The "Turnip Day" Session

Was there really a pressing national emergency? Harry Truman said there was. But who was talking--the President or the politician? Harry Truman's call for a special session of Congress was made at a political convention; it would be judged largely on its political motives and for its political effect. Harry Truman, who, like all Presidents, occupies a dual position as head of the Government and leader of a political party, had used his powers as President to further his party's fortunes.

"This Petulant Ajax." The maneuver was almost unprecedented. Not since 1856 had a President called back Congress in an election year.* It was a daring stroke of political chicanery. For the moment, at least, Harry Truman had destroyed the notion that the Republican Party would win almost by default. Like an aggressive general, he had seized the offensive at a time and place of his own choosing. If anyone had thought that the President would fight a hopeless delaying action against the Dewey panzers, it was now plain as a tank track that Harry Truman meant to go down fighting.

The cries from the opposition testified to the effectiveness of the maneuver. "This petulant Ajax from the Ozarks," warned New Hampshire's Senator Styles Bridges, would be answered by the "maddest Congress you ever saw." Southern Democrats were even hotter. Cried Georgia's Senator Walter George: "The South is not only over a barrel. It is pilloried. We are in the stocks."

The real Republican leaders were more cautious. The day after the President's call, Candidate Tom Dewey refused comment. He had already praised the record of the 80th Congress and declared that a special session would be "a frightful imposition." But the wires from Albany burned with telephone messages to House Majority Leader Charles Halleck in Rensselaer, Ind.; to Speaker Joe Martin at his summer home in Sagamore, Mass.; to other top Republican strategists. When Joe Martin finally spoke up, it was to warn: "There will be plenty of action. Like the boys at Bunker Hill, we'll wait to see the whites of their eyes."

From the 20-Yard Line. Harry Truman had taken a tremendous political gamble. One risk was that the special session might backfire on the Democrats: the Republicans might straightway haul up the President's civil rights program and let the Southern Democrats filibuster it --and the session -- to death. Another was that Republicans might run away with the session. Already in the works were Republican plans for more investigations of the Democratic Administration.

Said California's Jimmy Roosevelt: 'It's like a football game, and deciding to pass on the 20-yard line. If you connect --you're a great quarterback. If the opposition intercepts ... the quarterback is a bum."

Quarterback Truman could--and would --take credit for whatever Congress accomplished, would try hard to blame the Republicans for anything Congress failed to do.

It was aggressive partisan politics, but was it good for the nation? There was grave danger that the whole session would bog down in futile political wrangling. Said Michigan's Senator Arthur Vandenberg: "No good can come to the country from a special session of Congress which obviously stems solely from political motives." The greatest danger was that the world would misconstrue a purely domestic fight as evidence of fundamental disagreement over U.S. policies abroad.

Harry Truman had certainly stuck in his thumb and pulled out a plum. From being a fading and futile minority President he had suddenly appeared in a new and more popular guise as an effective rabble-rouser. It remained to be seen whether the U.S. would agree with him that he was really a good boy.

* When Franklin Pierce ordered Congress back to pass an Army appropriation bill.

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