Prefabricated Platform

Most difficult problem in producing the Democratic Platform of 1936 was to make that document appear to be the legitimate offspring of the Democratic National Convention. When Franklin Roosevelt's chosen platform-maker, Senator Robert Wagner of New York, arrived last week in Philadelphia, he solemnly assured inquirers that he did not bring with him a platform ready-made at the White House. Some days earlier Democratic Senators had been shown the draft of the platform, but Senator Wagner had either left it behind in Washington or tactfully destroyed it. All that he brought to Philadelphia, hidden under his coat or in his mind, were the individual planks, neatly cut to fit and ready to be nailed together.

For more than 24 hours the Democratic Party's best carpenters made a great to-do over putting these pieces together again. First the 53 members of the Resolutions Committee, without waiting for their official appointment, held a public hearing and examined every piece of lumber, knotty or warped, new or shopworn, which was hopefully offered as platform material by leaders of blocs and factions, economists, radicals, cranks. Heard by the committee were A. F. of L.'s William Green, American Farm Bureau Federation's Edward A. O'Neal, the National Grange's Louis J. Taber, Newspaper Guild's Heywood Broun, Hobo Fellowship's Ralph E. Dalton, many another. When the perfunctory examination of unordered lumber was over, the drafting committee settled down in room No. 717 at the Bellevue-Stratford to an all-night job. Their job was to make their work last all night. Waiters came & went with trays, bottles, ice. By morning Senator Wagner's job was nearly done, the platform was hastily sent to Washington by plane to be examined at the White House. By evening it was back, amended. The platform committee approved it, a stenographer retyped it, the Convention adopted it with a conglomerate shout. If politics were not so largely composed of headlines and hullabaloo, President Roosevelt could have issued it direct from the White House over his own signature.

A far better political document was the Democratic platform than its Republican counterpart of 1936, more literate, more persuasive. Brief, vigorous, and general, speaking in terms not of legislative plans but of glorious ideals was the platform Franklin Roosevelt had drafted. It recalled the Declaration of Independence by six times sonorously repeating "We hold this truth to be self-evident. . . ." It invoked the spirit of Roosevelt I by promising to end "the activities of malefactors of great wealth. . . ." Its ringing eloquence was reiterated in the chorus: "The farmer has been returned to the road to freedom and prosperity. We will keep him on that road. . . . The worker has been returned. . . . The American businessman has been returned. . . . Our youth has been returned. . . ."

At Cleveland Republicans, with honest differences of opinion to reconcile among themselves, wrote a platform marked with the inconsistencies that inevitably go with compromise. At Philadelphia Democrats had only to reconcile their platform with the opinions of their President. Its consistency and trustworthiness were automatically measured by each citizen's opinion of the mind and character of Franklin Roosevelt.

The Democratic platform declared for social security, for fair prices for consumers, for rural electrification, for decent housing, for freedom of speech & press, for extension of the civil service ("to all non-policy-making positions in the Federal service"), against monopoly, war and international entanglements. With such lofty aims in themselves, neither Republicans nor the Republican platform take serious issue. But specific differences there are on several points between the two platforms. Notably:

P:The old-fashioned high-tariff plank of the Republicans was matched with a Democratic promise "to seek by mutual agreement the lowering of . . . tariff barriers." That meant that President Roosevelt would continue to adjust customs rates over the bargain counter of reciprocal agreements with other countries.

P:The Republicans' vague but earnest promise to end crop restriction, the Democrats matched with a declaration in favor of "the production of all the market will absorb, both at home and abroad, plus a reserve supply sufficient to insure fair prices to consumers." To most observers that sounded like crop control stated backwards. Into the farm plank also went such pledges as continued benefit pay ments, Government refinancing of farm debts, encouragement of cooperatives, retirement of submarginal land, "recognition" of the evils of farm tenancy.

P:The Republican demand for sound money, interpreted by Nominee Landon as "convertible into gold," was matched by a looking-both-ways plank designed not to offend commodity-dollar men, silverites or inflationists: "We approve the objective of a permanently sound currency so stabilized as to prevent the former wide fluctuations in value . . . a currency which will permit full utilization of the country's resources."

P:The yowl of Republicans for Government economy and budget-balancing was answered in four nonchalant sentences: "We are determined to reduce the expenses of Government. We are being aided therein by the recession in unemployment. As the requirements of relief decline and national income advances, an increasing percentage of Federal expenditures can and will be met from current revenues, secured from taxes levied in accordance with ability to pay. Our retrenchment, tax and recovery programs thus reflect our firm determination to achieve a balanced budget and the reduction of the national debt at the earliest possible moment."*

P:The Republican declaration for relief administered by the States with Federal financial aid was directly matched by a declaration for continuance of the present relief system: "Unemployment is a national problem . . . to [be met] in a national way. . . . Work at prevailing wages should be provided."

P: But like the Republican platform the major plank of the Democratic platform had to be read largely between its lines. Franklin Roosevelt, according to report, planned originally to have the platform say little more on the subject of the Constitution and possible changes in it to circumvent the Supreme Court than he said in his speech at Little Rock (TIME, June 22):

"Under [the Constitution's] broad purposes we can and intend to march forward, believing, as the overwhelming majority of Americans believe, that it is intended to meet and fit the amazing physical, economic and social requirements that confront us in this generation." At Philadelphia, after a wrangle, an extra board was hammered into the platform calling, like Governor Landon's telegraphic codicil to the Republican platform, for "such clarifying amendment as will assure . . . the power to enact those laws which the State and Federal Legislatures . . . shall find necessary"--provided current social problems "cannot be effectively solved within the Constitution." "Thus,"boasted the Democratic Party, "we propose to maintain the letter and the spirit of the Constitution." But if Franklin Roosevelt was backward in specifically asking for enlargement of the powers and duties of the Federal Government, that theme was implicit in his entire platform. "We are determined," it said, "to erect a structure of economic security for all our people." Thus the issue of the two platforms (but not necessarily the issue of the campaign to follow) appeared to be drawn between a half-articulate Republican demand that the Government protect individual opportunity and an eloquent Democratic demand that the Government become a general provider for society.

* As a forgotten fact: the Democratic platform of 1932 promised to reduce the cost of Federal Government 25% below the Hoover level.

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