Scouting and Heckling: It is legitimate and useful to scout the public meetings of the opposition, if you can spare the personnel. Heckling should be used with caution as it has a habit of back-firing. You may want to heckle if the opposition is using the outright lie. Scouting is simple, it requires only a person with good hearing and a good memory; successful heckling is an art.

Always use women for heckling and pick them for quick wit, the ability to speak, and sound judgment under stress-there are probably several such in your organization. She should either be young and pretty, or should look like somebody's mother and a DAR to boot. By preference she should be as small as possible, but you may not have a choice.

Let her dress in her very best and smartest clothes, then seat herself about halfway down the hall. (Front rows and back rows are associated with heckling; she should try to look like a spontaneous case.) She will keep quiet until and unless the lie she plans to nail is used from the platform. Then she will stand: "Point of order, Mr. Chairman!" "Yes? What is it, Madam? State your point." "The statement the speaker has just made is incorrect. I am shocked to hear it associated with Mr. Hopeful's campaign. I am sure that it is without his knowledge." (If Mr. Hopeful himself is the speaker,

make it, "I know that Mr. Hopeful would not sponsor any such misstatement if he knew the facts; I am sure someone must be deliberately taking advantage of him.")

Throughout the encounter your woman maintains the attitude that both the chairman and the candidate are pure and innocent and tries to avoid being asked whom she is supporting; she is just the Public-spirited Citizen, in love with the Truth.

It is to be hoped that the opposition chairman will get rattled and refuse her a hearing - in which case she rises and sweeps grandly out, and gets away from there fast her purpose is accomplished; any votes that are on the fence are by now convinced that Hopeful's crowd is up to something shady or they would have given the little lady a chance to speak. Even some of Hopeful's committee will have misgivings which will slow them down. Most people don't like lies and other dirty tricks.

Unfortunately, Hopeful's man may give her a chance to speak. She must be all sweetness and light, reserving her indignation for the lie itself and the unnamed person who planted this foul thing on poor Mr. Hopeful. She should know, as nearly as possible ofher own knowledge, the true facts and state them briefly while asserting her claim to authority in some fashion which leaves the opposition only the two gruesome alternatives of accepting her version, or of calling a sweet and gentle representative of the fair sex a liar, net." I know because I was present when it happened," or "I have seen the court records," or "I was interested in this matter and looked up the vote in the Congressional Record, down in the Public Library."

From here on she is on her own, but she can't lose if she is bright enough to justify assigning her to heckling.

You must be prepared to deal with hecklers yourself. Most of them, unlike your own trained hatchet women, will be moderately stupid, bad tempered and arrogant - and probably self-appointed. Try this routine: 'Just a moment please - will you kindly state your name and address so that the audience will know who you are?" Then interrupt before he can get unwound with, "We can't hear you very plainly. Will you kindly come forward to the platform and address the audience? We want free speech here - if you have anything new to add we certainly want everyone to hear it."

There is a good chance for the heckler to destroy himself with the crowd at this point; in any case it gives your speaker a good chance to organize his rebuttal, or - if the situation calls for it - retraction with a noble gesture, but conditioned on the tentative assumption that the heckler knows what he is talking about.

In any case your speaker makes no reply until the heckler has talked himself out and left the platform. Thank him courteously, insist that he reassure you that he is quite through (this is so you can get the crowd to back you in suppressing him halfa minute later), then swing your own forces into action.

The key to the whole matter is to let him talk, always let him talk, and pray that he will be long-winded, boring, and displeasing to the crowd. Even if he turns out to be clever and persuasive you have cut your losses as best you can.

Hecklers from the opposition, or, more likely, representatives of pressure groups, particularly Communists, can create another type of crisis, not by the direct challenge of a statement, but by getting up and demanding an answer to a question of the Have-you-left-off-beating-your-wife? variety, such as "Do you or do you not condone the railroading of six innocent men to prison in the Midriff case?" Or "Do you think that the Veterans' Administration should be permitted to turn the attempt to house veterans into a farce by sponsoring the unreasonable practices of the building group?"

Frequently the question has nothing to do with the issues of the campaign - I have seen abstruse matters of foreign affairs thus injected into city elections, state matters forced into national elections, and vice versa, and judges queried about purely administrative or legislative questions. If the speaker is not the candidate and the candidate is not present, the best answer to an embarrassing and impertinent question is, "I have never discussed the matter with Mr. Upright and therefore cannot answer for him. If you will do me the courtesy of writing out your query, with your name and address, I will make it my personal business to bring it to his attention and will see to it that a full answer is made."

If appropriate, you should then add, "The question is not appropriate to the campaign, since the office Mr. Upright has consented to let us run him for is one which cannot possibly deal with the matter you have raised. However, Mr. Upright believes that the voters should be permitted to know all about him, even the brand of his tooth paste, if you are interested. Therefore I am sure that he will take time out, busy as he is, to look into the matter you are interested in and express an opinion."

If Mr. Upright is the speaker, he must answer, in some fashion. If it is pertinent to his candidacy, he should not straddle. Even if it's as hot as a baked potato, he should answer and a forthright answer will gain respect and lose no more votes than a straddle. If it is not pertinent it is quite likely that he does not know all the details; he may ask the speaker to meet with him, making a set date from the platform, for the purpose of digging into the matter. At the private meeting he may still insist on time for research and study, since he is not bound to accept the heckler's assertions as Gospel.

I want to make a subtle but, I believe, proper distinction between dishonest fence-straddling and reasonable prudence in avoiding unnecessary and irrelevant controversy.

There are so many different ways in which men may hold honest differences of opinion that it is possible to find reasons for like-minded, dose Mends to quarrel if an effort is made to determine the issues on which they differ. This truth is the basis of much shoddy politics- the injection of the extraneous and unnecessary issue. Do you think it is decent or indecent for the women of Bali to run around naked to the waist? Whatever your opinion, will it affect the fashion in which you perform the duties of county tax collector? Is it just to ask yourself to commit yourself in public on this issue?

On the other hand the matter may be very pertinent if you are seeking an appointment to the state board of motion picture censors.

There are many issues on which people are strongly divided in opinion, not necessarily along party lines, such things as prohibition, admittance of refugees, birth control, vivisection, capital punishment, public ownership, the UN, conscription, compulsory arbitration, legalized gambling, and so forth literally without end. It makes a lot of difference in these matters whether you are running for legislator, county clerk, congress, justice of the peace, supervisor of education, sheriff, or tax assessor, whether these matters are legitimate criteria of your qualifications.