Politics in Crisis

Last week Franklin Roosevelt watched the People. Perhaps excepting Adolf Hitler, no man of his time knew so well how to read what he saw, guide his acts by what he read. And the People watched the President. Of all the great peoples on earth, only they were utterly free to look, listen, judge, speak. Men and women called upon their President to be statesman, peacemaker, warrior. He was none of these. As in no other week since he entered the White House, he was the President of a political democracy, a ruling servant who could safely do no more, go no farther down his chosen road than the people were willing to allow.

With the President's great powers he could arouse, shape, channel the emotions of the People towards his ends. With the immense responsibility those powers entailed, he was in duty bound to state his ends clearly, hold himself in check in so far as those ends were not the manifest ends of the U. S. President Roosevelt's ends were known, definite, unneutral: by every means short of war,1) to help Great Britain and France win their war, and 2) to drive Adolf Hitler and Hitlerism from the world. He defined these aims well before World War II began, when many thought that in foretelling the Crisis and its ripening into war, he was whistling for the wind. More eloquent than any poll of the public temper last week was the conclusion of Franklin Roosevelt that he could not prudently restate his ends. Up to last week he had accompanied them with assurances of his hope and belief that the U. S. could stay out of war. Sensitive to a nation sensitized by the fact of war, he conveyed one impression last week: that the U. S. will stay out of war.

Mr. Roosevelt's people in their freedom to be diverse and perverse and confused were afraid of their confusion. In their unease they perforce seized upon familiar precepts and standards whereby to judge themselves and their President. Precepts frequently stated, standards often used may become cliches. Crisis cliches are as likely as any others to be hardily true, are just as likely to be tired symbols of what once was truth. The people with their many voices and no single voice have tried and tested two crises cliches.

The President here & now should renounce a third term. So said Alfred M. Landon last fortnight; so said Michigan's isolationist, Republican Senator Vandenberg last week. "I heartily agree with the President that politics should be adjourned," Mr. Landon had said. "But I submit that he himself should make the first move in that direction by removing the biggest stumbling block of all ... namely, the third term issue."

That the U. S. people in principle oppose third terms for their Presidents is a cliche so long accepted as to be a maxim, although it has never been tested by ballot. It now has a special meaning: a candidate for a second reelection, potential or declared, cannot be a good President in crisis; he may even use the crisis to forward his ambitions.

Mr. Roosevelt neither renounced a third term, gave the slightest indication that he proposes to do so, nor explained himself. He therefore could hardly object when others presumed to explain. The most cogent explanation offered last week was by Columnist David Lawrence, no New Dealer. Said he: "President Roosevelt will not be a candidate for a third term, but he will select his own time for making such an announcement. ... To renounce a third term now ... (in order) to remove politics from the scene in Washington today would have just the opposite effect--to start Presidential politics going in full swing inside the Democratic Party at a time when Mr. Roosevelt is making a supreme effort for unity."

Alf Landon and Arthur Vandenberg in asking Franklin Roosevelt to declare himself assume: 1) that he alone may determine whether he shall run again, and 2) that a majority of the people wish him to choose not to run. As it has shifted all other perspectives, World War II this week altered even these deep-rooted assumptions. Gallup pollsters reported that 43% of the voters now want Mr. Roosevelt to run again, that 52% would vote for him "if the war is still going on next year."

The greater the number of people who advocate a third term the more intense will become the opposition of millions who do not want it. Thus the issue comes alive as never before--particularly for those citizens who had dismissed the whole thing with the thought that Franklin Roosevelt could not win if he tried. Montana's vote-wise Senator Burton Kendall Wheeler, a Democrat who holds no consistent brief for the President, gloomily observed in Boston: "We are likely to have Roosevelt again, whether there is war or not."

The President should set up "a national government" to run the U. S. So said Pundits Walter Lippmann and Frank Kent in the first days of World War II. Certainly in pre-war months there had been a formidable swing away from Franklin Roosevelt and his domestic policies. And as certainly in recent weeks there has been a desire for national collusion to mend preserve democracy. But up to this week nothing had impelled the President to call Herbert Hoover, Alf Landon, and dissenting Democrats to rule with him. For one excellent reason: unlike Britain's the two-party U. S. Government does not lend itself to coalition in the executive branch. As stated by the Wall Street Journal: "to suggest such a thing is ... to overlook the all-important fact that, despite a President's great constitutional powers and official and personal influence, it is Congress that gives us the main framework of our federal government."

Until and unless Crisis deepens beyond anything confronting the U. S. at peace, the people must continue to look to unadjourned politics and politicians for Crisis government. Franklin Roosevelt of necessity must continue to deal politically with politicians in his Administration and in the opposition. But if the U. S. people cannot have "a national government," they can expect their President to think, act, speak in national terms.

And they expect as much of the President's opposition. Last week the head hired man of the Republican Party, its National Committee Chairman John D. M. Hamilton, supplied the first definition of its position in Crisis. Said he in Manhattan : "All of us have heard a great deal . . . to the effect that politics ought to be adjourned in the present emergency. . . . There is ... what I shall call the politics of principles. . . . Let me say most emphatically that that kind of politics should not be adjourned by the Republican Party at this time. ... It is the kind of politics that hears and understands and obeys the voice of the people every day. Heaven help us if that kind of politics is ever adjourned in these United States!"

By turns grim and gay, the President last week of course did not adjourn the political business of Government in Crisis. He:

P:Watched bulletins on the state of Carter Glass's health. A fortnight ago, the "Old Dominion Fireball" went to the White House for the first time in many months. Last week, as Virginia's Glass shook bronchitis from his 81-year-old bones, the story of that visit came out. Glass thought Franklin Roosevelt's embargo repeal address the best speech he'd ever made, and told him so. The President slapped the back of his longtime foe, said: "Well, it took a war to get us together again. I hope it will take an earthquake to separate us."

P:Sternly commanded U. S. owners of crude rubber, manganese, chromium, other materials which the U. S. Army & Navy would need for war, not to sell their stocks to foreign bidders.

P:Announced that he will withhold from publication a forthcoming report by his soon to be disbanded War Resources Board (see p. 16). Reason: the U. S. is not going to war: hence the public would not be interested in plans for war.

P:Received Canada's new Minister to Washington, Loring C. Christie. (Reminded by newsmen that Mr. Roosevelt interprets the Monroe Doctrine to protect Canada as well as South America from foreign invasion, Minister Christie said his country can care for itself.)

P:Announced (through Secretary Steve Early) that no nominations will be sent to the patronage-hungry Senate until it has disposed of Neutrality revision (see p. 14).

P:Coldly implied that the U. S. if asked will not front for Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin in their peace putsch.

P: Let Cordell Hull announce that the U. S. does not recognize the Russo-German conquest of Poland, continues to recognize the old Polish Government (now ensconced in Paris).

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