Election 1944: Pre-convention news

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (February 25, 1944)

Taking a rest –
President goes to ‘hideaway’

Roosevelt relaxes from press and public

With President Roosevelt’s party (UP) –
President Roosevelt was relaxing today away from Washington and in seclusion from the press and public of the country.

The apparent reason for his absence from the White House at this time was that his physician, VAdm. Ross T. McIntire, has urged the President since his winter attack of influenza to get away from Washington for a rest. There was no official explanation available here, however.

The voluntary censorship code prohibits detailed reporting of Mr. Roosevelt’s movements outside Washington without an appropriate official authority.

Reporters not invited

Correspondents for seven newspapers and two press associations – men whose regular assignment is reporting the activities of the Chief Executive – followed him to the vicinity of his retreat.

They were not invited by the White House staff, but made the trip nevertheless to be near as possible to the President in the event of major developments involving the war in general and particularly because of the political crisis touched off by Senator Alben W. Barkley (D-KY).

The newspapermen were told soon after their arrival here that they could expect no contact whatever with the President; that no inquiries could be received or answered; that all the news involving the President would come from Washington through the White House Press Secretary Stephen T. Early.

Has own communications

While the President maintained no contact with the press at his retreat, he had facilities for instantaneous communication with Washington. Although out of town, he was able to follow closely the political turmoil on Capitol Hill which followed his tax bill veto and Mr. Barkley’s denunciation of the veto message.

Despite the stringent official secrecy covering the President’s whereabouts and movements, it was the Chief Executive himself who first disclosed that he was “out of town” when he sent Mr. Barkley a letter asking him not to resign as Senate Democratic Leader.

First rebuff

Mr. Roosevelt has made numerous trips since Pearl Harbor, and on a few of them, reporters have been invited to accompany him. This occasion was the first time since the war began that the White House correspondents followed the President without official sanction.

Reporters criticized by Roosevelt aide

Washington (UP) –
White House Secretary Stephen T. Early said today that President Roosevelt is out of the city for a rest, but emphasized that his basic health is “good – very good.”

Commenting on dispatches which said the President apparently left Washington because of his health, Mr. Early said:

About 100 newspaper reporters saw him at a press conference on Tuesday. He looked all right then, didn’t he? Well, he is all right. Nothing has happened since the press conference to change the situation. His health is good – very good.

Discusses departure

Mr. Early took occasion at his morning press conference to also comment on the departure of a group of newspaper and press-association correspondents, regularly assigned to cover the President, to a place near which the Chief Executive is resting.

The group left Wednesday after Senate Leader Alben W. Barkley precipitated a political crisis with his announcement that he would resign.

Dispatches from some of the correspondents today bore the dateline “With President Roosevelt” and others “With the President’s party.” Mr. Early said these datelines are incorrect.

‘Miles from President’

He said:

The correspondents are miles away from the President.

Mr. Early also said the correspondents who left the capital did not deserve great credit for going near the President.

He said:

They were told in confidence by this office where the President was. They knew, therefore, where to go. They were also told that if the President had any news to give out, it would be given out here and not by the staff accompanying the President.

The correspondents left strictly on their own, with the knowledge that there would be no news where they were going and that any news would be given out here. The news has been given out here.

No appointments

The correspondents also were told, as were all correspondents regularly covering the White House, that the President had no appointments: that he was going away only for a rest.

Mr. Early explained that it was not feasible for William D. Hassett, newly-appointed White House secretary, or other members of the White House staff who are with the President to issue any news.

He said that if either Mr. Hassett or any other accredited staff member made a statement to the correspondents, it would be recognized as coming from a competent authority and therefore subject to publication under the censorship code.

‘Security involved’

Mr. Early said:

Thus, President Roosevelt’s whereabouts would be revealed to the world. Let’s not forget that this is wartime, and that the question of security is involved. The newspaper code recognizes these questions of security.

We will comply with the code and give President Roosevelt the security to which he is entitled and will not reveal his whereabouts.

Mr. Early said that it was only right to point out that the correspondents who “left Washington uninvited to travel to a point nearby the President’s abode” did not advise his office in advance of their departure.

‘In face of the fact’

Mr. Early said:

This was in the face of the fact that they had been told before the President left Washington that he was going away for a rest and would have no appointments.

The President is in instantaneous and immediate communication with the White House. Developments here of a news nature have been given out immediately to the press and would have been given to the correspondents who left Washington if they had remained here.

