, the Republican Party scandals left by the Harding regime, the high, tariff and heavy naval expenditure and will make capital out of the Republican nominees long residence out of the United States. The argument that Mr Hoover should not be elected be-, cause once it was proposed to confer a British knighthood on him sounds rather foolish, but it will be developed in districts where the anti-British feeling is predominant. Mr Hoover can be attacked on trivialities, but these unimportant personal details can be magnified until they overshadow vital political questions. The real battle in the presidential contest is between Governor Smith, a man with a good political record and an attractive platform personality, and Mr Hoover, with a political record at least as convincing as his opponent's, but with, no platform personality at all. Governor Smith is backed by a party which, with the exception of Woodrow Wilson, has not elected a president since the Civil War, while Mr Hoover can be made to carry the sins of the Republicans who have been in office and bungled things. Governor Smith is a good speaker and he knows how to handle crowds; Mr Hoover, on the other hand, is weak to the point of collapse as a public speaker. As a mining expert he learned something of the world and in the war and since he was discovered as the man who could be depended on to act in a crisis. As an administrator he has known no failure and the Americans know that in Hoover they possess an international figure. Governor Smith in State politics has been equally successful, and he is pre-eminently a national figure. Where he speaks he will win votes, but Mr Hoover will have to risk losing them in his pergonal campaigning. The issue is peculiar, but the odds seem to be in favour of the Republicans, in spite of the odorous residue of the Harding Government, because the country seems to be entering another period of prosperity, and because the support behind Hoover will be more closely knit than that which the more attractive Smith can claim.