Election 1944: Pre-convention news

[NormanStewart]

Stokes: The minors

By Thomas L. Stokes

With Willkie in Wisconsin –
There’s something a bit like the glamorous Broadway star going back to the five-a-day in the cheap and drafty theaters of the provinces in Wendell Willkie’s attempted comeback for the Republican presidential nomination on this Wisconsin circuit, preliminary to the April 4 primary.

Or, perhaps, like the major league pitcher who is sent back to the minors, ostensibly to cure that ailing left wing so the old hop will come back on the ball, who left the big town with the confident assurance from the boss, “We’ll be seeing you back soon again, old boy – you’ll like that club,” which he tried to believe as he shakes hands with teammates who smile too cheerfully.

All the trappings of the big time, all the sound effects, the perfection of detail, still cling reminiscently about this Willkie troupe back on the provincial circuit. The local committees are organized. The high school auditoriums are spick and span and frilly with flags. The suppers are laid out temptingly in the back rooms of local restaurants with that dainty touch so dear to small-town women showing themselves off to strangers.

The hotel reservations are ready in advance. The autos are on hand to transport the traveling show from town to town – Mr. and Mrs. Willkie and their entourage plus a sizable press corps which remembers the big-time circuit of four years ago, the screeching, storming multitudes, the huge auditoriums wild with frenzied people.

Towns are smaller, crowds smaller

But it’s all in miniature – 1940 on a greatly reduced scale.

The towns are smaller, the crowds are smaller, and the enthusiasm is tempered with the restraint of old folks who sit placidly and boys and girls in their early teens who gape and whisper and giggle, but don’t make hilarious noises. That vigorous middle group of the electorate is no longer here. It is off somewhere in the wars or wars’ industry. But the big, shaggy fellow is working at his electioneering job here with only 24 convention votes as the prize as if the whole thousand odd were at stake.

As he sees it, that is the stake. He is here trying to prove that he’s popular with the plain folk, despite the politicians. He wants so much to be President, so very much.

You can see he has doubts now that he didn’t profess a few months back. He’s a sobered man, but still determined.

We watched him perform for the small circuit.

Heterogeneous state politically

The high school gymnasium was full – the largest crowd it has ever had except for the county fair when the governor is a guest. It was a quiet, orderly crowd, until, at 8:15, the high school band struck up “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Everybody stood up and applauded as he made a grand entrance with Mrs. Willkie. He came smiling down the main aisle, waving now this way, now that, just as if there were 30 or 40 thousands present. There were about 2,500.

When the mayor got up, he addressed the crowd as “Republicans, Democrats, New Dealers, Progressives, Socialists, Prohibitionists and Townsendites,” and there was a chuckled through the crowd. This is a heterogeneous state politically.

He said:

A good political meeting is like an old-time religious meeting – there’s always the hope that someone will be converted.

Mr. Willkie lost no opportunities. When he had finished speaking, it was announced he would shake hands with all who wanted to come to the platform. For over half an hour, the folks filed by.

There was nothing like that on the big circuit in 1940.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 21, 1944)

Stassen willing to be drafted

Cdr. Stassen

Washington (UP) –
LtCdr. Harold E. Stassen, former Governor of Minnesota, has notified Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox that while he will not seek the Republican presidential nomination, he will accept if nominated.

Mr. Knox said today that Cdr. Stassen made his position clear in a letter which came through official channels from the South Pacific where the former governor is now serving on the staff of Adm. William F. Halsey Jr., commander of the South Pacific area.

Cdr. Stassen’s letter to Mr. Knox follows:

In recent weeks, there have been numerous questions by representatives of the press in the South Pacific as to my attitude toward the current inclusion of my name in the presidential nomination discussions.

The same questions have been raised in the public press on the mainland, accompanied by an increasing amount of conjecture and speculation and attempts at interpretation and misinterpretation.

I have therefore concluded that it is desirable and in the best interests of my naval service that my position be clearly, concisely, promptly and publicly stated.

The following is the statement Cdr. Stassen wished to make publicly:

In reply to the questions that are being asked as to my attitude toward the current inclusion of my name in the presidential nomination discussions, I will frankly and directly state my position.