As you know, the White House is the only news outlet for the President while he is off the record.

[NormanStewart]

Marcantonio has his joke –
Fourth-term decision awaits further tests

Jittery House thrown into a political dither at rumor of Roosevelt withdrawal
By Thomas L. Stokes, Scripps-Howard staff writer

Washington –
Much of the talk about Senate Democratic Leader Barkley’s defiance of President Roosevelt over the tax bill veto, and the resultant stiffened backbone of Democrats in Congress, concerns the possible effect on a fourth-term nomination for the President.

Nobody can tell now, of course.

No great activity developed immediately, however, among those Democrats in Congress who would like to stop renomination.

The practical situation in the party is well illustrated by a little incident in the House. Rep. Vito Marcantonio (AL-NY) sidled up to a group of Democrats and remarked that news had just come over the wires that President Roosevelt had announced he would not run for a fourth term.

It was like a bombshell. Their faces fell several feet. The New Yorker walked away. Later he went into the cloakroom. Members asked for more details. He thought he had carried this joke far enough and said:

He also named his successor – Joe Martin.

Time alone can tell

But still it wasn’t such a funny joke.

The consensus about the Capitol is that the effect on the Democratic Party and on renomination of the President depends on whether the conflict develops further to the stage of bitterness and no retreat, or whether it is adjusted amicably.

This, of course, must await the raising of another issue to see how both sides react. It might come if Congress sent to the President a soldier-vote bill that eliminated the short federal ballot and left only state ballots. A conference of House and Senate is still debating this issue.

Benefits are expected

Mr. Roosevelt previously characterized the state ballot bill passed by the House “a fraud,” which incensed Republicans and Southern Democrats – the incipiently explosive wings of the party – who sponsored it.

After Senator Barkley had been vindicated by his colleagues by unanimous reelection as leader, there was a feeling that the eventual result might be beneficial to the party now that Congress had had its say through the Kentucky Senator.

There was a feeling that President Roosevelt hereafter might be more conciliatory, which he seemed to indicate in the letter to the Senator, and that he might be more considerate of Congress.

Orders FOR the White House

The Senator, himself, in his reply to the President, opened the way for future cooperation by saying he hoped his resignation and reelection would work toward closer harmony between the White House and Congress. But he emphasized that he had retained his leadership only at the insistence of the Senate.

Senator Barkley has at least for the time being, shifted his role. He is now responsible to the Senate rather than to the White House, and henceforth would be expected to speak up for the Senate at the White House, rather than acting merely as the bearer of presidential orders from the White House to the Senate.

Reports from Kentucky, which went Republican in November in the Governor’s race, are that the Senator is facing an uphill fight, and the view about the Senate is that his show of independence may help in his race for reelection.

[NormanStewart]

Communists lose their ballot plea

San Francisco, California (UP) –
The State Supreme Court today denied an application brought by the Communist Party which sought to restrain Secretary of State Frank M. Jordan from removing the party from the California state primary ballot May 16.

The court’s ruling upheld the constitutionality of the election code which provides that whenever the registration of any political party falls below one-tenth of one percent of the total state registration, that party shall not be qualified to participate in the next primary election.

[NormanStewart]

Editorial: Soldier votes in the primary

Congress is still engaged in a political wrangle over the enactment of a law which will enable the members of the Armed Forces to cast a ballot in this year’s election.

But whatever Congress does, if anything, it is unlikely that any federal legislation will be applied to the primaries, which will take place over a period of seven or eight months, according to varying state laws.

Pennsylvanians in the Armed Forces, if they are to vote in the April 25 primary, must vote under the Pennsylvania Military Ballot Act. This law, while cumbersome and circumscribed with a certain amount of red tape, does give the soldier a chance to vote.

However, the man or woman in the Armed Forces who wishes a military ballot for the primary must apply for that ballot within a prescribed time. The first day to apply is March 6. The last day to apply is March 25. Postmarks govern in all cases.

Voters who apply for military ballots must have been previously registered. If they were registered voters when they were inducted into the service, that registration still stands. If they were not registered, they may apply to their home registration commission for a card, which has to be returned.

It is highly improbable that many members of the Armed Forces, especially those overseas, will be able to comply with all the requirements of the Military Ballot Act.

They will not remember, it they ever knew, the dates within which applications may be made for ballots.

