F.D.R. in 1943

Ever since Franklin Roosevelt began lopping off one New Deal head after the other, professional liberals have viewed his shift to the right with bewildered alarm. Last week the New Republic's intellectual George Soule, who is known in liberal circles for his antiseptic aloofness, quietly dissected Franklin Roosevelt's recent behavior, pointed toward some cool conclusions. Wrote dispassionate Pundit Soule:

"President Roosevelt . . . will long be celebrated as the leader under whom the period of reform known as the New Deal was carried through, and who saw, many months before the people as a whole, the necessity of defeating the Axis. . . .

"The key to Mr. Roosevelt is that he is a politician--a politician not in the sense of invidious epithet, but in the sense of the name of the profession skilled in gaming, keeping and wielding political power, often for praiseworthy ends. . . .

"The New Deal was not planned in the minds of brain-trusters, and still less in Mr. Roosevelt's mind; indeed, there was precious little planning about it. ... Much of it was improvised to meet current agitations and demands. . . .

"Those who have wrongly assumed that Mr. Roosevelt is a spotless knight-errant of progressivism have acquired the habit of blaming subordinates for actions which they dislike. ... As a matter of fact the President is personally responsible for more that goes on in his administration than those friendly critics often suspect. . . . Foreign policy [is] an example. . . . The concessions of his administration to expediency in foreign affairs might have been expected in view of similar concessions in domestic affairs. . . .

"The mistake has been to rely too much on the Great Leader. . . . This dependence on authority is the exact complement of the irrational hatred of 'that man in the White House.' . . . The progressive movement is weak indeed if there is only one man in the country who can carry its banner. Worse things might happen to it in the long run than defeat of a fourth-term candidate, if that were necessary to stimulate it to ... a policy more fundamental than to continue to place a single champion in the Presidential chair."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.