I do not seek and will do nothing personally to secure the nomination. If, notwithstanding this position, I were to be nominated, I would consider it to be my plain duty to accept and would do so, requesting inactive duty for a sufficient time to discuss with the people the issues and problems of the future.

I wish to make it equally clear that I will make no statement on political issues while on active duty, that I do not wish any publicity of my activities in the Navy to be used in a political manner, and that no one is authorized to make personal commitments on my behalf.

I will continue to carry out to the best of my ability those naval duties assigned to me.

[NormanStewart]

Guffey urges only voters hold U.S. jobs

He says others ‘are not worthy’

Washington (UP) –
Senators Joseph C. Guffey (D-PA) and Bennett Champ Clark (D-MO) today sought support for a bill they introduced which would require that appointees to positions in the federal government be qualified voters.

Applicants would have to be a qualified and registered or enrolled vote in a state, territory or possession of the United States. persons already employed or who have not attained voting age would be permitted to work in a temporary capacity until they could qualify by residence or age to become a voter.

Senator Guffey told a press conference:

The more vote you get out, the stronger the government should be. A man who is not interested enough to vote is not worthy of holding a federal job.

He said the effect of the bill would be to bar aliens, Southern Negroes, and District of Columbia residents from federal employment, except in the case of the latter if they have lived in Washington five years.

Senator Guffey said the bill would make him “hated” by government employees. He told reporters he thought knowledge of history should be a prerequisite for voting as well, but that is a matter up to the states.

[NormanStewart]

President gets soldier vote bill

He has 10 days to sign or veto it

Washington (UP) –
The compromise soldier vote bill reached the White House at 2:45 p.m. ET yesterday – five days after Congress completed action on it.

President Roosevelt has 10 days – not counting next Sunday – to sign or veto the bill. If he has done neither by midnight of March 31, it automatically becomes law.

Six governors have not yet replied to his telegram asking whether their states allow the use of a federal ballot and, if not, whether validating action will be taken by July 15.

Nearly half of the governors replying revealed that their states would not, or probably would not, permit use of the federal ballot.

[NormanStewart]

Willkie warns of federal rule

Every ill exploited, candidate declares

Ripon, Wisconsin (UP) –
Charging that the Democratic Party was “a vehicle for the maintenance of power,” Wendell L. Willkie last night accused the New Deal of aiming at “eventual adoption of a government-controlled society.”

The candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, speaking in the town where the GOP was organized 90 years ago, charged that the New Deal had exploited the theory that the only solution for “every ill” was complete government control.

The speech was Mr. Willkie’s second in his campaign to win the support of Wisconsin delegates to the Republican National Convention.

Mr. Willkie said:

The panic of 1929 and the devastating years that followed gave impetus and encouragement to the thesis that the solution lay solely in government control.

The total result, consistently fostered by the administration, has been the illusion that there is conflict between a society built upon economic incentive and a society of human welfare.

Mr. Willkie said that the modern Democratic Party:

…provides us with a clear example of… subversion, by which an inner group has carefully nurtured its power for 12 years.

[NormanStewart]

Stokes: Willkie’s limb

By Thomas L. Stokes

With Willkie in Wisconsin –
Governor Dewey of New York is very much the man who isn’t here.

Wendell Willkie has him constantly on his mind.

In his campaign here for Wisconsin delegates in the April 4 primary, the 1940 Republican candidate strikes at his rival for the 1944 nomination without naming him, by using him as a symbol of the type of candidate who refuses to discuss the issues as he himself is discussing them in his tour through this state.

Mr. Willkie gets into the subject by listing three categories of Republican candidates.

First, representatives of “narrow nationalism and economic Toryism.” In conversations, he includes Gen. MacArthur, who is entered in the primary, in this category as well as Governor Bricker of Ohio, who is not a candidate here, though he names neither publicly.

Second, those who would avoid the issues and depend upon rallying all sorts of elements to their banners. In this he includes Governor Dewey, who has a nearly complete slate in the primary.