But the families and friends at home can help them by writing letters of reminder. Suggest in them that they apply to the County Board of Elections for a military ballot – if they are registered. If they are not registered, tell them to ask for registration by writing to the Pittsburgh Registration Commission, if they live in Pittsburgh, or to the County Elections Board if they live elsewhere.

[NormanStewart]

Ex-Governor of Oklahoma recalls last soldier vote

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (UP) –
Former Oklahoma Governor Robert L. Williams, who was governor during World War I, says men in uniform voted heavily by absentee ballot during his term of office.

Mr. Williams, now a retired Circuit Court of Appeals judge, believed men overseas and on home soil should be permitted to vote, but he is not sure the absentee ballot would be the best method.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (February 26, 1944)

Senators put next move up to Roosevelt

Democrats seeking truce rather than jeopardize election chances

Washington (UP) –
Senate Democrats, having demonstrated their independence, are ready to make political peace with President Roosevelt if he will meet them halfway.

They would rather compromise their differences with the President than have the White House-Congress fight jeopardize the party’s chances for victory in November.

The general feeling is that if the President will work more closely with Congress, submit various phases of the war and post-war programs for Congressional approval and desist from further caustic criticism, he can win almost solid Congressional support – even for a fourth term.

Up to Roosevelt

If the President won’t compromise, however, he can expect the campaign year to be marked with further rebellion such as the one this week which saw Senate Democrats win Democratic Leader Alben W. Barkley (D-KY) from his control and overwhelmingly reject his veto of the $2,315,000,000 tax bill.

A majority of those who participated in this week’s rebellion hope, for the good of the party as well as their own political futures, that the episode has ended. They realize that Republicans could make political capital of a lengthy fight between the President and his own party members in Congress.

Virtually all of them expect Mr. Roosevelt to be a candidate for a fourth term.

Even the most vigorous administration opponents despair of keeping the nomination from Mr. Roosevelt if he wants it, and they’d rather have a fourth term than get a Republican President and see their party swept completely out of national control.

Wants his aid

Some of those who opposed the third term in 1940, but now are up for reelection themselves, have been soft-pedaling their opposition to Mr. Roosevelt of late.

They don’t want to change Presidents while the war is on. They also figure they might reap some advantage from having his name at the top of the ticket.

Of the 39 Democrats who voted in the Senate yesterday to override the tax bill veto, the President probably could count on better than two-thirds of them to make speeches for a fourth term.

[NormanStewart]

Background of news –
President, party and Congress

By Bertram Benedict, editorial research reports

Gen. Washington, Woodrow Wilson has pointed out:

…set an example which few of his successors seem to have followed… he made constant and intimate use of his colleagues in every matter that he handled, seeking their assistance and advice by letter when they were at a distance.

The record shows that President Roosevelt, even in the pre-war years of his administration, consulted very sparingly with his party leaders.

The “soak-the-wealth” administration tax program of 1935 was sprung without warning upon a Congress which had been led to believe that the President desired no new general revenue bill in that year. The undistributed-profits tax program was placed before Congress in 1936 without Congressional leaders having been consulted, and in the following year, revision of the tax was demanded by Chairman Harrison of the Senate Finance Committee.

Senator Robinson, then Senate Majority Leader, complained that he had not been consulted on the President’s Supreme Court plan of 1937, and Chairman Farley of the Democratic National Committee was not a party to the President’s purge attempt of 1938.

‘Intrusion’ resented

Party leaders complain that at the same time President Roosevelt has intruded into what should be their private province. His “Dear Alben” letter to Senator Barkley in 1937 was supposed to have shown presidential preference for Mr. Barkley over Mr. Harrison for the post of Senate Majority Leader, and in 1940, the President forced the nomination of Henry A. Wallace for Vice President.

Party leaders have also complained that when they have wrung concessions from the President, he does not stay put. In November 1941, the House, bitter at strikes in defense plants, passed by a narrow margin the administration-supported revision of the Neutrality Act only after Speaker Rayburn had read aloud a letter from the President interpreted as promising immediate action against such strikes. The House leaders felt the promise was not kept.

The record also shows that even at the beginning of the New Deal, an overwhelmingly-Democratic Congress refused to follow the new President in all issues, though the President sent Congress in 1933 a letter thanking it for “a more sincere and more wholehearted cooperation” than had existed between the executive and the legislative branches for many years.

