Roosevelt’s pleas to voting masses arouse Congress
President adept at blaming Senate and House for failure of his programs; ‘clever strategy’ deplored
By Thomas L. Stokes, Scripps-Howard staff writer
Washington – (Feb. 26)
The noisy fanfare over the personal clash between President Roosevelt and Senate Democratic Leader Alben Barkley, all done with Klieg-light dramatics, has submerged the underlying political strategy which has governed Mr. Roosevelt.
The tax bill veto, with its accompanying sharp message which provoked Senator Barkley’s act, was only one phase.
A definite pattern emerges from a series of events beginning with the President’s message to Congress in January which all add up to strengthening him with the mass of voters who have contributed the chief support in the three previous triumphs.
It also represents a shift of presidential attention from the foreign field which has hitherto engrossed him to the somewhat-neglected field of domestic affairs upon which Republicans have concentrated.
Roosevelt’s groundwork
Mr. Roosevelt laid the ground for his attack in his annual message by calling upon Congress for certain specific measures, among them, a national service act, a simple federal ballot for soldier voting, continuation of subsidies to keep down the price of food, an adequate tax bill to raise $10 billion
His apparent idea was to make the record for himself and, when Congress failed to come through, to call that to the attention of the people repeatedly, blaming Congress, and thus setting himself up against Congress with the people.
Already he has been able to exploit some of the issues. Undoubtedly, they will bob up later, even into the campaign.
Could accuse Congress
If prices should go up, if inflation should set in, of there should be strikes and manpower troubles – then he can point back to his program and charge Congress with responsibility.
It’s not all as simple as that but a President has a sounding board not enjoyed to the same degree by Congress, and he can simplify issues, because he speaks with a single voice while Congress often resembles a meaningless babble.
Mr. Roosevelt seemingly has lost some labor support. Also, Republicans are trying to lure back the Negro vote, a decisive factor in big Eastern and Midwestern states.
Called a ‘fraud’
The President made capital with both pf these groups, as well as with families of soldiers by calling the state ballot bill passed originally by Congress, with Republican and Southern Democratic support, a “fraud.” It would disenfranchise Negro soldiers in many Southern states.
He appealed to consumers generally, to labor and white-collar workers, in his veto of the bill which would ban food subsidies, calling the bill “an inflation measure, a higher-cost-of-living measure, a food-shortage measure.”
And, in that tax bill, he pleased labor with his veto because of the provision requiring labor unions to report to the Internal Revenue Bureau the source of their income, though he omitted any mention of this provision in his veto message. His praise describing the bill as “a relief bill providing not for the needy but for the greedy” was also designed for mass consumption.
Tactics deplored
His decision becomes clear.
It is clear, too, to members of Congress, clear and offensive, even to some who have followed his program through the years. They now deplore his tactics because of the critical period and the need for unity. One such expressed himself thus:
It’s very clever strategy. He gets the country to the point where it thinks every member of Congress comes in every morning, weighs his mail to see how he will vote that day, gets a free shave, a free whisky sour–
He threw up his hands.
But is that the kind of strategy to employ when the country is in a war and needs unity, and is that the kind of strategy that’s going to be helpful after the war in getting measures of international cooperation through the Senate, and in getting post-war domestic measures approved by Congress?
I don’t think so, and lots of others don’t think so.