Third, those who believe in international cooperation and an expanding domestic economy that recognizes social advances. In this he includes, principally, Wendell Willkie.

GOP can’t win if–

The Republican Party, he says, cannot possibly win if it nominates anybody in the first two categories.

It cannot help but win, he predicts, if it nominates a representative of the third category – again, Wendell Willkie.

In his calculations, Mr. Willkie is largely overlooking Gen. MacArthur and LtCdr. Harold Stassen, ex-Governor of Minnesota, who is also entered in the primary because he does not think either will cut much of a figure. It would be hard, too, for him to attack LtCdr. Stassen because the latter, his floor manager at Philadelphia in 1940, fits into Mr. Willkie’s own private third category.

Governor Dewey is the man he fears here. Political analysts tell you that this is, basically, a Dewey state, and that if it weren’t for the confusion over whether Governor Dewey is a candidate, he would easily come out on top. Governor Dewey tried to withdraw his delegates on the plea that he isn’t a candidate, but some 16 of them stayed in the race. But people out here take Mr. Dewey more at his word than do more cynical Easterners.

Over and over again

So, Mr. Willkie hammers over and over again on the theme he expressed most succinctly at Oshkosh, in describing the second category:

There is another group of delegates who say they should be elected on the basis of no discussion of the issues at all. They represent the argument that if a man says he is not a candidate, then you can tell the people that you represent all the divergent elements on America. The 1944 convention, them, would be not a convention of principle but merely a political convention, a depending for nomination through cleverness. There must be no hotel-room nomination.

The inference from Mr. Willkie’s discussion of the Republican Party and what it should be and should do is that if does not follow his prescription he cannot go along with it.

Mr. Willkie is glad to have this inference get out and the interpretation that goes along with it, namely, that he might bolt the party and lead a third party or independent movement. But nobody who knows Mr. Willkie well takes any stock in any third party movement. He, himself, has made a careful examination of state laws and discovered that third parties can get on ballots in only a negligible number of states.

His dissent rather would take the form of refusing to support the Republican candidate, perhaps even supporting Mr. Roosevelt.

He is working himself out that far on the limb.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 22, 1944)

47 vote replies given President

Washington (UP) –
President Roosevelt, still nursing a slight cold, today studied replies from 47 state governors to his inquiry about use of the proposed federal war ballot.

Whether Mr. Roosevelt will sign or veto the bill for limited use of a federal war ballot for servicemen depends on what conclusions he reaches, from replies of the Governors, about whether more persons could vote under existing law or under the bill.

Only South Carolina has made no reply.

Of the five replies revealed today, only that of Texas Governor Coke Stevenson contained a flat assurance that his state would permit use of the proposed federal ballot.

A breakdown of the 47 replies showed this lineup:

• States definitely accepting: Seven.
• States which consider their own laws sufficient and will not accept: Seventeen.
• States which probably will not accept: Five.
• States which will make an effort to authorize use: Fourteen.
• Undecided: Three.
• States conditionally accepting: One.

---

Hannegan pleads for ‘solid front’

Hartford, Connecticut (UP) –
Democratic National Chairman Robert E. Hannegan appealed to party leaders in Connecticut last night to present a solid front “to see that the present administration and Franklin D. Roosevelt are continued in office.”

He said:

No election since the birth of the Republic hinged on graver issues than are involved in what takes place next November. The problems of war and peace cannot be separated.

Mr. Hannegan charged that Republicans were “working in every state to capitalize on every complaint.” He had no assurance, he said, that Mr. Roosevelt would seek a fourth term, “but I have no doubt that if he runs, he’ll win.”

[NormanStewart]

Campaign points listed by White

GOP candidate offers program

Joseph A. White of Brentwood, candidate for the Republican nomination for Congress in the 31st district, announced a platform in support of his candidacy.

Among points were:

• Tax measures must be written solely for the purpose of raising revenue “on the basis of ability to pay, and not used as punitive measures against any particular group.”

• Business must be “freed from so-called war restrictions as soon as possible.”

• “I do not subscribe to the theory that the American standard of living must come down to that of other countries, but rather that theirs should come up to ours.”

