"Ageless" New Deal

The Fourth Term campaign was officially launched.

Southern Governors milled all week in the lobbies of Washington's Mayflower and Statler Hotels. One Governor emerged from the smog of cigar smoke and politicking long enough to sum up: "We go into meetings to cuss him--but we just can't figure out any other answer than FDR in 1944."

Unanimously and amid cheers, the Democratic National Committee, also meeting in Washington, earnestly "solicited" Franklin Roosevelt to continue as "the great world leader." New national chairman named to succeed Postmaster General Frank C. Walker: Missouri's young, professional Robert E. Hannegan (TIME, Jan. 24). Convention city: Chicago. Campaign theme: twelve years of Roosevelt v. twelve years of oldtime G.O.P. "normalcy." Now, Committeemen muttered grimly, lukewarm Democratic Congressmen who have been sniping at the New Deal and then coasting into office on the Roosevelt coattails will have to come to the aid of the Party.

At the annual $100-a-plate Jackson Day dinner (terrapin soup, breast of capon, burgundy), speakers and audience also took it for granted that Franklin D. Roosevelt is the only Democrat who can win in 1944. Second place on the ticket was the only puzzle. Friends of Paul McNutt moved energetically among the guests. The stock of House Speaker Sam Rayburn (who spoke in the President's regular spot at Jack son Day dinners) went up perceptibly. But by the time Vice President Henry Wallace rose to affirm that the "ageless" New Deal was far from dead, big & little Democrats were ready to admitit: if the President insists on Henry Wallace again, even Southerners and Midwesterners, who like him least, will have to take him. Cried Henry Wallace: "The President has never denied the principles of the New Deal and he never will. They are a part of his very being. Roosevelt, God willing, will in the future give the New Deal a firmer foundation than it has ever had before."

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