Heffernan: On Americans without a candidate
Sometimes I wonder if this presidential campaign, like that of 1940, will find Americans of my turn of mind without a candidate for the Chief Magistracy.
There have come to my desk letters from supporters of Mr. Roosevelt who say that they are against a fourth term but that the Republican Party offers no acceptable candidate against the present incumbent. There have come letters from readers who say that, although they are not satisfied with Governor Dewey, whose mobility of sentiments is already a target for New Deal attack, they would vote for a piebald puppy rather than for Roosevelt again.
Then there are others who, like myself, base their political action on these points:
-
Desire for a return of constitutional government.
-
A two-term limitation on the presidential tenure.
-
This polity pronounced by Washington and a guiding influence of our foreign policy up to President Wilson’s time: “It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.”
The quotation is from Washington’s Farewell Address.
People of my mind realize that we are in this war, that our bravest and best blood is being shed on a hundred fields, and that extrication when the cannon cease their thunders will not be a matter of easy and immediate process. We shall have to aid the other powers involved to enforce peace where force is necessary and to persuade it where persuasion is possible.
But that still can be attained, we think, without the permanent alliances which Washington considered ruinous to our government, and which if we make them, will create a constant drain on our manhood and wealth and a continuous irritation of our domestic politics and a continuous depreciation of the value of our way of life.
Our opposition to President Roosevelt is the result of the lack of correspondence of performance with profession. The campaign speeches of the last presidential campaign seem like words floating in air against the American boys on foreign fields today. And even before the war the domestic policy of the administration has been a strange commentary on this from his 1935 Message to Congress:
Continuous dependence on relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive of the national fiber. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.
We are now confronted with the strong probability that Mr. Dewey will be the Republican candidate. His 1940 addresses, which were strongly non-intervention, are at odds with his present-day declarations on national policy. But if he be the candidate, we shall find ourselves forced either to vote for him or for the continuance in office of the New Deal and the consequent obsequies of the Constitution of the United States.