• Servicemen must be assured of “improved opportunities in their chosen fields of endeavor.”

Mr. White said all legislative problems must be judged for their effect on the war effort and he argued for foreign relief “only when used to relieve genuine need.”

[NormanStewart]

Coloradoan splits with Roosevelt

Chicago, Illinois (UP) –
Democratic Senator Edwin C. Johnson of Colorado formally parted company with President Roosevelt last night in a speech at North Park College in which he charged that:

History will name the fourth term, if it ever materializes, as “the term of defeat and frustration.”

In recent months, an increasingly open critic of the administration, Mr. Johnson said “the greatest tragedy of American history was the President’s decision four years ago to seek a third term.”

He said:

It launched the 1940 campaign by appeasing the internationalists with the appointment of two old-line Republicans [Frank Knox and Henry L. Stimson] as Secretaries of Navy and War. It appeased the nationalists by assuring them “again and again” that no mother’s son would “be sent to fight in a foreign war.”

The New Deal appeased Japan, he said, by selling her all the war material she could pay for.

It appeased China, with money and credit and, after the election, appeased Britain by going to war. It has been appeasing everyone everywhere ever since with Lend-Lease at a cost to the American taxpayers of billions. It appeased Russia by junking the Atlantic Charter. It appeased John L. Lewis, the railroad brotherhoods, at the back door of the White House, after scornfully turning them down at the front door with the beating of drums.

Senator Johnson said that “one-man control” has reduced the Democratic Party to hopeless impotency.

[NormanStewart]

Willkie attacks America Firsters

Green Bay, Wisconsin (UP) –
Wendell L. Willkie, candidate for the Republican presidential nomination stumping Wisconsin for support for his slate of convention delegates in the April 4 primary, today predicted “overwhelming defeat” for the GOP “if the viewpoint represented by The Chicago Tribune is imposed upon the Republicans.”

He included Gerald L. K. Smith in the same category in which he placed the Tribune and said that:

Any candidate who does not repudiate the America First group and Gerald L. K. Smith and all they represent, cannot possibly be elected President of the United States.

Willkie beats clock; enters Maryland race

Annapolis, Maryland (UP) –
Maryland Republicans today faced the choice of voting in their May 1 primary for Wendell L. Willkie or an unrestricted delegation to the Republican National Convention.

At 11:45 p.m. ET yesterday, 15 minutes before the deadline, Mr. Willkie’s certificate of candidacy was handed to a clerk in the secretary of state’s office by Baltimore attorney Charles Ruzicka. Mr. Willkie will be the only presidential aspirant of either party on the primary ballots.

[NormanStewart]

Soviet paper sure of 4th term try

Moscow, USSR (UP) –
The nomination of President Roosevelt for a fourth term is a virtual certainty, Maurice Mendelsohn, described as a specialist in American problems, said today in the Army newspaper Red Star.

Mendelsohn did not pick a victor in the November election, but said Republican strength was increasing as demonstrated by GOP victories in a number of mayoralty elections in large towns:

…for instance, Philadelphia where the candidacy of the famous reactionary Democrat [William C.] Bullitt fell through.

All of Philadelphia’s mayors have been Republicans since Samuel G. King, who served from 1881 to 1884.

The Red Star article named Wendell L. Willkie, Governor Thomas E. Dewey, Governor John W. Bricker and Gen. Douglas MacArthur as the leading Republican presidential candidates.

[NormanStewart]

Editorial: It should become law

President Roosevelt, it seems to us, should sign the soldier vote bill – or at least permit it to become law without his signature, if his distaste for the strongly states’-rights character of the Congressional compromise is so strong as to deter him from an affirmative OK.

The results of his poll of the 48 governors are inconclusive. Some say their states will cooperate with the federal ballot bill. Some say they will not. Others are noncommittal or undecided.

The President has taken the position that the bill should be allowed to become law only if his survey indicates that more soldiers would be able to vote under the new measure than under the existing statute of 1942.

One trouble with this position is that the law of 1942 has been attacked as an unconstitutional infringement of states’ rights. If the constitutional challenge were pressed after a close election, the result might be a state of uncertainty that would be most awkward in the middle of a great war.

