Exit Ed Flynn

This week Franklin Roosevelt suffered his worst political defeat since an irate Congress forced him to backtrack on packing the Supreme Court in 1937. What had at first seemed like a minor political revolt against his nomination of ex-Democratic National Chairman Edward J. Flynn as Minister to Australia turned into a rout. Faced with certain Senate rejection, Ed Flynn asked that his name be withdrawn. The President complied.

Said Ed Flynn: "I am unwilling to permit my candidacy to be made the excuse for partisan political debate in the Senate. . . . What happens to me is of no importance. . . ."

Ironically, it was the hand of another political boss that sealed Ed Flynn's doom. His rejection by the Senate had not been certain until Tennessee's Senator Kenneth McKellar announced his opposition, at the behest of Tennessee's aging Democratic Boss Edward H. Crump. What Ed Crump's reasons were remained obscure, but in whatever political revenge he achieved he had helped others express resentment at cynical politics.

It was the first time since 1889 that a President had suffered a rebuff on a diplomatic nomination: on that occasion it was a cynical Senate which turned down an able man.* For Ed Flynn it meant the loss of three jobs in three weeks--the national chairmanship, committeeman from New York, boss of The Bronx. ^

President Benjamin Harrison had nominated Murat Halstead, crusading editor of the Cincinnati Commercial Gazette as Minister to Germany. The Senate dug into his past, found he had written blistering exposes of the then common practice of buying Senatorial seats (Senators were elected by State Legislatures), and turned him down.

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