Reading Eagle (August 23, 1944)
Pegler: Debate
By Westbrook Pegler
New York –
A studious observation of the controversies of the last few years in our country bring it home to me that we no longer debate, if we ever did in my time, but confine ourselves to claim, or boast, and accusation. That is to say, in an ancient political phrase, we point with pride and view with alarm. But seldom, even in Congress, are issues actually debated.
A New Deal orator or journalist will say, for example, that President Roosevelt is a great friend of labor and cite the Wagner Act as proof of his militant love for the working man. He presumes that it will be conceded that the Wagner Act is all that he says it is. Other men and women, of contrary opinion, might like to argue that this law is dangerous to labor, meaning the people who work for wages, although a great boon to the professional organizer and union politician and to the New Deal party.
But the question is never debated, head-on. The New Dealer makes his claim in the course of a speech or article and rushes on to insist that therefore Mr. Roosevelt should have the workers’ votes.
The one who insists that the Wagner Act deliberately exposes workers to oppression, exploitation and intimidation by the union and that behind it all is a cunning scheme to hitch labor in chains to Mr. Roosevelt’s chariot, does so in another form, over another hookup or in another publication. The point is that they never meet in public, whether on platform or printed page, and argue the issues in detail, speaking strictly to the subject, as Huey Long used to say.
In that form or oratory which passes for debate, Huey was a master, himself. For that matter, he was a great debater in the true meaning of the word, as good lawyers agreed who heard his argument before the 1932 Democratic Convention. But in speaking to the whole public. Huey actually won over multitudes by showing contempt for their intelligence. Thus, in one oration over the air he got his best effect by smearing Hugh Johnson as a chocolate soldier who had never snapped a cap. This was unfair and irrelevant. It was unfair because everyone who knew Johnson knew he was not a dandy, or chocolate soldier but downright slovenly and that one of the great disappointments of his life in the Army had been his inability to get overseas with a command. But the whole reference had absolutely nothing to do with the subject under discussion.
In one of big Bill Thompson’s campaigns in Chicago, a rather austere opponent who had been sticking to the issues patiently and conscientiously in an effort to arouse the people to intelligent consideration, found all his earnest presentation offset by Thompson’s ribaldry. Thompson said his opponent had egg on his necktie, which may have been true, but still had no bearing on the subject. Finally, Thompson’s opponent let fly with a roar one night that Bill had the hide of a rhinoceros and the brain of a baboon. That wowed them, although it did not win for him. But it touched Thompson more than anything else that had been said of him in the campaign.
I have been told that a Southern Senator first won his seat by campaigning in an old Model-T flivver in misfit clothes and waving at the crowds a bill of fare from one of the expensive Washington hotels which listed such luxuries as caviar at $3 a portion and steak at $8 for four. He would explain that caviar was just nothing but fish eggs and imported from Red Russia at that, and point out that honest, God-fearing people, were lucky to sell a cow, on the hoof, for $8. I am not sure that he was selling out his constituents to “the interests” so as to be able to buy imported fresh eggs at $3 an ounce. The whole idea was one of suggestion. The successful candidate, incidentally, is a man who has been noted for his fastidious dress and luxurious living in Washington in the years since he was first elected.
During the convention of the two big parties in Chicago, many speakers sounded off on many subjects, promising or condemning. But the only possibly way to weigh the opposing claims and charges was to wait until the Democrats were through and then go back over the text in the papers which, of course, nobody did. Not a word was said in defense or answer in either convention. Every speaker just claimed, promised or attacked, with no facilities provided for disproof.
Debate is abandoned in our politics, unless you count those squalling radio forums in which the speakers seldom have a chance to prepare arguments and are subject to hecklement with loaded questions.