Taylor: ‘Referee’ Roosevelt ‘takes it on lam’ not one day too soon
President avoids making decision in factional fight over Vice President
By Henry J. Taylor, Scripps-Howard staff writer
Chicago, Illinois –
When President Roosevelt went “away from Washington for the next few days” he left in the nick of time.
Men to whom Mr. Roosevelt is politically beholden are demanding that he settle the fights here, and there is no way he could do it.
For after 11 years the party now operates only on the presidential nod and without it, deliberations wallow in guesswork and confusion. Yet Mr. Roosevelt’s nod to one leader is a black eye to another. And Mr. Roosevelt now has to keep from distributing black eyes.
For example, Vice President Wallace is crunched in a crusher between four party stalwarts. Senator Joseph F. Guffey (D-PA) and Sidney Hillman of the CIO Political Action Committee prop him up while Mayor Frank Hague of Jersey City and Mayor Ed Kelly of Chicago knock him down.
Mr. Roosevelt does not owe much to Mr. Wallace, but he owes a great deal to all four of these men. And none of them is bashful in requiring Mr. Roosevelt’s support in exchange for 11-year favors they have done.
Truman slips off path
Guffey and Hillman say that dropping Wallace would cost Mr. Roosevelt Pennsylvania and “liberal votes throughout the country.” Mayors Hague and Kelly contend that keeping Mr. Wallace would lose New Jersey, New York and Illinois.
Mr. Wallace as a personality disappears in all this and Mr. Roosevelt’s problem becomes how to meet his own political debts to either two of the four without defaulting on the others.
Meanwhile, National Chairman Robert E. Hannegan, committed to Senator Truman, his political godfather in their home state of Missouri, is entitled to his own demands.
In theory, the national chairman is neutral in any race within the party, but Hannegan’s foot slipped off the beaten path in Chicago. By going overboard for Senator Truman, he now needs Mr. Roosevelt’s blessing for Truman or he bogs himself down as manager of Mr. Roosevelt’s campaign through the early liquidation of his party prestige.
South on protest limb
The result: Samuel Rosenman of the White House inner-circle, on arrival here is reported by Hannegan’s friends as stating that Truman would be acceptable to Mr. Roosevelt, which means Mr. Roosevelt would have to appease the CIO.
Next, Mississippi, Virginia and other Southern leaders went out on the end of a protest limb by caucusing for Senator Harry F. Byrd for President, hoping lightning might strike Mr. Byrd for second place.
Byrd is approximately the last Democrat that Mr. Roosevelt might wish to endorse, and yet he is committed to appeasing these conservative Southern elements.
Accordingly, Senator Alben W. Barkley and Speaker Sam Rayburn step in to fill the vacuum. Senator Barkley is to nominate Mr. Roosevelt, but beyond that there is not a cheer in the House.
Associate Justice William O. Douglas, second choice of the Guffey-Hillman-CIO group, is a prime favorite of Roosevelt. He really speaks the President’s language. His top sergeant here is Thomas G. “Tommy the Cork” Corcoran, who is still bobbing around in White House waters and serves as advance agent for both Mr. Roosevelt and Justice Felix Frankfurter. Nobody here owes Douglas, Corcoran or Frankfurter anything, but Douglas’ tie-in with the President puts him in the swim.
Easiest to slip in
Similarly, along comes James F. Byrnes, reportedly the President’s choice from the beginning. His present place as “assistant president” makes him, next to Wallace, the easiest to rationalized into the “don’t change horses” theme.
Yet age, the unhappy impact of Byrnes poll-tax record on the sentiments of Negroes in the North and some impressions here in Chicago that Byrnes is short-circuiting other leaders’ candidates are backfiring on Mr. Roosevelt for making Byrnes his “secret” choice – if that is what he did before he went “away from Washington for the next few days.”
The South Carolinian has begun actively campaigning for the Vice Presidency, working down from the top levels. He has a choice layout on the 17th floor of the Stevens, unlisted and well-guarded. He uses the freight elevator to escape the lobby, and then duplicates this performance to reach a similar setup which he maintains as sleeping quarters at the Blackstone across the street. He calls in leaders, chiefly the big four – Guffey, Hillman, Hague and Kelly, along with Hannegan and Ed Flynn. But Byrnes is reported losing ground.
This whole meeting is not sitting well with many of the ballot-box chieftains who have to get out the vote, especially not well with Guffey, Hillman, Hague and Kelly, who are the real sparkplugs of the show and the true pillars of power in the party.