TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/election/40elect/40elect.003

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                                                                                July 22, 1940

CAMPAIGN

Mystery Story



    Thousands of visiting Democrats and a few donkeys appeared in
Chicago last week. Most of the donkeys (on the hoof and on signs)
were soon removed. Exactly why, delegates to the Democratic
Party's 28th National Convention had to judge for themselves:
unexplained mysteries were the rule in Chicago. On a wall of the
Convention's vast (21,000 seats) Chicago Stadium, a huge picture
of a donkey was replaced by a spotlighted, grisly sketch of
Franklin Roosevelt. Assiduously distributed were 500,000 campaign
buttons, adorned not by a donkey but by a bright reed cock-o'-
the-walk and the legend: "Just Roosevelt."

     Observers said they had never seen such a convention. The
Republicans had been leaderless; the Democrats had been bossed
into apathy. They were there for just one purpose, and they knew
it -- to nominate Franklin D. Roosevelt. Those who were not on the
Democratic payroll made no secret of their discontent.

     One delegate brought a dash of vigor and verve along with
him. At otherwise abortive hearings on the Party platform (to all
intents it was written at the White House), San Antonio's gobliny
Mayor Maury Maverick prescribed for the Democratic Party "that
aggressive spirit which has made it great." He evoked the
Mavericks who pioneered in Texas: "They came praying to God and
shootin' Indians. That's the way this country was built and it's
the way it's got to be kept alive." One night -- Maury Maverick
continued -- his wife found him praying, said she was "glad that
you are praying for our boy."

     "I'm sorry to disappoint you, honey," the mayor quoted
himself, "but I'm not praying for our boy. I'm praying for the
British Navy and the Bank of England."

     But even Maury Maverick succumbed to the pall that hung over
Chicago. Said he, surveying the lacklustre scenes at the Stevens
hotel ("World's Greatest"), where the National Committee was
quartered: "This convention is like a mystery story in which
everybody knows the answer to the mystery."

     After eight years of power, the Democratic Party still had
strength. What was lacking as the convention opened in Chicago
was an outlet. Silent at the White House, remote on the Potomac,
Franklin Roosevelt had damned the only outlet, presumably would
open it in his own good time. Some of his victims cursed the
baffling indignity of their position; a few cursed the man who had
created and preserved it, simply by letting them assume instead
of know that they were there to ratify Nomination III.

     Despite all the traditional hocus-pocus of bands and
bunting, platform committees and "keynote" oratory, the forms and
panoply had no more meaning than they had had at Philadelphia,
before Wendell Willkie and his freshening forces swept the
Republicans' fog away. To the Convention's keynoter, Alabama's
William Brockman Bankhead, the 1940 campaign seemed to be nothing
more than a necessary footnote. Said he: "The minds of the
American people are now so deeply engrossed in . . . the
preservation of our established order of life and institutions,
that they will have no tolerance for the superficial banalities
of politics. An election must be held, but . . . the major
objective of both parties must by unity and solidarity of
purpose. . . ."

     Orator Bankhead's best and strongest words were reserved for
Foreign Policy (his hearers noted that he jointly credited
Franklin Roosevelt and Cordell Hull with formulating and
executing a sound policy). He quoted the President's "we will not
send our men to take part in European wars" and only by inference
did he mention, much less defend, U. S. aid to the Allies and
then to Great Britain.


July 29, 1940
PRESIDENCY
A Tradition Ends

     Midnight. A few lights gleamed in the shadowy expanse of the
White House. President Roosevelt made his way to a dungeon-like
room in the basement that was once used for diplomatic receptions
and is now used for radio broadcasts. He sat at a table facing
microphones and a small group of friends and White House
employes. The night was hot, with the dull, moist heat of
Washington midsummer that settles like a tangible weight on the
city. The President took off his coat and in a 32-minute speech
accepted the Democratic nomination for a Third Term.