Congress in 1933 toned down the administration’s draft of the NRA Act, forced concessions in the administration’s original economy program, and rejected several presidential appointments. In 1934, Congress overrode a presidential veto in order to restore cuts made in government salaries and veterans’ payments.

Wilson’s method recalled

Older members of Congress recall nostalgically that Woodrow Wilson put through his program in his first term largely by working hand-in-glove with the party leaders and caucuses. Yet in 1916, when the party leaders rejected Wilson’s defense program, he went over their heads by appealing to the public in a speaking tour.

Wilson also called upon Democratic voters to purge, in the party primaries, certain outstanding Democratic members of Congress who had been anti-administration.

Most strong Democratic Presidents have had party revolts on their hands in Congress.

In Cleveland’s second term, Democratic leaders in Congress joined with the Republican minority to emasculate the administration’s low-tariff bill. In terms not unlike Roosevelt’s attack on the tax bill of 1944, Cleveland denounced the bill as “party perfidy and party dishonor” and an “abandonment of Democratic principle.” In terms not unlike Barkley’s attack upon Roosevelt in 1944, Senator Gorman of Maryland, leader of the Democrats in the Senate, thereupon delivered on the floor of the Senate a bitter personal attack on the President.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (February 27, 1944)

Dewey urges firm Congress

Ominous trend is seen in current fight

Albany, New York (UP) – (Feb. 26)
Governor Thomas E. Dewey warned today that the “very existence” of Congress is at stake.

In a letter to William S. Bennet, New York City Republican who will seek the 21st Congressional seat at a special election next Tuesday, Mr. Dewey said:

Now, if ever, Congress needs all the strength it can obtain. No citizen can fail to reach the conclusion after reading the ominous trend in the news of the fight against Congress, that its very existence, its very function in the plan of American constitutional government, is at stake.

The Governor endorsed Bennet, a former representative, and expressed hope he would be elected.

Mr. Dewey wrote:

This is the time when it is the duty of the citizens to send experienced and capable legislators to the halls of Congress.

I wish you well in the election.

[NormanStewart]

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.

[NormanStewart]

In Washington –
Federal vote for soldiers appears dead

Conferees show weariness after 7 meetings on once-hot issue

Washington (UP) – (Feb. 26)
Chances for the enactment of new federal soldier-vote legislation today appeared to be virtually nil.

After each meeting of the Senate-House conference on the measure, members indicate an increasing weariness with the whole issue, which scarcely a month ago was the hottest in Washington. Their attitude suggests that delay and disinterest may yet put the quietus on all federal ballot plans.

The conferees broke up yesterday for the weekend. In the words of Chairman Theodore F. Green (D-RI) of the Senate Privileges and Elections Committee, conferees will “retire and pray for guidance” on the future course of their deliberations, which by now have comprised seven meetings stretching into their third week.

The latest proposal the conferees will consider over the weekend was suggested yesterday by Reps. Herbert C. Bonner (D-NC) and Karl M. LeCompte (R-IA). It would provide a federal ballot for all soldiers who had applied for a state absentee ballot and had not received it by Oct. 1 – providing their states had agreed to accept the federal ballot.

The state-certification provision is opposed by the Senate conferees, who have consistently maintained the federal ballot should be accepted if voted by the soldier, regardless of whether or not it conforms to state law.

[NormanStewart]

Democrats willing to end their fight with Roosevelt

Era of good feeling may result if both sides profit by week’s lessons

Washington (UP) – (Feb. 26)
Congressional Democrats believed tonight that an “era of good feeling” may be in prospect between President Roosevelt and his party colleagues in the House and Senate if both sides profit by this week’s lessons.

If the President adopts a more conciliatory attitude – if there are no more White House blasts charging legislative fraud and bad faith – if Mr. Roosevelt will work more closely with Congress on war and post-war programs, the recent exchange of blow may prove beneficial in the long run to all involved, many observers believed.

Willing to end row

Democratic legislators appeared willing, now that they have proclaimed their independence, to make peace with the President. And his message to Senate Democratic Leader Alben W. Barkley last Wednesday appeared to indicate belated realization on the President’s part that the tone of his tax bill veto message was unpalatably tart.

There appeared little doubt, however, that Mr. Roosevelt – having taken one major beating when Congress overrode his veto of the tax bill – must swallow at least one more cup of defeat before getting back on an even keel with Congress.

Soldier vote bill

Congress still has a score to settle with him on the soldier-vote bill, and the odds are that it will settle the score by refusing to enact any form of the administration-supported federal ballot measure.

