MR. ROOSEVELT AND THE WHITE HOUSE
By S. K. RATCLIFFE • WAsins:Glxix, February.
• The presidential candidates will be nominated four months hence. The election falls on November 3rd. The interval is long enough for almost .anything to happen, and no one who considers the last national poll will be disposed to underestimate the element of chance in _this year's contest. In 1931 Mr. Roosevelt's. .popular. victory was greater than in 1932. In .1986 any inquirer who should make the mistake of confining himself to the Pressof the great cities and the associations of business men could easily be led to infer that the President is already defeated. The political climate, east of Chicago and St. Louis at all events, has changed during the past twelve months to an extraordinary degree, and the change, of course, is the more noticeable because of the President's unique position during the first 18 months of his term. Congress turned against Calvin Coolidge, Congress and the country turned against Mr. Hoover. But neither of those Presidents ever approached the popularity enjoyed by Mr. Roosevelt. in 1983-4. The harshness and violence of the feeling against the President. throughout the business world today is not unlike that poured out against Woodrow Wilson in 1920. And yet three years ago, Franklin Roosevelt saved American business, with the banks, and investment houses, from utter disaster. His friends in that world would seem now to be no more than a scattered remnant. The newspapers of the Eastern States steadily encourage the view that the tide of public.. sentiment is mounting against the Democratic Administration. The Republicans Olen, you would conclude, must be cheerful, while the President's supporters are increasingly anxious.
But that is certainly not What one finds between New York and: Washington. • The political campaign has opened at a far too early date. Al Smith's speech in Washington on January 25th was broadcast over the whole country.. _It made a greater stir than any speech within living _ memory delivered against a reigning President in advance, of the campaiguptoper. It was followed imme- diately by four or five others of similar length, by aspirants t9 the Presidency, all 'heard on the air, and all alike being accorded Ihe, dubious advantage of verbatim publication in the daily papers._ Over here, of course, is publication on a scale such as the great political orators of the past could not have imagined. These speeches before the battle, we may certainly assume. are listened to by a vast multi- tude ; they are even read by great numbers.. But what can they be said to amount to, several months before the presidential candidates are (-flown and the party platforms take shape ?
It. is interesting to note that so far the firing is almost all from one side. Mr. Roosevelt does not. answer, and evidently has no intention of being drawn in. lie knows that his opponents, especially if they are thinking of office, must keep to a negative line 'of attack ; or else that if, like Governor Landon of Kansas, they arc courageous enough to hint at a social policy, a general likeness to the New Deal must be apparent. Although Al Smith declared that there was only one man who Should or could reply to him. the President made no sigh, and no one can suppose that he is under any temptation to do so. Al himself, the former Democratic champion, is not a candidate, and it has been universally remarked that his present associates. the opulent supporters of the non-party Liberty League, make strange companions for the man who as Governor of New York and opponent Of Mr. Hoover came nearer to being what we in England should recognise as a radical progressive than any other head of a great American party. Mr. Roosevelt knows that this opponent is mast effectively answered by the Al Smith of seven years ago. The deadly parallel, said a conspicuous Washington correspondent the other day, is a game that is going to be played this year against every man in the field but no one has more cause to fear it than Al Smith, once the most formid-. able fighter on the President's own side.
As for the Republicans who have thrown themselves thus early into the fray, there is no need to treat their speeches as of any acecnmt, for reasons that are perfectly well understood. • The one important figure among them, Senator Borah, will not be considered when the nominating convention meets in Cleveland. He is over 70, and is the lone wolf of Washington ; he has never led even the smallest group. And if any one of the others now aiming at the Republican nomination should secure it—for this year almost anything in the Grand Old Party is imaginable the choice will have been made for one reason and one alone : hecausethe managers of the party. have agreed upon flair man. Awl yet the Supreme Court is making the greatest of constitutional issue.~ a reality. What an extraordinary opportunity for fighting the 1936 election on American finufamcntals The central point to note at the present stage is this : that within the party opposed to the Roomweltian Administration there is _going on a terrific struggle for the control of the party machine. The general assumption among Republican politicians is still that in November the New Deal will win and Mr. Roosevelt be re-elected. What matters in 1936 is the light for the mastery of the machine. One point of fresh and peculiar interest. The presidential campaign will be fought mainly over the radio, and already the aerial battle has begun to yield its surprises. So far Al Smith and Senator Borah alone among the combatants have given thought to the microphone ; the others are making difficulties for themselves and arousing all sorts of suspicions. They deliver long, heavy, or elaborate discourses. Mr. Hoover, for example, has markedly altered his style. His radio 'speeches contain paragraphs of literary artifice, and are lightened' by 'an occasional anecdote oddly out of character with the President America knew. Let the politician beware, for the radio listener is unmerciful. He wants to know who is the author of the stuff he has just turned off.
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