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University Daily Kansan Tuesday. Nov. 29. 1955.
Presidential Hopefuls
Nixon Presents Political Puzzle
One of the Republicans' biggest problems in the coming convention is going to be what to do with Vice President Richard M. Nixon, that is if President Eisenhower decides not to run for re-election.
(This the eighth in a series on 1956 presidential candidate possibilities).
By LARRY HEIL
He was co-author of the Mundt-Nixon bill to require communist front organizations to register and label their propaganda as communist and to refuse passports and the right to hold federal non-elective offices to communists.
And no one knows just why. It is impossible to tag him as a right or left winger, or even a middle-of-the-roader. His policies seem to swing from one extreme to the other, always within the bounds of Republicanism.
He voted for a restoration of economic cuts in the mutual security program in 1951, and against a defense production act to suspend all price and wage controls in 1952. In both of these cases, he was voting against Kansas Republican senators.
At the first of President Eisenhower's illness, the vice president was mentioned as a strong possibility for the nomination, mainly because it was felt that he was the President's first choice. Now, opinion seems to be that if the President doesn't run again, his first choice will be Chief Justice Warren.
He voted with the conservatives on sending troops to Europe but with the liberals on price controls, federal funds, school construction, and regulation of trusts. He has been identified both with vested interests and isolationism and with Democratic foreign policy.
But he opposed the action of John S. Woods, chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee in asking 71 colleges and 48 state education boards to submit textbooks for examination for communist ideas. He stated that the committee shouldn't interfere with academic freedom.
This would leave Mr. Nixon, no one knows just where. It doesn't seem likely that he will run again for vice president. No major party leaders are supporting him for the presidential nomination, yet he seems to be popular with a large number of voters.
His critics say this proves he has no convictions, but blows with the political winds. His supporters say his switch from left to right on different issues shows that he has strong personal convictions, too strong to be controlled by any set political doctrine.
Whether he is an idealist or an opportunist, he has sky-rocketed politically in the past nine years. Virtually unknown when he got out of the Navy at the end of World War II, he was elected to congress from California and served for two terms. He then moved up to the Senate and served there for two years before becoming the country's youngest vice president in 1952 at the age of 39.
He has the political dopsters puzzled, but they agree on one thing—he's a man to watch in the 1956 convention.
..Short Ones..
The Grand Rapids Press quoted an old grad as saying at the annual football dinner, "Coach, we appreciate the spirit of gentlemanly conduct you have instilled in your players and your conviction not to put victory ahead of ethics—and good luck coach, wherever you go."
Miss Martha Peterson, dean of women, was quoted in the Kansan yesterday as saying lack of supervision was a frequently heard criticism of freshman dorms. Goodness, who accused them of that? Ever try to get a freshman woman in ten minutes after closing?
Four gunmen recently robbed a Chicago bank while shouting "Trick or Treat." The Kansas City Star asserts that if men can't be serious about their jobs, they should get into some other line of work.
Why is it that the student who can't get up the hill without a car can walk 10 miles in freezing weather when he's out after quail?
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
"IVE WAITED FIVE YEARS FOR SOMEONE TO ASK ME THAT QUESTION."
Book Review
O'Hara's Novel Called Craftful, Insignificant
TEN NORTH FREDERICK, John O'Hara, New York: Random House. 1955. 408 pages.
The Critics Club and assorted friends of John O'Hara went all out last week in their hosannas to "Ten North Frederick," which continues the epic of Gibbsville, Pa., that O'Hara started in "Appointment to Samarra" and continued lucratively in "A Rage to Live."
It recalls five years ago when Mr. OHara issued his laivish praise to Ernest Hemingway's "Across the River and into the Trees." He was about the only critic who had a good word for the Hemingway novel. Several had a good word for "Ten North Frederick." The only one so far to put the book in its proper perspective is Time magazine.
"Ten North Frederick" is being hailed for Mr. O'Hara's perceptiveness, his understanding of character, his minute, objective, detailed description of a community, and its people. Certainly he deserves to be recognized for that perception. But see the people he writes of in so realistic a way worth writing about?
The hero is Joseph Benjamin Chapin, Gibbsville, Pa., lawyer. The novel begins on the day of Joe's funeral, in 1945, and then ranges back and forth, in effective fashion, telling of Joe's life from his birth in 1882 until his death.