It was the “states’ rights” ballot bill passed by the House which touched off the showdown battle climaxed this week with Congressional enactment of the tax bill. Mr. Roosevelt called the House measure, banning federal machinery for conducting balloting among service personnel, a “fraud.”

The Senate subsequently squeezed through a compromise measure, providing for limited use of a federal ballot, but House and Senate conferees have since been unable to reach an agreement. The result probably will be no bill at all.

Two factors faced

For the future, however, there was reason to believe that efforts will be made to heal the breach and bring about peace between the President and the Congressional majority. Uppermost in Congressional minds was realization that:

• This is a campaign year, and Mr. Roosevelt is admittedly the party’s strongest possible candidate for President, despite whatever liability there may be in the fact that he will be seeking a fourth term.

• Wartime cleavage between the President and Congress can only be harmful to the nation, and could be disastrous.

[NormanStewart]

Editorial: OWI’s ‘mistake’

Just after Elmer Davis, director of the Office of War Information, settled a family row with his Overseas Branch and admonished that branch to keep out of public trouble, the Republicans jumped all over the same outfit for failing to identify Governor Bricker of Ohio as a candidate for President.

Mr. Bricker was one of two men in United States about whom such a mistake is unpardonable.

He is an announced candidate. So is Wendell Willkie.

But if OWI had failed to mention that Governor Dewey, for instance, is a candidate, it could easily have been forgiven. Or if it had omitted saying anything about President Roosevelt being a candidate, no fault could be found with it.

Presidential aspiration is no longer a matter of thumped chests, bellowed challenges and brass bands. The modest blush, the averted eye, the indecisive answer, the coy humor seem to be the marks of a candidate.

[NormanStewart]

Taylor: New Deal stronghold

By Robert Taylor, Press Washington correspondent

Washington –
By a strange political development, traditionally Republican Pennsylvania has become one of the last remaining strongholds of the New Deal wing of the Democratic Party, while the Solid South, except for a smattering of votes, has slipped away.

The rock-bottom strength of the New Deal in Congress was ascertained last week by the roll calls in the House and Senate on President Roosevelt’s veto of the new tax bill – a showdown brought about by the President himself when he trampled on Congressional sensitivities in his veto message.

Pennsylvania has 13 Democratic Congressmen and 12 of them voted to sustain the veto, a total exceeded only by New York. The State’s Democratic Senator, Joseph F. Guffey, a New Dealer all the way, not only remained staunchly in the President’s corner, but also reiterated his prediction that Mr. Roosevelt will be reelected for a fourth term.

If the Congressional vote represents adequately the sentiment of the constituents – and this is a campaign year – it means that Mr. Roosevelt, as the Democratic nominee, will be supported in the South because he is on the Democratic ticket and because he is the only Democrat with a chance to win.

In Pennsylvania, however, Mr. Roosevelt will be the one big candidate, with other party candidates comprising only a sort of supporting cast and the whole campaign waged on a pro-Roosevelt or anti-Roosevelt basis. Pennsylvania Democrats, with a single exception, remain firm in the conclusion that their success depends on Mr. Roosevelt.

That policy was plainly enunciated at the meeting of the Democratic State Committee three weeks ago, when a harmony program was ratified to prevent a primary fight, and Republican leaders promptly accepted the issue with a similar harmony program, formed for the same reason.

In Pennsylvania, party managers know they’ve got to get Republican votes to win, and every statewide election since 1932 has proved that Democrats can carry Pennsylvania only when Mr. Roosevelt runs or on the high tide of a strong New Deal issue, as in 1934.

The rupture between the President and Congress, therefore, caused Pennsylvania members considerable concern, not because of fear that their constituents won’t approve their stand on the tax bill veto but because it marks a new low in the steadily worsening relations between the Executive and Congress.

The vote against the President may have political repercussions next November that can mean the difference between victory and defeat for some of the Pennsylvania Congressmen who have continued to support him throughout his fencing with Congress on such issues as the anti-strike bill, which was passed over his veto, and the food price subsidy issue.

How rapidly Mr. Roosevelt’s Congressional support deteriorated is shown in two House votes to override presidential vetoes. The first, on his veto of a bill that would eliminate food price subsidies, was 226–151 with a Republican-Democratic coalition failing to override. The second, less than a week later, on his veto of the tax bill, was 299–95.