Since a truly adequate federal law is obviously impossible to obtain this session, would it not be wiser for the President to accept the compromise Congress has put together, and thus at least place squarely upon the states the responsibility for either facilitating or denying the vote to men overseas – the responsibility Congress evaded?

Pressure of public opinion might produce, before the July 15 deadline, more widespread cooperation by the states than the results of the President’s telegraphic poll indicate so far. Even if not, at least the troops from some states would have a better chance to vote – without constitutional doubts – and those from others would know where to put the blame for their inability to vote.

[NormanStewart]

Stokes: Phantom foes

By Thomas L. Stokes

With Willkie in Wisconsin –
The intriguing psychological case of a young man’s political ambitions which blow now cold now hit, has intruded itself into the Wisconsin presidential primary to confuse further the situation of Wendell Willkie who is stumping this state in the interest of renomination as Republican presidential candidate.

The young man is 36-year-old Harold Stassen, three times governor of neighboring Minnesota, now flag officer of Adm. Halsey in the South Pacific. LtCdr. Stassen is having a hard time deciding whether he should be a naval officer or a candidate for President, just as another young man, a few years older, is having trouble deciding whether he wants to keep on being governor of New York or wants to run for President, meaning Thomas E. Dewey.

Wendell Willkie has no doubts. He wants to be President and he is out here weaving up and down and across this state, and weaving and shouting in his characteristic oratorical manner from every platform he can find vacant for a few minutes, to that end.

But the young men who are undecided keep bobbing up.

Both of them have been entered in the Wisconsin primary April 4 by their friends, as has Gen. MacArthur, to make this a four-man contest. Governor Dewey tried to pull his delegates out, but a majority of them wouldn’t be pulled. Publicly he has said he is not a candidate.

Dictates statement in street

Now comes Cdr. Stassen who says in a letter to Secretary of the Navy Knox made public in Washington, that he is not a candidate, but would accept the nomination by the Republican convention. He thus takes a position in a category a degree above Governor Dewey in the strange and mystifying categories which are developing in this political campaign. It would take more than a soothsayer to explain just where some of the candidates stand, including, of course, Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Cdr. Stassen’s letter was one of those minor political bombshells when it was dumped, without warning, into Mr. Willkie’s caravan as it hurried from hither to thither. It caught him at Appleton, as he was leaving the college chapel where he had spoken to the students. He was obviously surprised, but it didn’t take him long to come back.

He hopped out of his auto when it got to the hotel a few blocks away, called reporters about him. And there, in the middle of the street, while the citizens stood gaping, he dictated a statement.

He said he couldn’t tell whether “Governor” Stassen was a candidate or not. Anybody who is a candidate should discuss the issues and if he is not in a position to do so – as Cdr. Stassen obviously is not – then he should withdraw from the race. It was blunt, and no mistake.

Common ambition divides them

Just before that, in the college chapel, Mr. Willkie had told off both Gen. MacArthur and Cdr. Stassen by saying that when he, himself, went to war in 1917, he devoted himself “entirely to that cause, knowing I could not possibly understand or do anything about outside issues until the war was over.”

Harold Stassen was Mr. Willkie’s floor manager at the 1940 convention. He advocates, both domestically and internationally, a program similar to Mr. Willkie. The two cooled off in their relations when both became ambitious for the 1944 nomination.

Logically, the two belong on the same side in the brewing fight within the Republican Party. But a common ambition divides them.

The young men are causing Mr. Willkie lots of trouble while they make up their minds.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 23, 1944)

7 states accept federal ballot

40 may spurn it; one unreported

Washington (UP) –
Formal replies from all except one state showed today that only seven governors have given President Roosevelt definite assurance they will permit overseas servicemen from their states to use the federal war ballot if the President signs the pending soldier vote bill.

Only South Carolina remained to be heard from after the White House announced that replies had been received yesterday from Texas, Tennessee, Wyoming, Michigan and Oregon. Of these, only Texas Governor Coke Stevenson gave flat assurance that his state would permit use of the federal ballot.

