Word: deverism
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Died. Paul Andrew Dever, 55, two-term Governor of Massachusetts (1949-53), who keynoted the 1952 Democratic convention, orated on and on against Republican "dinosaurs of political thought" while his suit became swampy with perspiration and his voice faded away to sandpaper hoarseness; of a heart attack; in Cambridge, Mass. Sometimes known as the man of "girth and grins," the roly-politician was one of the canniest who ever sat on Beacon Hill, built up a formidable personal machine that almost withstood the Eisenhower landslide of 1952, when Republican Christian Herter won the Massachusetts governorship...
...among them, California's Richard Nixon) on a trip to Europe in 1947, helped clear the way for congressional approval of the Marshall Plan. An early Eisenhower backer, Herter seemed strangely irked when, in 1952, Massachusetts Republicans urged him to run for governor against Democratic Incumbent Paul Dever. Said he: "You're just trying to get me out of Washington." Reason for his discomfiture: he was confident that Ike would be the next President-and he thought he had a good chance to become Under Secretary of State...
Admittedly, the temptations to play this state's peculiar political games are strong, but the test of a candidate's value comes in how well he emerges from the pork-barrel pulls. Furcolo, identified with patronage of former Governor Paul Dever, is clearly not the intellectual equal of Christian Herter or John F. Kennedy. But on the basis of his superiority over his Republican opponent--Furcolo draws our qualified endorsement for the Governorship...
Whittier's ambitions for the governorship have been publicized since 1950, when Dever won his second term. An excellent orator and clever platform speaker, he became the Republicans' chief critic of the Dever Administration, attacking the Governor from the floor of the State Senate and in every possible headline for inefficiency and corruption. Dever once became so incensed with the young senator that he barred him from the Governor's office...
...House and through every sizeable Massachusetts city and town. His unsuccessful 1954 opponant for re-election, James A. Burke of Hyde Park, charged then that Whittier was the "most expensive Lieutenant Governor the state has ever had. He has turned the office into a publicity mill," Burke said. And Dever, biting back at Whittier before a recent Truman testimonial dinner, said, "You have your Nixon on the national scale. We have our Whittier in Massachusetts. They are counterparts...