While the issues differed, in each case the House was voting on whether to override a presidential veto. The food price subsidy issue was one that gathered widespread popular support for the President from labor, consumer and other groups. Even with the help of an unofficial consumer committee of Congressmen, headed by Rep. Thomas E. Scanlon (D-Pittsburgh), and strongly backed by labor, the administration forces managed to sustain the veto only by a narrow margin.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (February 28, 1944)

Graham candidate for Congress race

Butler, Pennsylvania – (special)
Attorney John C. Graham today announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for Congress at the April 25 primary.

Mr. Graham has sought election to Congress several times, the last two years ago when he polled Butler County over Congressman Louis E. Graham, but lost the nomination in the results from the other two counties in the district, Beaver and Lawrence.

Mr. Graham said his candidacy gives Butler County a chance “to have a representative in Congress for the first time in 20 years.”

[NormanStewart]

Democrats in House

Nashville, Tennessee –
Tennessee Republican leaders at their 1944 Lincoln Day dinner to hear an address by Alfred M. Landon, GOP candidate in 1936, were somewhat surprised, to say the least, at the selection of background music. Among the songs selected were “Donkey Serenade” and “Night Train to Memphis” (Memphis is the stronghold of Edward H. Crump, Democratic political boss).

[NormanStewart]

Editorial: President and Congress

Now that Congress has overridden the President’s unprecedented veto of a tax bill, and Senate Democrats have endorsed Leader Barkley’s revolt against Roosevelt usurpation, where do we go from here?

The answer is far more important than the political fortunes of any man or party. Winning the war and winning the peace are at stake. There can be no national unity and no efficient war government as long as the President and Congress are fighting each other. Teamwork between the White House and the Hill, in the letter and spirit of coordinate constitutional powers, is the most acute need in America today.

Such cooperation will not be easy to achieve. Congress has been alternately ignored, smeared and bossed for so long by the President that its human temptation is to pay him back now that he has so grossly-overreached himself. Freedom that comes from successful revolt is a heady wine – Congress could get drunk on it.

Cooperation is even harder for the President. By temperament and habit, he is a one-man show. Moreover, as wartime Commander-in-Chief he is in a spot where even the humble Lincoln found it necessary to be dictatorial at times.

But above all other causes of growing conflict between the President and Congress is the fourth-term election. It is hard for him to divorce War President Roosevelt from Candidate Roosevelt, and still more difficult for Congress to do so. Even when he speaks with wisdom and selfishness, he is heard as a clever politician maneuvering for 16 years’ rule. And when he loses his poise – as in his recent insulting messages – he is jumped on as a blundering candidate, rather than helped out as a national leader who sometimes stumbles under the world’s heaviest load.

Despite all barriers, the President and Congress must get together.

Congress must forget and forgive his past usurpations, remembering its own frequent defaults of responsibility.

The President must learn, from the humiliation which he has just brought upon himself, that he no longer can drive the elected representatives. He must reason, if they are to follow. He must reason, if they are to agree. He must respect their constitutional function, if they are to work with him.

The present tax and foreign policy disputes are typical. The Constitution makes Congress chiefly responsible for taxation, and the President chiefly responsible for foreign policy, but both responsibilities are to be shared. We repeat here the proposals we and others have made so many times for joint executive-legislative committees. Unless the President and Congress can get together on a simplified program for increased taxes, the nation is threatened with inflation and worse. Unless they can get together on a foreign policy, the nation is threatened with another Wilson tragedy and loss of the peace.

They can get together, if they will.

[NormanStewart]

Background of news –
Divided Democratic Party

By Bertram Benedict, editorial research reports

In the House vote last Thursday to override the veto of the revenue bill, about 80% of the Representatives who stuck by the President come from urban areas. With the President were all but two of the Democrats from New York City, a large proportion of those from the West, a considerable number from Oklahoma and Tennessee, but only five from the Solid South (two on pairs).

The Democratic Party is an uneasy amalgam of the South and the large cities of the North and West. About one-half of the Democrats in Congress are Southerners; about one-third urban Easterners and Westerners, about one-sixth non-urban Easterners and Westerners.

In 1924, the party delegates split 50-50 at the national convention in New York on condemning the Ku Klux Klan by name, with most of the Southerners against condemnation, most of the Easterners for it. The convention deadlocked for over 100 ballots between the candidacies of Alfred E. Smith, supported chiefly in the East and in Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin, and of William G. McAdoo, supported chiefly in the South and the rural West.

