Editorial: Dewey speaks out
Whether Governor Dewey will or will not be a presidential candidate, his Lincoln Day address stated the issue of the coming campaign.
That is restoration of the spirit of constitutional government, which preserves separation of powers of the coordinate branches of the federal government and reserves the function of the states.
We cannot return to horse-and-buggy administration in an air age. But not even the most efficient and honest national administration could solve our problems without virile local government and self-reliant citizens. Rule from the top is not representative government. There is either democracy at the bottom, or there is no democracy.
The dangerous trend of the past 11 years has been the near-abdication of the states, and the willingness of the people to look to Washington instead of to themselves for solutions. The great promise of the future is that Americans are now turning away from that reliance upon an all-powerful Washington run by one man.
But there still are some who think return to more representative government should be postponed until after the war, and until after the peace is made. Governor Dewey answered that argument. He showed how the recent strengthening of state government in New York and elsewhere has advanced the war effort and prepared for the post-war period.
In the field of foreign affairs, a return to balanced representative government is essential. Even if President Roosevelt were the sole source of wisdom and leadership – and he is hardly that, or he would not have left leadership for post-war international cooperation to the Republican Mackinac conference – there could be no effective American foreign policy without Congressional participation and ratification.
Mr. Roosevelt has not been able to provide that cooperation with Congress. Americans are aware of the cost of that failure. As Mr. Dewey put it:
They know that with a self-willed executive who wars at every turn with Congress, they will have a repetition of the same catastrophe which happened in 1919.