State of the Union

Gin.

Gin!

Gin.

Here's the doc.

What's the verdict, Doc?

Can't last another 24 hours.

Any chance of us making the early edition? He'd want to.

What about some pictures, last-moment stuff?

No.

Good afternoon, Miss Thorndyke. Your father...

I heard your verdict, Dr. Crane.

That's the daughter. She's tougher than the old man.

Get out. But, Mr. Thorndyke, I...

Out! Out, I say. Stupid nurses, doctors.

Oh.

How are you feeling, Sam?

Oh, this blasted thing's eating my guts away.

Did you see that editorial in the Albany paper?

That fella won't take orders. Fire him.

I did.

That's my girl.

The White House called to ask about you.

He should call.

If those Republicans hadn't knifed me,

he wouldn't be in the White House.

I'd be dying there.

Well, well, well. What else?

Longstreet called.

Longstreet? That buzzard.

Made me an offer for the papers.

Willing to keep my name on the masthead, he says.

I'll keep it there, Sam. You don't need Longstreet or anyone else.

Kay, I used to hate you for being a girl.

I always wanted a son like me.

But you're bigger than any son.

A woman's body with a man's brains.

My brains. Use them.

You'll make the White House, Kay, one way or another.

The Republican Party owe us that. Don't forget it.

I won't forget it.

That's my girl.

Men are weak,

vain, idealistic.

Can't stand pain.

Can't stand pain any longer...

Sam. Women are the only realists.

Until they get sentimental. Don't you ever get sentimental, Kay.

I never have. Yeah.

Er...

Goodbye, girl.

I guess I'll call it a day.

You're the chief from herein.

I'm gonna miss you, Sam. Yeah, yeah.

You'll be all right. You'll be all right.

Make those heads roll.

Make those heads roll.

Don't go in there. But, Miss...

Oh, good heavens! Oh, Doctor!

Doctor!

Call the police!

Congratulations. Congratulations.

Fifty-one. Oh, Doctor.

Lose your stomach, Mr. MacManus?

Mr. Hawkins' office, please. First door to your right.

Thank you.

Hi, Scylla. Hi, Charybdis.

Well, if it isn't the poor man's Drew Pearson.

Hey, new talent.

You better go in before we have a new columnist.

Wait a minute. Who's in there with the lion-tamer?

Team secret. Came in through the fire escape.

Tailored? Mmm-hmm.

Tailored politician? Hmm.

Tailored Republican politician? What else?

Tailored worried Republican politician?

All politicians are worried today.

Jim Conover. Announce me.

Spike MacManus. Send him in.

If I had your number, I'd call you and tell you

who's gonna be the next President of the United States.

I know. Truman.

You want the walls to cave in around here? I'll see you later.

Hello, boss. Hello, Jim, what's cooking?

You'll be. If one word of my being here gets out.

Hey, boss, the freedom of the press.

If you must grace your column with my name, it's Conover.

C-O-N-O-V-E-R.

You've spelt it "Canover", "Can opener", everything but Conover.

Don't squawk, I haven't spelt it "Conniver" yet.

Let's skip the jokes.

Jim, you know the Republican Convention this year can end in a deadlock.

I don't know anything.

My uncle with the two heads does. Spike.

He tells me they're following the usual Republican policy:

The Tafts, Deweys, Stassens, and Vandenbergs

may knock each other out of the running even before the Convention.

Thus providing a perfect track for a dark horse.

Which leaves you, Mr. Conover,

a fight manager looking for a good heavyweight who can punch.

Jim, I think I have your man.

Yeah, you and everybody else.

This is Kay Thorndyke, not everybody else.

I'm sorry, Kay, it's just that you have to show me. I'm from Missouri.

Ha!

If you were from Missouri, you'd have a job in Washington.

Lay off, Spike.

All right, let's have it, Kay. Who's your man?

ltem one: born in Nevada.

But there's never been a western president.