In the election of 1924, the Smith states gave little support of John W. Davis, the party’s compromise candidate. When the Smith camp demanded and got the nomination for their man in 1928, half of the Southern states voted for Hoover.

Alliance is nothing new

Today, the Northern and Western Democrats yearn to retain the labor vote and Negro vote, necessary to party success in many parts of the North and the West. Southern Democrats in Congress usually can expect reelection whatever the fate of the presidential ticket.

From its very beginning, the Democratic Party was a union of the South and large cities of the North.

Thomas Jefferson rode to power by dint of an alliance with certain urban political organizations of the North, notable Tammany Hall. The alliance ultimately came to grief, despite Jefferson’s attempt to hold the Northerners in line with patronage, and by the end of Jefferson’s administration, he had all but lost control over his party in Congress.

Even at the time of the Civil War, the Southern cotton planters were in close political alliance with Northern cotton manufacturers, and most of the considerable vote in the North against Lincoln for reelection in 1864 came from large cities and towns.

In Grover Cleveland’s second administration, he turned ultraconservative, according to the prevalent views in the South and West during the long depression of the ‘90s, and the South and West took control of the Democratic Party at the 1896 convention. Over Northern opposition, they put across a Free Silver plank and the nomination of Bryan, and the convention even rejected a proposal to commend the Cleveland administration.

Labor turns to GOP

With the Democratic Party in the hands of Southerners and Westerners, Eastern labor turned largely to the Republican Party, especially since the GOP “sold” labor, as we say today, on a protective tariff.

Woodrow Wilson managed to keep the Southerners in line for the pro-labor program of his administration, but in those days, industrialization had made few inroads into the South, where the trade union movement was still more of an abstraction than a reality.

Today, the South has come to know at first hand the attempt to organize both industrial and farm workers for higher wages and shorter hours, and the South is cold to pleas of the Northern and Western Democrats that they need the labor and Negro vote for political success.

The South, on its side, insists that the Northern and Western Democrats don’t appreciate the excesses in Reconstruction days, when voting restrictions in the South were largely relaxed.

[NormanStewart]

Barkley still a progressive –
Revolt gives little comfort to anti-Roosevelt forces

By Thomas L. Stokes, Scripps-Howard staff writer

Washington –
A second look at the “Barkley Affair” indicates that the anti-Roosevelt forces have perhaps drawn mote comfort than is justified from it. Already the Senate Democratic Leader’s deft of President Roosevelt has been toned down somewhat by the exchange of friendly letters between the two.

In judging the incident, this has been overlooked: Senator Barkley has never been among the conservatives, is not among them now, and is not likely to be found among them.

Anybody who expects him to abandon the progressivism that he has followed during his 31 years in Congress and overnight step out as the front man of the conservatives and anti-Roosevelt forces is due for a letdown. That is, unless the basic character of the man is other than it has appeared to close friends and associates for years.

“Alben Barkley was a progressive long before President Roosevelt,” is the wat one of them out it, pointing back to the Kentucky Senator’s record years ago in the House.

He has never aligned himself in the Senate with the Byrds, the Georges, the Baileys, the “Cotton Ed” Smiths.

Nor does he seem to possess the temperament of other outstanding men who, along the war and through the years, have “broken” with President Roosevelt and become deeply embittered as a consequence – Al Smith, James A. Farley, Senator Burton K. Wheeler, to mention three. They have joined up with the anti-Roosevelt forces to topple the President from the White House.

Learned to adjust himself

Senator Barkley has weathered all the vicissitudes of politics. He’s been in the minority and in the majority. He has learned to adjust himself, to roll with the punch, to compromise personal differences of opinion, to take orders and to accommodate himself to party discipline.

The difficulties of his job as leader during the last few years can be appreciated only by those who are familiar with the day-by-day, week-by-week ordeal.

There are two things that might work to sour Senator Barkley, a naturally genial gentleman, and throw him into the camp of the enemy.

One would be an attack of ambition, and that means one ambition, the Presidency. That was at the back of the clash between President Roosevelt and Al Smith, and between the President and Jim Farley, though other factors were also involved. This ambition seems to change the whole scheme of a man’s thinking – toward himself and toward others.

Mentioned for Presidency

Senator Barkley is being mentioned for the Presidency now. How seriously he takes it has not been revealed.

