Stokes: Truman selection marks swing of pendulum from left wing New Dealism to conservatism
City bosses aligned with South does it
By Thomas L. Stokes, Scripps-Howard staff writer
Chicago, Illinois –
The swing of the Democratic Party pendulum away from blue-ribbon New Dealism was certified publicly today with the dropping Henry A. Wallace and the substitution of Senator Harry S. Truman as the candidate for Vice President.
How far this will go – whether eventually it will mean the capture of the party by the conservatives – depends on events.
The conservatives won a substantial victory in the convention, and both sides know it. This does not inhere in the person of Senator Truman, who cannot be catalogued with the conservatives, but in the fact that the conservatives rallied about him successfully to beat Vice President Wallace.
In 1932, Garner
What has happened to the party can best be illustrated by the history of President Roosevelt’s running mates.
In 1932, he accepted John N. Garner of Texas, then Speaker of the House, in order to get the block of Texas and California votes that sealed his own nomination. Mr. Garner and the Southern conservatives who looked to him as leader went along with the early New Deal program of correcting financial abuses and of helping small farmers and businessmen by not-too-harsh reforms.
Everything being fairly serene, in 1936, President Roosevelt took along Mr. Garner for another ride.
Garner and backers balk
In the second administration, the southerners began to get restive when the reforms went deeper and threatened the preserves of the industrial and financial overlords in the South through government regulation of private power companies, through the Wage-and-Hour Act, and through the encouragement of labor unions in a section hitherto almost free of them.
Mr. Garner balked. He and the Southern conservatives formed a coalition with Republicans that began to be successful occasionally in Congress against the President. Mr. Garner got ideas of his own. He decided to run for President. Mr. Roosevelt dumped him.
In 1940, Wallace
The President had no intention or going back. Instead, he went forward and made the party completely New Deal by literally ramming Henry Wallace down the throats of the 1940 convention. Conservatives became really alarmed with the rising power of labor and its political organization into the CIO Political Action Committee, and the Southerners also by New Deal agitation for greater economic and civil freedom for Negroes, with all of which Mr. Wallace became identified.
This grew into a veritable storm, before which Mr. Roosevelt finally yielded in a series of compromises that came to their climax last night with the official abandoning of Henry Wallace. However, the decision to drop the Vice President – if possible. without too much injury to his left-wing support – was made months ago.
City and South alliance
It is significant that the defeat of Mr. Wallace was achieved by the combination that was the nucleus of the old Democratic Party before the New Deal came along, that strange alliance of the South and the big-city bosses. Ed Kelly of Chicago, Frank Hague of Jersey City and Ed Flynn of the Bronx were in on this game here from the start. And when the proper time came, the Southerners put the knife to Mr. Wallace and twisted it, as was manifest in that hectic convention hall drama last night when the Southern delegations began to switch from favorite sons to Senator Truman.
The rebirth of this alliance is an important event. The big-city machines, which have been following along with the New Deal – for their good health, to be true – seem to be returning to their conservative base.
CIO has Roosevelt
For the immediate campaign, the Roosevelt-Truman ticket will meet the necessities of a straddle to include the wild horses on the right and left. The CIO has Mr. Roosevelt at the top of the ticket, and nowhere else to go.
The Wallace ouster has mollified the south and conservatives elsewhere. Likewise satisfying to conservatives is the inclusion of a representative of Congress who gets along well with both wings of the part at the Capitol, and which will help to meet the Republican criticism of one-man government by presenting the picture of a balance between the President and Congress.