Two take stand

Meanwhile, North Dakota and Nevada, which previously were undecided, indicated they probably would not permit use of the federal ballot.

Mr. Roosevelt, still nursing a head cold and confined to his study, perused the 47 replies to determine whether he should sign or veto the bill. He must act by midnight of March 31 or the measure becomes law without his signature.

State lineup

Here is how the states stand on the federal ballot issue:

• Definitely will accept: Seven.
• Will not accept: 15.
• Probably will not accept: Eight.
• Will make efforts to permit use of federal ballot: 13.
• Will use only if necessary: Two.
• Undecided: Two.
• Unreported: One.

President Roosevelt has received telegrams from 856 individuals asking that he veto the bill and telegrams from four persons urging him to sign it, the White House said.

[NormanStewart]

Willkie defies GOP elders, draws his largest crowd

Sheboygan, Wisconsin (UP) –
Wendell Willkie continued his pre-convention swing of Wisconsin last night as he addressed the largest audience of his delegate-getting campaign despite refusal of local Republican Party leaders, reportedly favorable to Governor Thomas E. Dewey, to sponsor his appearance.

More than 5,000 persons attended the meeting after young GOP organizations leaders assumed arrangements for the rally.

Mr. Willkie lashed out at isolationist elements in Wisconsin and the Midwest and against charged that Robert R. McCormick, publisher of The Chicago Tribune, was subversive to the nation’s welfare.

The 1940 Republican standard-bearer called for the election of a GOP slate of delegates from Wisconsin that would prove that “the Republican Party wants America to assume its true position in the world.”

Denies bid to Smith

The presidential aspirant asserted that unless such action is taken, the Republicans cannot win.

Mr. Willkie said:

I want to see the Republican Party not only win in 1944, but I want to see the Republican Party deserve to win.

In an earlier address at Manitowoc, Wisconsin, the candidate branded as a falsehood the statement by Gerald L. K. Smith that Willkie agents had offered the America First Party leader “anything you want” to cooperate with the Willkie campaign.

Mr. Willkie said:

No authorized agent of mine ever approached Smith. In Detroit, last June, when his crowd picketed the hotel at which I stopped, I thanked him for his opposition and expressed the hope it would continue.

8-point program given

Mr. Willkie proposed an eight-point program for the employment of returning servicemen and displaced war workers.

The program embodies a post-war tax program to encourage individual initiative and incentive; prompt liquidation of war contracts; a political atmosphere not hostile to business; vigorous enforcement of anti-trust laws, and maintenance of a high wage level.

Also included are plans for the protection of farmers against a downward price spiral; the joint cooperation of world nations for increased trade and commerce, and a competent national administration working for efficiency and economy in government and unity of the people.

Willkie loses ground in poll of delegates

Chicago, Illinois (UP) –
Wendell Willkie lost ground as a Republican presidential choice in the last three polls conducted among 1940 GOP National Convention delegates, and revealed today by James S. Kemper, president of the Lumbermens Mutual Casualty Company.

The poll showed an improvement in the standings of Governor Thomas E. Dewey, Governor John Bricker and Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

Mr. Dewey maintained his first-place spot with 66.6% of the vote, while Mr. Willkie polled 15.7%, Mr. Bricker 14% and Gen. MacArthur 3.7%.

Governor Earl Warren of California was top choice among the last convention’s delegates as the vice-presidential candidate.

[NormanStewart]

Next inauguration slated for television broadcast

Hollywood, California (UP) –
The next presidential inauguration and possibly the Democratic and Republican nominating conventions will be broadcast by television, Niles Trammell, president of NBC, said today.

He said:

Television is now definitely in the cards. Families will be able to buy television sets for $100 to $200 after the war.

NBC has invested $10 million in television research and will spend another $10 million in post-war expansion, Mr. Trammell said.

[NormanStewart]

Stokes: Middle-of-road

By Thomas L. Stokes

With Willkie in Wisconsin –
Wendell L. Willkie is carefully building up, in his Wisconsin primary campaign, a middle-of-the-road philosophy designed to attract the large independent vote.