There are Americans out there, too.

Item two: self-made, sold newspapers, worked his way through school.

Item three: good war record. Partisaned Lafayette Escadrille WWI,

decorated by three governments. Ancient history.

Item four: started the two-by-four airplane factory

and ran it into the biggest thing in aviation today.

Look at me when I'm talking to you.

First industrialist to introduce labor-management plant administration.

He's never even been threatened with a strike.

He'd have labor in one pocket, big business in the other. Are you interested?

No. What's Horatio Alger look like?

Women have been crazy about him all his life, if that's what you mean.

Well, that lets me out.

And men?

Part owner of a ball club.

Ever run for office?

Not even for dog catcher.

Hates politics.

Then what's given him this presidential yen?

Oh, he hasn't got it yet.

You're going to give him that.

On the newsstands tomorrow.

"Our planes have wings but not our ideas."

You could make him the next president, Jim.

Kay, I'm not terribly impressed. I never am by amateurs.

But if you and Grant Matthews happen to be in Washington,

and knock on my door to get out of the rain...

But I have been trying to make this clear all afternoon.

I don't want to be President of the United States.

Guess the job isn't big enough for him, boss.

President. Holy smoke.

Why, when I was a kid, my dad took me on a two-day trip

just to look at President Taft.

On a clear day you could see him for a couple of hundred miles.

Yeah, you sure could.

After he passed, my father slapped me right across the face.

When I asked him what that was for, he said,

"Just so you'll never forget the day you saw the President of the United States."

Well, Mr. Conover, I've listened to some pretty tall reasons around here

why I could run for president.

Self-made man, friend of labor, dark horse and all that stuff.

All very flattering, I might add.

But, could I ask you, a professional politician, to give me one good reason

why me, Grant Matthews, should run for the biggest and the best job in the world

when there are 10,000 other men... Wait a minute.

Let's understand each other. I'm not telling you you should be President.

I was under the impression that Kay Thorndyke brought you down here

to sell me on the idea, not for me to sell you.

Now let's not get childish, nobody's trying to sell anybody anything.

Kay, the man doesn't want the job, and hundreds of others do.

We're wasting our time. That's right, Kay.

He's right. We're wasting his time.

I'm not interested in politics or politicians.

And I don't like airplanes.

That makes us even.

Although I could get to like you, Mr. Conover.

Mr. Matthews, it's no skin off my nose, but just for my private files,

you made a speech in Cleveland that hit the front pages all over the country.

Even the New York Times with that stuff about,

"Either we pull together or get pulled apart."

Every Republican leader wishes he'd made it.

So? I'm trying to get it through my lame brain,

if you have no interest in politics, why did you make that speech?

Oh, now, wait a minute. I can be interested in the country

without being interested in politics.

That'll surprise Jim Conover.

I don't care who it surprises.

Don't get the idea that I'm not interested in what's going on.

I like this country, Mr. Conover.

It's been darn good to me.

I started with a screwdriver and a monkey wrench

and two years of high school, and built the Matthews Aircraft.

Did you ever fly an airplane? Oh, no, you don't like airplanes, do you?

You better not elect me President then, because I'd make it a law

for every politician to spend at least 100 hours in the air.

This year, most of us are up in the air all the time.

Well, the next time you're up there, Mr. Conover, look down.

Look down on Pittsburgh, for example, what do you see?

Smoke. That's right, smoke. From the steel mills.

Miles and miles of steel mills.

But you see something else, too, don't you?

Farms, factories, lumber, mines, railroads, business, management, labor.

Not one able to exist alone, but together, working together

with courage and imagination. That makes America.

That's a great picture from the air.

Yeah, but come down to earth and walk into one of those meetings

like that one in Cleveland, and what do you find?

Farmers, cattlemen, lumbermen, business, labor, they were all there.

All working together? In a pig's eye.

All scared to death, all fighting each other.

Each out for the biggest bite in the apple.