The other thing would be the species of persecution of which some of the zealous New Deal aides have shown themselves capable when someone raised his hand against the President. They work up a vengeance that the President himself undoubtedly never felt.

One disagreement on fundamental policy with the President, one speech of protest, and this group classifies the dissenter as 100% in the enemy’s camp.

This noisy and vicious little claque thus carried on their vendetta against Jim Farley and Burt Wheeler and others. It might happen with Senator Barkley.

[NormanStewart]

Willkie hits veto message

Blames administration for ‘inadequate’ tax bill

New York (UP) –
Wendell L. Willkie, candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, today assailed President Roosevelt’s veto message on the tax bill as “violent and ill-tempered” and said that the administration is to blame for the “inadequate” tax bill.

In a speech here Feb. 3, Mr. Willkie said that if President Roosevelt meant by a “realistic” tax program the $10-billion plan proposed to Congress by the Treasury, then the administrations fiscal estimates for paying the costs of the war were “far too low.” Mr. Willkie proposed instead a tax program “more than double” that of the administration.

Need additional revenue

Mr. Willkie said in a statement today that the administration:

…has so extravagantly and wantonly wasted the people’s money that many Americans see the payment of additional taxes as merely providing additional funds for more profligate government spending.

If it had not been for this record of extravagance, the need for additional taxes now would be both obvious and accepted by all Americans. The American people recognize that a hard war must be fought the hard way – that it must be an all-out war. They are eager to match at home, as best they can, the sacrifices being made by our fighting men who are risking and giving their lives.

The additional income that the war has created should be taxed and taxed heavily. For we need this additional revenue to pay for the war – to pay for as much of the war as possible while we fight.

Must pay now for war

But we need additional revenue now for another basic reason. We must pay now so that after the war is over, taxes may be lowered in order to give that stimulus which lower taxes always give to our economy – the stimulus necessary to provide jobs and opportunities after the war for our present war workers and our returning soldiers.

The violent and ill-tempered presidential veto message advanced none of these causes.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (February 29, 1944)

Votes lined up right and left for Roosevelt

‘Doc New Deal’ may be dead but Hannegan’s alive and ‘merging’
By Thomas L. Stokes, Scripps-Howard staff writer

Washington –
President Roosevelt is going to be riding so many different colors of political horses in this coming campaign, all at once, that before it is all over, he will look, figuratively, like one of those circus equestrians.

At the same time, he is going to provide some neat sleight of hand so the audience won’t know whether it’s the right or left hand which is holding the reins.

His right hand was showing a few weeks ago when he dropped the term “New Deal,” a move pleasing to conservatives, in and out of his party. Lately his left hand has been showing in messages to Congress carrying such blistering phrases as “not for the needy but for the greedy,” speaking of the tax bill, and “a high-cost-of-living measure, a food-shortage measure,” speaking of the anti-subsidy bill.

Catch-all program

While the President is indulging in the higher strategy, his chief political lieutenant, Democratic National Chairman Hannegan, is working at a “catch-all” program on the lower level of practical politics.

Mr. Hannegan gave public notice of this on his recent scouting trip when he laid plans in Minnesota for a fusion of the Democratic and Farmer-Labor Parties there, which is exactly the trick the President, himself, arranged there during the 1936 campaign.

Mr. Hannegan not only approved plans for this fusion, but also said this would be a model for merger of other political groups with Democrats in other states.

Wilson’s experience

The Democrats are not going to overlook any little batch of electoral votes anywhere. Woodrow Wilson lost Minnesota by 392 votes in the very close 1916 election, but was saved by his 3,806-vote victory in California.

This year may be a replica of 1916 in its closeness.

An example of political amalgamations which will bring together all sorts of groups this year is New York, where the American Labor Party and the Communist Party will unite with Democrats behind President Roosevelt, and New Jersey, across the river, where the Communists have thrown in with Boss Frank Hague.

Poor grace in 1936

The Minnesota Democratic Party, which has been distinctly a third party in rating, did not take with too much grace the 1936 fusion which Mr. Roosevelt arranged while campaigning there. One Democratic leader, Rep. Elmer J. Ryan, spread his spleen all through the campaign train as it pulled out of the state.

Republicans now control the state, thanks to the political capabilities of former Governor Harold Stassen, now in the Navy, who left a handpicked crew in charge.

The Democrats need help now, and so do the Farmer-Laborites who ruled the state for a number of years under the late Floyd Olsen. They do not seem inclined to ask too many questions about a merger this time.