Cabinet to regain powers under Truman leadership
Roosevelt’s group merely carried out policies which ere decreed by President
By Charles T. Lucey, Scripps-Howard staff writer
WASHINGTON – A reemergence of the President’s cabinet as a stronger, more influential part of the government is one of the first changes forecast for President Truman’s administration.
The reasons for this flow from the vast differences in personality and characteristics between Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman.
Mr. Roosevelt came to Washington a dominant, powerful figure, full of ideas for his New Deal in American social progress. He himself and the little group of brain-trusters about him developed the policies and his cabinet took a secondary role.
Cabinet members didn’t formulate such policy, they were instead administrators of departments which carried out policies Mr. Roosevelt himself decreed. The President was always regarded as being pretty much his own Secretary of State, even when Cordell Hull held that office, and in considerable degree this held for the other cabinet departments.
But with President Truman, those who know him believe, the story will be different.
Good record
Mr. Truman comes into the presidency with a record as the capable and courageous head of a Senate War Investigating Committee. which has done a superior job. But, say his friends, he realizes well that there are many areas in the vast field of government in which he has had little experience, and here he will rely heavily on men who know these subjects.
Hence Cabinet members and agency heads will have greater influence in their own right than in the last 12 years, it is reasoned, and so some personnel changes are being predicted.
James F. Byrnes flew in from South Carolina to meet the President yesterday and he said afterward that, as private citizen James F. Byrnes he had offered his help to Mr. Truman. Already the signs point to his being Secretary of State to succeed Edward R. Stettinius.
Hannegan for Walker?
President Truman, in the first hour after Mr. Roosevelt’s death had become known here, asked the present Cabinet to remain. But changes are considered pretty certain. At this stage, it is hardly more than speculation, but the names of fervent New Dealers like Secretary of Labor Perkins, Secretary of the Interior Ickes and Attorney General Biddle are always at the top in this speculation.
Another shift frequently mentioned as possible would put Democratic National Chairman Robert E. Hannegan into Postmaster General Frank Walker’s place.
Wallace’s position
Henry Wallace is expected to stay as Secretary of Commerce. But for a long time, the liberal group in the Roosevelt camp has talked up Mr. Wallace as the man they want to support for the presidency in 1948. If this move ripens into something approaching an obvious candidacy, it probably would be difficult for Mr. Wallace to remain in the Truman Cabinet.
Mr. Roosevelt always had a little group of close-in advisers between him and the Cabinet – Tommy Corcoran, Ben Cohen, Ray Moley and others in the early days, and Harry Hopkins and Judge Sam Rosenman in later days. Often Cabinet members resented it, but couldn’t do much about it. The odds are now that many of the old FDR advisers will fade from the scene.
On his first day as President, Mr. Truman went back to Capitol Hill to have lunch with his Senate colleagues, and that, too, betokens a new trend – closer relations between the White House and the Congress.