Upon this he is resting his chief claim for renomination as Republican presidential candidate.

Mr. Willkie is frank about his objective. As he describes it, the only way the party can win is to adopt a forward-looking program, both domestically and internationally, to appeal to the independent vote.

He estimates that vote as between 35 and 40 percent of the electorate. That seems high. But polls show a much larger percentage of voters undecided this year than usual, which indicates a greater degree of independence.

His is a difficult task. He is trying to show, on the one hand, that he is not a New Dealer, not still a Democrat, not “another Roosevelt” and, on the other, that he is not an old-line GOP-type Republican.

When he arrived here, he found the air full of talk that he is not a real Republican. He has been dangling these rumors before his audiences – rumors, as he describes them, that “I’m a carbon copy of Roosevelt,” that I’m in league with Roosevelt,” that “I’m trying to help the administration.”

He says:

I’ve never talked politics with President Roosevelt in my life.

Not Democrat or New Dealer

Then he reads his bill of particulars in proof that he’s not a Democrat or New Dealer.

On foreign policy, he specifies, he has disagreed in a number of instances with the administration, including most recently the Polish question. He even went so far as to accuse the administration of having no foreign policy.

On domestic policy, he charges the administration with poor administration and the President with having a Cabinet of “yes men.” Outstanding men are needed, he says. He holds up two Cabinet members as horrible examples – Secretary of Agriculture Wickard and Secretary of Labor Perkins.

The independent commissions in Washington, he says, should be more independent. They are too much under the executive thumb.

He saves his heaviest attack for the “power complex” which he attributes to President Roosevelt and the administration, and he describes the New Deal regime as being “tired and cynical,” with a supreme belief that they know what is good for everybody in the country. This, he concedes, is often a sincere belief, but the egotism of it he deplores as the result of people being too long in power.

Tempers criticism of New Deal

He tempers his criticism of the New Deal by admitting that it has achieved some worthwhile reforms. He speaks harshly of those who are against everything just to be against, who react adversely to everything the administration does.

He says:

They are not thinkers – they are just pathological.

On the other hand, he denounces stand-pat Republicanism as bitingly as any Democrat ever did, and, if he should get nominated, President Roosevelt, or any of his campaign speakers, would be able to quote him at length without bothering to coin any new phrases.

He tells time after time, here in Wisconsin where isolationism was so prevalent, how he fought for Lend-Lease and he takes credit for helping to get the bill through Congress, though 80% of the Republican Party leadership, he says, was against it.

In telling an audience at Manitowoc yesterday that they must “bear in mind always that the objective of the party is to advance social relations,” he said:

I’m anxious to remove the impression that the Republican Party is a brutal, cold party that does not recognize social obligations.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (March 24, 1944)

In Washington –
President hints he won’t sign soldier bill

May let it become law without signature

Washington (UP) –
President Roosevelt indicated today that he will permit the new soldier vote bill to become law with or without his signature. He said he expects to issue a statement on it about the middle of next week.

If he planned to veto the bill, he would have to send Congress a message explaining his disapproval. In response to a news conference inquiry whether he contemplated a statement or a message to Congress, he specifically said it would be a statement.

He said that his decision on the measure, calling for use of a federal ballot only by those servicemen whose home states specifically validate such a tally, depended on whether he found more service personnel could vote under existing law or under the bill.

President Roosevelt’s soldier vote poll among the 48 governors was completed when South Carolina Governor Olin D. Johnston said his would not accept the proposed federal war ballot for servicemen.

A final tabulation showed that 16 states definitely will not accept the federal ballot and eight probably will not.

The poll indicates that half the states are virtually committed against the administration-endorsed federal ballot.

Only seven states definitely will permit use of the federal ballot, while 12 others have indicated they might. Three states are doubtful and two are undecided.

[NormanStewart]

Stokes: Political feud

By Thomas L. Stokes

Milwaukee, Wisconsin –
A human-interest drama, as old as men and politics, is being played here as an accompaniment to the Wisconsin presidential primary.

It concerns the personal relations of two prominent political figures, once staunch allies, now divided by ambition.

