Monday, Jul. 31, 1939
Revolt in the Desert
On the sunny winter day (Feb. 7, 1937) that President Roosevelt delightedly stunned the country with his Supreme Court Plan, one Senator withdrew from the ranks of his huffing & puffing colleagues, sought out a secluded leather chair, thoughtfully drank a Scotch-&-soda which he later described as "a foot high."
Charles Linza McNary of Salem, Ore., the Republican minority's Senate leader, was the one legislator who refused to treat the Court Bill as an earthquake. His eyes narrowing with the twinkle that always precedes the dehorsing of an adversary, pink-cheeked Senator McNary brooded long and carefully.
A scheme that then seemed grandiose and daring beyond any dim 1937 Republican dreams gradually took shape under the still-sandy thatch that belies McNary's age (65). When all but a few bumbling die-hards believed the President would have his way about the Court, McNary coolly visioned not only the bill's strangulation but the wide-open splitting of the Democratic Party and the eventual use of the conservative Democratic wing by Republican strategists in a practical coalition which could not merely harass Mr. Roosevelt's New Deal but stop it cold. The conception was a brilliant, deadly parallel to the late T. E. Lawrence's masterly guerilla tactics in the Arabian revolt in the desert.
Imposing silence on his own colleagues, especially upon Idaho's sonorous constitutionalist, Wild Bill Borah, was Leader McNary's hardest job. Every morning he summoned them all to the green-baize table of his caucus room and made them vow tongue-holding again. "Let the boys across the aisle do the talking," he would say, smiling dreamily as he shot his cuffs. So it was not Borah or California's Johnson or Michigan's expletive Vandenberg who took the headlines in the Court debates. It was Virginia's red-hot Glass, Montana's Wheeler, Nebraska's Burke, North Carolina's Josiah Bailey--Democrats all.
In the background was another Democrat--Peter Goelet Gerry of Rhode Island, no orator but a great conniver. At his home the President's opponents met secretly, unsuspected. And another Democrat headed the Judiciary Committee which had the bill in charge: Ashurst of Arizona. That elegant obfuscator contributed nobly the second essential of McNary's stratagem: delay.
To his mounting anger, the President learned in April that there were 75 "sure votes" for a compromise plan. No compromise, the President cried to his tiring wheelhorse, Joe Robinson. McNary chuckled, and the anti-Roosevelt votes only increased.
Then overworked Joe Robinson died, and Franklin Roosevelt played straight into McNary's hands by his choice of bumbling "Dear Alben" Barkley over Pat Harrison for his new Leader. Next came the attempted Purge, another stroke of political amateurishness. McNary grew almost profane when restless men like Vandenberg talked openly of an open coalition with the conservative Democrats whom Roosevelt was trying to read out. He encouraged his followers to go to ball games with Jack Garner, Pat Harrison and other time-biders, but kept them from doing anything that might revive loyalty to the Democratic label.
On the House side, Minority Leader Bertrand Snell, the Potsdam, N. Y. cheese baron, never did a thing to help Senator McNary harass Franklin Roosevelt and divide his cohorts. But last autumn old "Bert Snell retired. Into his place stepped Joseph Martin of Massachusetts, smart, vigorous and unaffected. In no time he was in tune with McNary, and besides 81 new Republican House votes, other new factors favored. The defeat of the one man purged by Mr. Roosevelt, New York's hard-boiled O'Connor, slid the omnipotent Rules chair under ancient Adolph Sabath of Illinois, for whose leadership even New Dealers had scant respect. With Sam McReynolds sick (he died last fortnight), the Foreign Affairs chair went to prognathous Sol Bloom. Far up by seniority on most committees were Jack Garner's old Southern crowd, men who had been in Congress before Franklin Roosevelt was even a gleam in Jim Farley's eye. And Garner was still Charley McNary's close chum and ally. What with inept House leadership and disaffected House strength, Joe Martin had but to keep his little phalanx solid and alert to triumph on many a border raid.
After so many long-laid coalition mines exploded all at once last week, a smiling, nonchalant McNary told reporters he had booked train passage for Oregon's cool woods before August 1. Joe Martin who has not taken a real vacation since 1935, planned to work most of the summer as usual after a brief visit at his home in North Attleboro, Mass. In September comes an executive meeting of the G. O. P. national committee; a speech to small-businessmen at the New York World's Fair. Joe Martin, glutton for work, summarized last week's performance by saying, "Congress is improving with age. If we only had a couple more months, life would really be worth living."
Only Democrat who really sounded as though he knew what had happened to the powerful Administration majority of only a year ago was anguished Adolph Sabath. Last week he screamed: "You Democrats! Can't you see the Republicans are using you?"
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