Candidates and the War

"We agreed that the danger of a world-wide war crisis would rise toward a maximum between 1939 and 1940 and he thought that by that time there should be someone younger, quicker and better equipped to meet the urgencies of possible warfare without delay in the White House. But he spoke of that rather as his own personal problem than America's."--(H. G. Wells--after lunching with President Roosevelt two years ago--in Collier's, Feb. 5, 1938.)

As no indications came from the White House that the President had found his paragon, it dawned on some Republicans last week that at last they had an Issue. For seven years, while the New Deal juggernaut squnched over the political battlefield, the G. O. P. had vainly whipped up little issues, had vainly sought an issue that would stand up under fire. The G. O. P. popgun fusillade was futile, their cannons fired only blanks, their bombers dropped duds or boomerangs.

If this new Issue held up, the G. O. P. had an 80-ton tank. The New Deal has spent 60 billion dollars--seven billions on national defense--and still in an hour of peril the U. S. was weak. No Issue has to be the truth: an Issue only has to seem true. (Examples: 1928--Al Smith would let Rome run the country; 1932--Herbert Hoover would let the U. S. starve.)

Although the U. S. last week had the biggest, best peacetime Army, Navy and Air Corps in history (see p. 11), the citizenry, nightmare-ridden from two weeks of total-war news, was in no mood to listen to comforting explanations. Action was the nationwide cry. From Washington the U. S. demanded immediate speed, skill, production, results.

Democrats. Most Democratic hopefuls, numbed by the President's complete command of the 1940 nomination, contented themselves with bumbling. John Garner said nothing, mourned the ups & downs of Washington's ball club. Paul McNutt rolled back from a national tour still beating a lonesome drum. Jim Farley shook postmasters' hands. Burton K. Wheeler took a die-hard stand for Isolation. Cordell Hull, as usual, sawed wood.

Taft. Ohio's solid, glamorless Robert A. Taft, No. 1 Republican Bumbler, beetled off around the U. S. putting his foot in his mouth. Last week in St. Louis, Republicans from eight States told him of a daily-spreading Midwest sentiment for more substantial aid to the Allies. G. O. P. leaders, from Alf Landon down, had warned him to go slow on Isolationism; local chiefs had told him how delighted they were at his continued open-mindedness on foreign affairs. That night Senator Taft spoke, made his strongest appeal yet for strict U. S. neutrality, financial as well as military, in World War II.

Dewey. For months political wiseacres have poohed the rapid rise of New York's Thomas E. Dewey. Winks went around: "He looks good now, but wait till the experts work out on him." Last week two experts got to work on young Mr. Dewey. In the New Yorker, mordant Wolcott Gibbs, who believes in mixing plenty of gall with his ink, profiled Mr. Dewey enthusiastically in an article that read like a long, catlike scratch. Mr. Gibbs on Mr. Dewey:

"His face . . . has a compressed appearance, as though someone had squeezed his head in a vise. His suits are custom-made but uninteresting, and always seem a little too tight for him. . . . He is a hard man to imagine in a toga . . . whose indifference to money is such that he can remember offhand how much he was making at any given day in his life, even for singing in choirs. . . ."

In the American Mercury, in a piece titled "Thomas E. Dewey, Self-Made Myth," Benjamin Stolberg pictured Candidate Dewey as a threat to the U. S.:

". . . Dewey's emotional immaturity, his remarkably limited experience, the whole unfinished effect of his personality, are the most striking things about him.

. . . He is not so much immature as spiritually arrested, There is a touch of Goebbels about his propaganda--crass, bold and hard to nail.

". . . He is psychically, mentally and even physically tne typical Young Man of Forty. It is this type which forms the new elite of the totalitarian states, and which is dangerously on the rise in this country as well. It is the perennially 'youthful' Leader of the new bureaucracy: ruthless, opportunistic, abnormally ambitious, full of egocentric arrogance, emotionally unstable or arrested, above all radical-reactionary. . . .

"Dewey's neat little mustache looks so stagy because his face lacks the maturity to support it. It has all the depth of experience of a billiard ball.

". . . If he runs he will get the Stalinazi vote. . . . Dewey has no program, foreign or domestic, except that little Tommy wants to be President."

The two stories were the smoothest smearing jobs done since the Brain Trust worked on Paul McNutt (TIME, March 25), the most thorough on any Republican since sly old Charley Michelson took his stiletto out of Herbert Hoover's back in 1932.

This week Mr. Dewey announced his policy: abandonment of the "war on business," avoidance of foreign entanglements, support of the Monroe Doctrine.

Vandenberg. Last week, in a nation reconsidering Isolationism, Isolationist Arthur Vandenberg, to his infinite private relief, was politically nowhere. Michigan's senior Senator has long regarded the Presidency as a "crucifixion," and last week there appeared to be no national desire thus to crucify the big Michigander.

Willkie. Wendell Willkie was the first Republicandidate to seize the Big Issue. Mr. Willkie hopped aboard it and opened the throttle wide, telling hearers that the first task of the Administration was to restore private enterprise, that national defense depends mightily on a highly productive, Federally encouraged domestic economy. But Mr. Willkie still had more friends than delegates, and G. O. P. bosses were still leery of a Wall Streeter, no matter how homespun his appearance.

Hoover. To people everywhere in the world last week, men of experience looked good, and even Herbert Hoover, looked a little better. Mr. Hoover, in a broadcast from New York, drew three lessons from the past: 1) experts in manufacturing, industry, labor, transportation, agriculture are essential in a procurement program; 2) board, councils, committees are worthless: one man must control industrial production; 3) politicians must be kept out of the defense pie. Stressing unity of purpose, Mr. Hoover underlined economic regeneration of the U. S. as a prime defense requirement.

Roosevelt. Still no one had the final answer to Term III from the only man who knows the answer. But it was still on the cards that Mr. Roosevelt would be nominated at Chicago in July, unless he specifically and unequivocally declined. Many Washingtonians thought the matter settled: Brain-Trusters pondered only the problem of succession. Again the name of tough-minded Supreme Court Justice William Orville Douglas was mentioned for the Vice-Presidency on a Roosevelt ticket. Justice Douglas, still the strategic chief of the "Killer" group of the Janizariat, is not so delectable to Mr. Roosevelt's heart as Attorney General Robert H. Jackson--but he is considered more electable.

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