The Daily Express

Barkley
Statement Seen
As Bid For Re-Election
By EVAN HOSKINS
HOLLYWOOD, Oct. 9 (INS)-- Vice president Barkley declared last night that "we will stand on our record next year" and those who heard him interpreted it to mean that he and president Truman would seek re-election in 1952.
Barkley's statement came just after he said "no president and vice president have ever worked more closely together than Harry S. Truman and I," convincing his listeners that he was talking about himself and the president rather than about democrats in general in the approaching campaign.
The vice president told of his future plans in extemporaneous remarks after he had concluded the prepared text of an address delivered before 1,800 persons at a $100-a-plate western states democratic dinner.
After asserting that "we will stand on our record," he added:
"We won't go snooping through back alleys and garbage cans for our campaign material.
"We ask the people for another lease of power to preserve democracy."
If, as believed, the vice president has fired the opening gun in a campaign for the re-election of the Truman-Barkley ticket, he has given political circles an answer that President Truman has refused to give in Washington.
The president has persistently declined to indicate whether he would again seek the presidency.
Barkley, 73 years old, was elected to the vice presidency three and a half years ago when the electorate voted Truman into his first full term as president.
In his prepared address, Barkley praised President Truman as having "met more difficult decisions than any other man in the history of the nation in the same period of time."
Touching on the Russian threat, he said that the United States must lead the world in smashing the "alien brutality" of Communism.
The dinner was attended by a good turnout of party brass, national as well as state.
However, democratic national chairman William N. Boyle, Jr., who was to have presided but who is under fire in Washington, was not present.
Executive vice chairman George J. Leary said that Boyle had to stay in Washington to confer with the president on important congressional problems.