     His was a difficult task. On him lay the responsibility that
no other President had faced -- that of explaining why he believed
it wise and necessary to break a tradition that had lasted
through 151 turbulent years of U. S. political life. The step
that Washington had refused to take he was at the point of
taking; the rejection of the Third Term that Jefferson had
elevated into a principle of government he was now prepared to
challenge. His task was to answer the historic objections to the
Third Term -- the tenet of democracy which holds that the great
reservoir of democratically trained citizens can always yield new
leaders; that one danger of democracy is that an ambitious
Executive may use the power of his office to keep himself in
power. As he sat in the silent White House room, his words
carrying to a silent meeting of the Democratic Convention in
Chicago, his task was also to make it clear, if clear he could
make it, why these beliefs were no longer valid, why these
dangers were no longer real, and why the objections that had been
made to the Third Term for other Presidents did not apply to him.

     With these great questions there were minor ones:

     Silence. Years ago Washington correspondents began pressing
President Roosevelt about his Third Term intentions, were put off
with answers that were sometimes jovial, often sarcastic. The
President had told his questioners to put on the dunce cap, to
stand in the corner, to cease speculating, to drop sophomoric
queries, that his intentions would be revealed at a time and
place of his own choosing.

     Last week, as the Democratic Convention got under way,
veteran, grey-haired Correspondent Merwin Browne asked at a press
conference, "I would like to ask Mr. President, in all honesty
and sincerity, why you have refrained from making known your
position on the Third Term issue." Correspondent Browne had
written and rewritten his question so that it would not provoke a
wisecracking answer; had memorized it so that he would not fumble
the asking. Replied the President: let the newspapermen listen to
the Convention broadcast; they would hear Senator Barkley make an
announcement for the President when the Convention's permanent
organization was completed. He broke into loud laughter as they
rushed off with the sensational news that the secret was out.

     But the Presidential message that night merely said the
President was not asking for the office: "The President never
had, and has not today, any desire or purpose to continue in the
office of President, to be a candidate for that office, or to be
nominated by the Convention for that office."

     Confusion. If he could answer the people, answer the
correspondents, there remained the small but important problem of
answering the Democratic National Convention. National Defense
and international affairs kept him in Washington but he was not
too busy to follow the Convention day & night by radio. Even in
his office he kept a gadget pocket radio open on his desk. When
the Convention sank into confusion after its spiritless opening,
he talked long with Harry Hopkins in Chicago, used the direct
wire from the White House to confer long with Senators Byrnes and
Barkley. When Alabama's Lister Hill, with lamenting tremolos and
quaverollos in his voice, placed the name of Franklin Roosevelt
in nomination, no sign or word betrayed Franklin Roosevelt's
emotion. But Steve Early, an accurate barometer of the
President's political feelings, groaned.

     While the candidacies of Jim Farley, Jack Garner and Millard
Tydings ran their brief, unhappy course, while the anti-Third
Term resolution was booed to the flag-draped rafters, while
delegation after delegation said its say for Franklin Roosevelt,
the President played host to a radio party of friends and trusted
helpers. In the historic study that is saturated with the
memories of critical decisions, he sat attentive beneath a
painting of John Paul Jones.

     When, on the first ballot, he was for the third time
nominated for President, he sent word to the silent, suspicious
reporters that he would have nothing to say. Not, added Steve
Early, "until he has received official notification of his
nomination; that is customary and he would like to adhere to
custom." It was 2:15 a.m.; the President went to bed.

     Delay. If he could answer the people, the press, the
Convention, there remained the problem of answering the
Democratic Party that was going into a campaign in which it would
be unseemly for the President to take an active part. From a
dimly lighted, peach-colored telephone booth in the reception
room of Chicago's Blackstone Hotel, Senator James Byrnes called
the White House, formally informed President Roosevelt that he
was the Democratic nominee. All day in Washington the White House
remained silent except for a statement that the President would
address the Convention after a Vice-Presidential nominee had been
selected. But as the night session grew bitter, as boos greeted
Henry Wallace as the President's choice for a running mate, as
balloting dragged on toward midnight, another word was given --
that the speech would be canceled or postponed if Wallace lost
the first ballot.