One is Wendell L. Willkie, who is moving about this state, like a circuit-riding evangelist, seeking to aroused the people to elect his slate of delegates in the April 4 primary so that he may continue to seek renomination as Republican presidential candidate. He is warming up. The hair is beginning to fall down over his eyes.

The other is the much younger Harold Stassen – he is 36 – thrice-elected governor of neighboring Minnesota, now a lieutenant commander on the staff of Adm. Halsey in the Pacific.

Wendell Willkie is the once-defeated presidential candidate who is trying to comeback.

LtCdr. Stassen is the younger man who, like youth forever, thinks it is now his turn.

With that idea his friends entered him in this primary against the older man he helped four years ago, despite the fact that he had removed himself from politics to go into the service.

Perceptible coolness develops

The story begins back in the spring of 1940 when the strapping Governor of Minnesota became interested in the aspirations of Wendell Willkie to become President. Mr. Stassen had been selected as keynote speaker of the 1940 convention and he became a figure in the convention.

At the appropriate, dramatic moment he came out for Mr. Willkie. His skill as floor manager of the Willkie campaign was quite a factor, it was generally recognized, in the victory against some of the shrewdest political operators in the party. In the campaign, that followed Governor Stassen did yeoman service.

He was reelected governor. There began to be talk of him for 1944. A perceptible coolness developed between the two men. Mr. Willkie never for a moment gave up the idea of renomination and he worked at it constantly. But the young man had ideas of his own. He let Mr. Willkie know that he was now on his own.

Governor Stassen’s stature grew when he was reelected a third time, revealing vote-getting ability which the party so needs. He announced during the campaign that he was going to resign after his legislature adjourned and go into the Navy, which he did.

Meanwhile, with the aim of building up a national reputation, he made speeches and wrote magazine articles. He developed a plan of post-war world organization, with a very specific blueprint, that attracted national attention. It was reflected in the Ball-Burton-Hill-Hatch post-war resolution in the U.S. Senate. Then he left for the service.

Gives lift to campaign

His friends did not give up their dreams of him as President, nor, it seems, did he, for just the other day he put himself into the running by his letter to Secretary of the Navy Knox, saying he would accept the nomination, though he is not a candidate, and he would ask to be retired to make a campaign if the convention picked him. this gave a lift to his campaign here.

Mr. Willkie resented this show of ambition by his one-time ally, and revealed it in his statement of reaction.

Likewise, LtCdr. Stassen’s friends here resented Mr. Willkie’s demand that the young man withdraw from the race, since he could not be here to discuss the issues. They point to his record and his fulsome discussion of national issues before he went away.

The irony of this rivalry between the older man trying to come back and the young man who wants his chance, is that both attract the same sort of support here, and each probably will hurt the other by splitting that vote.

It recalls, too, another famous political feud, between an older man who wanted to come back and a younger man who wanted his chance. The name of one was Alfred E. Smith. The name of the other was Franklin D. Roosevelt.

[NormanStewart]

Willkie scores primary foes

Kenosha, Wisconsin (UP) –
A few years in public office does not necessarily qualify a man for the Presidency, Wendell Willkie told an audience here yesterday in an attack on three of his opponents for the Republican presidential nomination.

Mr. Willkie aimed his remarks at backers of New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey, Ohio Governor John W. Bricker and former Governor of Minnesota LtCdr. Harold E. Stassen.

Measure personalities?

Mr. Willkie said:

I hear it said that the Republican Party should sit down and measure personalities and then select a candidate on the basis of his experience in public office.

It is suggested that some man who may have served one, two, three, four, five or six years as a governor is qualified for the Presidency, irresponsible of his stand on issues.

If followed to its logical conclusion, such an argument would require the reelection of President Roosevelt because he has already held three terms, Mr. Willkie added.

Too much experience

He said:

No one has ever said as much experience as Mr. Roosevelt and I hope no one ever again has as much.

Mr. Willkie, making a statewide tour on behalf of his slate of convention delegates at the April 4 primary, spent the remainder of his speaking time criticizing anti-Willkie forces which claim he “is in league with President Roosevelt.”