Editorial: Dewey gets tough
Well, now we are getting into the sort of political campaign to which we have been accustomed every four years.
For a time, it was almost too polite to be true. The terrible reality of war had laid restraint over the quadrennial electioneering. Mr. Roosevelt said he would “not, campaign in the usual sense” – he did “not consider it fitting.” And Mr. Dewey was sedately stumping the country, tolling off the issues in a dignified tone and manner.
Then came Saturday night. “The Champ” stepped into the arena, before a banquet of the teamsters’ union. A born crowd-pleaser, he couldn’t resist the temptation to use the kind of language he did. “Fraud,” “falsehood,” “isolationists,” “labor baiters,” “monopolists,” with liberal reference to Mein Kampf and Goebbels. Brickbats such as “the Champ” had not felt compelled to use in polishing off Messrs. Hoover, Landon and Willkie. It was a gay and hilarious evening of name-calling and wisecracking.
So last night, in Oklahoma City, Mr. Dewey picked up the brickbats and hurled them back.
He read the record to sustain charges which the President had said were “false,” “fantastic” and “fraudulent.”
The man who had suggested that after the war we could “keep people in the Army about as cheaply as we could create an agency” for jobless men when they are out, Mr. Dewey recalled, was “the national director of Selective Service, appointed by Mr. Roosevelt and still in office.”
The men who had said we were unprepared when war came were generals, and such administration Senators as Messrs. Barkley and Truman.
Where had Mr. Dewey picked up that strange idea that Mr. Roosevelt had prolonged the depression? From the record which showed after seven years of Roosevelt rule 10 million still unemployed – figures supplied by the American Federation of Labor.
And the suggestion that Mr. Roosevelt considered himself “indispensable” – where did that “malicious falsehood” come from? And again Mr. Dewey quoted, from Senator Truman and Boss Kelly – men certainly not repudiated by the President.
“The man who wants to be President for 16 years,” said Mr. Dewey, “is indeed indispensable, He is indispensable to Harry Hopkins, to Madam Perkins, to Harold Ickes, to a host of other political jobholders. He is indispensable to America’s leading enemy of civil liberties – the Mayor of Jersey City. He is indispensable to those infamous machines, in Chicago – in the Bronx – and all the others. He is indispensable to Sidney Hillman and the Political Action Committee, to Earl Browder, the ex-convict and pardoned Communist leader. Shall we, the American people, perpetuate one man in office 16 years to accommodate this motley crew?”
Mr. Dewey, the prosecuting attorney, speaking.
The case is now getting ready for the jury.