     At eight minutes after midnight Wallace was nominated; the
lights went out in the Chicago Stadium except for the spotlights
glaring on a grisly, grey painting of President Roosevelt; at
12:20 a.m. C.D.S.T. the President began to speak. Vice-
Presidential revolt had cut his audience -- it was 1:20
E. D. S. T. in New York; 10:20 in Denver; 9:20 in the Pacific
Coast cities. It was the nocturnal life of the U. S. that caught
his words and their intonation -- the taxi drivers, the sleepless
passengers in de luxe trains, the patrons of bars and restaurants
-- most workmen and farmers were long since asleep.

     Answer. In a melancholy, persuasive voice that sometimes
grew emotional, Franklin Roosevelt told of his reasons for
accepting the nomination:

     "It is with a very full heart that I speak tonight. . . .

     "When, in 1936, I was chosen by the voters for a second time
as President, it was my firm intention to turn over the
responsibilities of government to other hands at the end of my
term. That conviction remained with me. . . .

     "During the spring of 1939 world events made it clear . . .
that a great war in Europe had become . . .a probability. . . .

     "When the conflict first broke out last September it was
still my intention to announce clearly and simply .. that under
no conditions would I accept reelection. . . .

     "It soon became evident, however, that such a public
statement on my part would be unwise from the point of view of
sheer public interest. . . .

     "It was also my obvious duty to maintain to the utmost the
influence of this mighty nation in our effort to prevent the
spread of war, and to sustain, by all legal means, those
governments threatened by other governments which had rejected
the principles of democracy. . . .

     "The normal conditions under which I would have made public
declaration of my personal desires were gone.

     "Thinking solely of the national good and of the
international scene, I came to the reluctant conclusion that such
declaration should not be made before the National Convention.
It was accordingly made to you within an hour after the permanent
organization of the Convention."

     But, said the President, the real reason he had accepted was
that the country needed every citizen: now it was up to the
electorate to say whether or not be had made the right choice.
"During the past few months, with due congressional approval, we
have been taking steps to implement the total defense of America.
I cannot forget that in carrying out this program I have drafted
into the service of the nation many men and women . . .calling
them suddenly from their homes and their businesses. . . .
Regardless of party, regardless of personal convenience, they
came -- they answered the call. Every single one of them, with one
exception has come to Washington to serve. (Presumably Alf
Landon, who was reported to have refused a Cabinet post unless
the President rejected the Third Term.)

     ". . . But they alone could not be enough to meet the needs
of the times. . . .

     ". . . Some form of selection by draft is as necessary and
as fair today as it was in 1917 and 1918. . . .

     "Lying awake, as I have on many nights, I have asked myself
whether I have the right, as Commander in Chief of the Army and
Navy, to call on men and women to serve their country or to train
themselves to serve and, at the same time, decline to serve my
country in my own personal capacity if I am called upon to do so
by the people of my country."

     Thus President Roosevelt gave his reason both for accepting
and for having kept silent as to whether he would or would not
accept. The melancholy that had pervaded his words about his
desire to return to private life turned into sternness as he
spoke of the issues of the conflict: "It is a revolution imposed
by force of arms which threatens all men everywhere. It is a
revolution which proposes not to set men free, but to reduce them
to slavery. . . .In the face of the danger which confronts our
tie, no individual retains, or can hope to retain, the right of
personal choice which free men enjoy in times of peace." Only the
people, said the President, can draft a President "If such a
draft should be made upon me, I say, in the utmost simplicity, I
will, with God's help, continue to serve with the best of my
ability and with the fullness of my strength."

     On the grounds that an answer was necessary to the world the
President based his case. He blasted at appeasers ("I do not
recant the sentiments of sympathy with all free peoples resisting
such aggression."). He gave the Convention a promise about his
personal help in the campaign: "I shall not have the time or the
inclination to engage in purely political debate. But I shall
never be loath to call the attention of the nation to . . .
falsifications of fact which are sometimes made by political
candidates."

