"Tired of Reform"

Four years ago this summer Franklin D. Roosevelt's constant confidant and companion was Columbia University's Professor Raymond Moley. Citizens who then saw their next President for the first time saw almost as often the sharp, shrewd features of "Ray" Moley, got the definite impression that most of the facts and theories which Nominee Roosevelt was expounding on the stump originated in the teeming Moley mind. On March 4, 1933 Dr. Moley went to Washington as Assistant Secretary of State, No. 1 Brain Truster and one of the new President's most potent and intimate advisers.

Last week, with Franklin Roosevelt's second Presidential campaign about to start. Ray Moley was far from the side of his old friend and patron. Distinctly cold to the President's Tax Bill (TIME, March 23), increasingly chummy with those whom Franklin Roosevelt chooses to call "economic royalists," Dr. Moley has frequently in Vincent Astor's Today warned the New Deal to reef its sails. Last week Editor Moley used Dr. George Gallup's latest Institute of Public Opinion poll showing Governor Landon to have an electoral majority (TIME, July 20) as a peg on which to hang still another warning to Roosevelt, Farley & Co. Wrote he:

"In any straw vote the important thing to note is the trend of public opinion. The Gallup polls show a sharp nation-wide swing away from Roosevelt. In only seven States has there been a gain in his popularity. In the Middle West, the real battleground in this campaign, there has been a general subsidence in the pro-Roosevelt sentiment. . .

"Whether this startling indication of Landon's strength will influence the future strategy of the Democrats remains to be seen. If they do not deceive themselves, it will. It seemed to thoughtful people that the warlike note struck in Philadelphia, which could only be interpreted as the assurance of a continuance of Leftist reform, was unsound politically because the country was temporarily tired of reform. The Gallup poll provides impartial evidence to support the wisdom of that judgment."

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