In particular, it tells of his amours, and of those of almost everyone else in the novel. And Mr. O'Hara is a leading literary exponent of the findings of Dr. Kinsey, for all of the Gibbsville people, with the exception of a Catholic politician and his wife. Furthermore, O'Hara doesn't just hint that extracurricular lovemaking is going on. He describes it with such vigor that after awhile
GUYS IN THEIR CUPS SHOULD STAY OUT OF THEIR CARS
it seems as clinical as "The Sexual Side of Marriage."
There are several effective portraits in "Ten North Frederick." Joe Chapin is a man of little imagination and scope, but is pretentious enough to envision himself in the White House although he couldn't even make the Pennsylvania lieutenant governorship. And how he hated "That Man" in the White House in the 1930s and early 1940s. There is Edith Chapin, who wanted Joe so she could guide his destinies, and there are the Chapin children, rebellious Joby, the son, and Ann, the daughter, whose life was ruined when her wealthy and ambitious parents annulled her marriage to a young musician and packed her off to a fashionable, abortionist.
Many other Gibbsville residents are dissected by Mr. O'Hara, a craftsman if nothing else. But it all comes back to the point that Joe Chapin and his friends and relatives really don't matter, not to literature anyway. The book is no expose of the rich, nor is it a eulogy. It is just a story.
-Rolfe Davis
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Leo Flanagan                                                                     Editorial Editor
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Frosh Cagers Need Rivals
About this time each year, the same old question arises among many sports enthusiasts. Who are most of the Big Seven conference athlet directors indifferent toward allowing freshma basketball teams to compete with small college teams?
If ruled in by a Big Seven vote, the action would present freshmen in the league with more of an incentive and drive during their first year of basketball. After all, this would help to keep them in better spirits during a year when they might be undecided about the school—particularly from the morale point of view.
The rule would also give local fans a better chance to measure the potential and capabilities of a freshman player. And players-after-practice against one another for the first month-going to have more incentive to compete against team from another school. That's only natural.
Louis Menze, athletic director at Iowa State has fought for some time in favor of allowing freshmen to compete against Iowa junior college teams. In an athletic director's meeting in Lawrence, Kan., May 20, 1955, Menze introduced a motion to "allow five home games for the freshman basketball team" for the coming 1955-56 season. His motion was lost for want of a second—not the first time this has happened.
As far as the average freshman basketball player is concerned, the first year in the sport i a dead one. Sure, maybe he should concentrate o his studies the first year, but there is such a thin as giving him an equal "shakedown" on the sport competition side.
The real reason for assuming an indifferen attitude toward more freshman competition seem according to Menzel, that if the cagers get the "green light," then the other athletic squadswi want a freshman schedule, also. Another reason concerns the expense problem, but Menzel said that is exactly why he asked for all five games t be played at home in the college armory.
-Iowa State Daily
We would like to take exception of one of the state's more prolific newspapers—namely, the Hutchinson News-Herald.
Thirdly, who the hell else would the nation gad about if us lowly ones weren't members of the same organization as the U. of O. We talked to a tried and solid easterner last week over the long-distance wire and he says, "Who's this Chamberlain." 'Course he knew all about the U. of O., though.
They have urged, at least editorially, that u lowly members of the Big Seven conference boo Oklahoma out and onto their oily domain, ther for us lowly members to rename the Big Seve, the Big Six Conference.
Nuts, News-Herald; We Need Sooners
Secondly, them Okies have about 1,000 stoops who need basic English grammar taught to them when they enter the U. of O. So, if they can' lurn nothin' down there, they can always come up to "Harvard on the Kaw."
Fourthly, who the hell else can we git to play football in the Orange Bowl every other year? U lowly ones can only pervide a fat pig for slaughter durin' the off years.
Sixthly, don't go underestimatin' them U. of O people about this game called basketball. You ought to git down there and hear all that fervor and storm them U. of O. people are kickin' up over their trip to the Olympics come 1960, or there-abouts.
First off, that oil down there ain't gonna las forever. And just as soon as those tiny little hole, dry up, us lowly ones are going to be better of than oil-rich and happy Oklahoma.
Fifthly, how we gonna share in the profits of the Orange Bowl if we can't get the U. of O. into the bowl?
Nuts to you News-Herald.
Seventhly, I'm a damn Sooner and don't you go pushin' and shovin' around all them nice, clean-cut, young, rambunctious, oil paid U. of O. people We and they is nice folks, and we sorta appreciate the lowly ones in the Big Seven Conference so we can win a game once in awhite.
Sam L. Jones