     He gave the Democratic Party a talking point: "If our own
Government passes to other hands next January -- untried hands,
inexperienced hands -- we can merely hope and pray that they will
not substitute appeasement. . . ."

     But he spoke most clearly and firmly in his denunciations of
tyranny and of the issue facing the U. S. in a world at war. "We
face one of the great choices of history. . . . It is the
continuance of civilization as we knew it versus the ultimate
destruction of all we have held dear -- religion against
Godlessness; the ideal of justice against the practice of force
moral decency versus the firing squad. . . ."

     So the 32nd President scrapped the Third Term tradition. Few
who heard his acceptance speech did not believe that before doing
so he had convinced himself that his decision was for the best
interests of the nation. If in the coming campaign voters are
also convinced, the tradition will be scrapped for good; if not,
it will be Franklin Roosevelt who is scrapped.

     Last week the President also:

     --Signed the Two-Ocean Navy Bill authorizing $4,000,000,000
for warships and planes.

     --Signed the Hatch Bill, prohibiting political activity to
State and municipal employes who are paid with federal funds a
prohibition reportedly violated in Chicago.

     --Asked Congress, as the Havana Conference opened, to
increase the capital and lending power of the Export-Import Bank
by $500,000,000 for loans to Latin-American countries.

     --After a 36-hour cruise on the Potomac set out for a three-
day rest at Hyde Park.


CAMPAIGN
By Acclamation

     The thin man stood by the window, fingering a cigaret,
inhaling smoke steadily in long, deep drags, his hot brown eyes
staring across Michigan Boulevard's river of traffic, across he
concrete esplanade that bridges the railroad tracks, and out to
the blue peace of Lake Michigan.

     The thin man's thoughtful eyes were tired, his scanty hair
disordered on his pallid skull. His bony shoulders drooped like a
weary farmer's, his little paunch sagged in the baggy white
trousers that flapped inches short of his ankles. Harry Hopkins
was tired, but he was happy, happy as he could be. Constantly he
smiled; often his short barking laugh broke out. The long,
tortuous road to a Third Term was nearly past its next-to-last
milestone; the Democratic Convention was being held in his
bedroom.

     The way to Harry Hopkins was well known to every Term III
Democrat: it traversed the plush gloom and sombre elegance of the
old red-brick Blackstone Hotel; down the red-brick Blackstone
Hotel; down the red-carpeted marble corridors to a spacious
sitting room of candy-striped chairs, a crystal chandelier, a
plumed, bustled lady of the English Regency, framed in the pink-
&-gilt fireplace, delicately offering all comers a symbolic
prize -- a prickly rose. In this room operated dapper young Vic
Sholis, Hopkins' secretary, and soft-spoken David K. Niles, the
Janizariat's undercover man, who engineered the biggest financial
coup of the 1936 campaign by wangling $500,000 out of John L.
Lewis' United Mine Workers.

     Off the sitting room was the real goal of the Democrats who
trod the path of Term III, a tan-walled bedroom with green-spread
twin beds, a screen a telephone wire direct to the White House.

     That very suite (308-09) was historic before Harry Hopkins'
advent: there, about 2 a.m. on the morning of June 12, 1920, a
sweating, anxious group of G.O.P. old Guardsmen had chosen to
nominate romanesque Warren Gamaliel Harding, fulfilling Harry
Daugherty's prophecy and indelibly stamping into the language a
special meaning for his phrase: ". . .smoke-filled room."

     Treading in such hallowed footsteps came the Democrats last
week. Most frequent caller was Chicago's mayor Edward J. Kelly,
smirking in gentle good will, nodding approval as his gorilla-
shaped body-guards tipped photographers off-balance as fast as
they could get set for a picture. Almost as often came bald Frank
C. Walker, oldtime White house adviser, white-haired Leo Crowley,
FDIC Chairman who became chairman of Standard Gas & Electric (and
is the new Dealers' 1942 hopeful for the Wisconsin
Governorship); Jersey City's high-collared Mayor Frank Hague; and
long procession of men who had been tentatively promised the
Vice-Presidency.

