Editorial: Mr. Roosevelt’s convention
The Democratic National Convention opens tomorrow with all the suspense of a thrice-told thriller, and as much reality. Speakers will recite well-remembered lines, and delegates will arrive at their make-believe decisions written by an author who is not there. If some forget their cue, they will be prompted if they make faces at the stage manager or stick out their tongues at the audience, in revolt or boredom, that will not matter much – the end will be the same.
Mr. Roosevelt in effect has even accepted the nomination in advance. A bit hard, perhaps, on the dignity of delegates trying to give reality to the show, but effective withal. There is no other possible candidate – for 10 years he has killed off politically every potential successor as rapidly as one arose.
He has also written most of his own platform. So, the delegates will not have to bother with policy decisions. It is said to be a well-polished document, first outlined by his chief scribe, Judge Rosenman, and then rewritten by Mr. Roosevelt himself. Maybe room has been left here and there for lesser men to fill in the chinks, and a little argument may arise over that humble labor, but the completed product will have the symmetry which only a single architect can achieve. Compromises, to be sure, but his own.
Doubtless that is only fair to the candidate. For he has decided it is better politics for him to make few campaign speeches, thus denying to himself the customary candidate’s privilege of recasting the party’s platform as he goes along.
Anyway, the Democratic platform is singularly unimportant this year. Mr. Roosevelt’s record, for better or for worse, is the actual platform. His promises won’t count. The most naïve voter will not suppose that this candidate can provide more wisdom or efficiency, if returned to the White House, than he has already shown while in office. Being a fourth-term aspirant thus has its disadvantages. Whatever the platform verbiage or the nominee’s maneuvers, his candidacy perforce boils down to a four-word appeal: “More of the same.”
Whether that appeal will elect Mr. Roosevelt again depends less on him and his party than on Mr. Dewey and the Republicans. “More of the same” is not good enough for many independent voters – how many, will be determined chiefly by Mr. Dewey ability to convince the dissatisfied voters that a younger and freer administration would be more progressive and efficient than the same old bureaucracy under the same one-man rule.
Because that would-be indispensable man is not as young or as vigorous as he once was, which increases the possibility that he would not finish his fourth term if elected, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee must be picked consciously as a potential President. Hence the unusual public and party concern over the second man on the ticket, who may become first. Mr. Roosevelt, nothing loath, is taking care of that too. He gave Mr. Wallace a perfunctory pat on the back, but then said he was leaving the choice open to the delegates.
However, no running mate can be chosen without his approval. In 1940, he forced the unpopular Mr. Wallace on the unwilling convention. But his aides – who have to make the delegates take it and like it – are begging him to be more considerate of the convention’s pride this time. Apparently, he has agreed. But if he refrains from dictating his choice openly, he will OK the man in secret – hands-off gestures in public notwithstanding.
Even in the best-bossed convention – and there has never been one like this -* there is always a chance of minor revolt and a few delegates breaking away. Texas now threatens to do just that. But this would not upset the convention’s preordained decisions. For the Southern politicians as a whole have one thing at least in common with the other delegates, including the New Deal office-holders and the Kelly-Flynn-Hague machines: They must accept Roosevelt dictation or else.
Such is this command performance for the candidate who says: “I would accept and serve, but I would nor run in the usual partisan, political sense. But if the people command me…” Certainly there is nothing “usual” about this performance. Neither is that the kind of “command” Mr. Roosevelt says he craves from the American people.