     Two men rushed in & out of the bedroom without knocking:
South Carolina's Senator Jimmy Byrnes, foxy, mellow, casual;
Florida's Senator Claude Pepper, the eloquent, scarlet-faced
swamplands slicker -- both 100%ers. Big & little Democrats came in
hordes, some humble like San Antonio's globular Maury Maverick
(who came out saying "I didn't sit down -- a small-time politician
like me wouldn't dare"), some sardonic, like massive Federal
Lender Jesse H. Jones, who lounged about, cracking hard Texas
jokes, made no attempt to consult with the new Field Marshal of
the Democratic Party.

     100% or Nothing. The distinction that was made between these
visitors was clear, deliberate, sometimes purposely cruel. Only
100% Roosevelt Democrats were welcome. The shock to party
oldsters was frightful. Hundreds on hundreds of them went to
Chicago personally acquainted with only one nationally-known
Democrat, Jim Farley. Now they mobbed Big Jim in elevators,
lobbies, on the street, stopping his car, clutching his hands,
his clothes asking him puzzled questions.

     But what Jim Farley knew, he had pledged not to tell. And
beyond that one thing he knew nothing. Scratching their heads,
perplexed, anxious, the hordes went to the Hopkins headquarters.
There they got rough treatment. Not a single post-Convention
promise was made to them, and only one pledge was exacted from
them: unquestioning obedience to the New Dealers.

     By Monday night even the blindest party hack could see what
had happened. For the first time since 1932 Franklin Roosevelt
was in absolute command of the party he had raised from a
15,000,000-vote low (1928) to a 27,000,000-vote top (1936). The
purge that had failed in 1938 was being carried through in 1940.
Two years ago Franklin Roosevelt had at last begun to carry out a
pledge made to his intimates in 1932: to force the Democratic
Party to become the liberal party of the U. S.

     Many a delegate had no objection to this aim, but they had
many an objection to Harry Hopkins. Still, it was Hopkins or
nothing. Some got drunk, some went home (one of these was
Virginia's apple-cheeked apple grower, Senator Harry Flood Byrd).
But most went around to Hopkins' headquarters, there meekly,
glumly, sadly or rebelliously surrendered. Over their heads the
shrewd, cool Secretary of Commerce held one awful threat: one
false move out of the convention and your only candidate won't
run. Then where are you?

     Griping, mutinous, sore, united only in the fear that the
party would be left without its one big vote-getter, the
professionals grumbled as they went to Chicago's Stadium on the
first night, to sit on the red-painted chairs in the vast arena,
hear the old Hamlet of the House, Speaker William B. Bankhead,
elocute his meandering way through half an hour of the corniest
Southern oratory most of them had ever heard.

     By the second day their discontent began to take an ugly
turn. The delegates didn't know what they were going to do, but
were determined to do something. Harry Hopkins, conferring
endlessly, smiled a satisfied smile. He was now certain of 900
delegates out of 1,100; John Nance Garner's career needed only a
suitable monument; Montana's Burton k. Wheeler had been bought
off ten days before by personal promise from Franklin Roosevelt
that the foreign-policy plank would be as isolationist as Mr.
Wheeler. Maryland's Millard Tydings was stubborn but negligible.

     There remained only big Jim Farley. What Harry Hopkins & Co.
wanted was a real draft: nomination by actual acclamation.
Failing this, the Janizariat wanted a nomination by apparent
acclamation. But Mr. Farley stood solidly in the way, and no
nomination opposed by the only Democrat beloved from end to end
of the party could be made to seem unanimous.

     Demonstrations. A quick stroke was decided on. At 4:20 p.m.
E.S.T., the Convention actually began. Mr. Roosevelt told his
press conference to listen to the radio that evening, as
Kentucky's Alben Barkly would read the Convention a message from
the White house. This was the first real news out of the
Convention, and it came from Washington.

     By 6:30 p.m. Columnist Robert Kintner and Newshawk Turner
Catledge of the New York Times had seen the message. Word quickly
spread -- and by the time bumble-tuble Mr. Barkley began bellowing
at 9 p.m. C.D.S.T., only galleryites and radio listeners wondered
what he was going to say.

     The Hopkins strategy was simple. Delay seemed to be growing
dangerous, so, doubtedly reflect that they ought to be sitting
under shade trees dreaming just for the fun of dreaming. He has
said: " . . I believe that most of us, once the opportunity is
afforded, will discover within ourselves a variety of stimulating
and pleasant things to do." He has listed dreaming as one of the
worth-while occupations. To Henry Wallace, campaigning in
nightmarish 1940 will not be one of the pleasant things to do.


The Voice of the Convention

     Alben Barkley's dull roar died away. In its stead, for a
long moment during the Democratic Convention last week, there was
only the manifold murmur of the crowd in the Chicago stadium. The
seating, shuffling, staring thousands had just heard Franklin
Roosevelt's inconclusive message that he could be had, wondered
what would happen next. Suddenly the loud-speakers clustered
above the delegates came alive. A voice thundered:

     We want Roosevelt!

     The delegates on the floor, the thousands stacked in the
galleries began to stir, here & there to cry with The Voice:

     We want Roosevelt!

     The Voice continued, for 45 minutes, intermittently
sustained a sonorous tom-tom chant:

     The Party wants Roosevelt!

     New Jersey wants Roosevelt!

     The world needs Roosevelt!

     Everybody wants Roosevelt!

     The Voice which thus lifted delegates and spectators from
apathy into their first big, draft-Roosevelt demonstration
belonged neither to Alben Barkley, to the People, nor to God.
Politically it belonged to Chicago Bosses Ed Kelly and Pat Nash:
technically, to their Superintendent of Sewers Thomas D. ("for
Democrat") Garry.

     Leathery, pot-bellied Tom Garry was the Kelly-Nash henchman
who had charge of Stadium decorations. By prearrangement, he also
had an electrical pipe line to the loud-speaker circuit, which
was supposed to be controlled exclusively from the convention
rostrum. In the hour of his triumph last week he was ensconced in
a tiny basement room, where the amplifier circuits were centred.
Six times he ran from "the catacombs" to Mayor Kelly's box and up
into the galleries to survey the milling, parading, shouting
results of his tongue work, then dashed back to his microphone.

     "It was a job right up my alley," said Tom Garry next day,
beaming through his bifocal glasses and stroking his green plaid
jacket. "I figured out a lot of my own angles."

     Tom Garry went into politics at the age of 12, when he rang
doorbells for his father, who was an alderman in Chicago's Eighth
Ward. He also learned to lay brick (and still carries a union
card), but for more than 30 years Chicago's brand of politics has
been his business. Along with other Sanitary District employes he
was once indicted for general conspiracy, was never tried. He has
been Superintendent of Sewers three years, gets $6,000 a year.
Says contented Tom Garry: "People in politics are the biggest
chumps in the world. Only one out of 20,000 makes a living out of
it. I'm just an ordinary lug who loves the game of politics." Tom
Garry has a comfortable apartment on Chicago's West Side, a wife,
four daughters (three are married). His great day last week was
also Mrs. Garry's birthday, the first in 33 years when he had
failed to give her a party. "But she's a good pal," said The
Voce, "and sees the convention is more important. . . . Outside
of my wife, my hobby is Mayor Kelly and Pat Nash. They're the
greatest humanitarians in the world. They're the nuts."

     Proud of his 3,800 miles of sewers, his 300,000 manholes and
catch basins is Tom Garry. And he has his own way of emphasizing
their (and his) importance to Chicago. "First thing when you get
up in the morning," says Tom Garry, "you come in and see me. You
don't know it, but that's me you're visiting."