The Head of the Party

Franklin Roosevelt passed two anniversaries last week. Twenty years ago, the Democratic Party notified him of his nomination for Vice President (with forlorn Jim Cox). Eight years ago, in the library at Hyde Park house, he first met and charmed Henry Agard Wallace, who lived to be Mr. Roosevelt's Secretary of Agriculture and 1940 choice for the Vice-Presidency. If the President remembered the first anniversary, he gave no sign of it. Henry Wallace, again with his friend and chief at Hyde Park, had to remind him of the second one. "That's right!" Mr. Roosevelt exclaimed, "and pretty happy eight years for both of us."

When Mr. Roosevelt made this observation, he and Henry Wallace were in shirtsleeves, sitting side by side in the President's shiny blue Ford. The President had driven on to the lawn of his wife's Val-Kill cottage, where she had 800 neighboring Democratic women to tea. Mr. Roosevelt informed the ladies that he and Henry Wallace were going to argue "for the next four years" about the relative merits of Dutchess County corn and Iowa corn. Then he drove away. It was his only political meeting of the week.

Democrats (Willkie bolters excepted) did not avoid Mr. Roosevelt. He avoided them. His aversion appeared not to be merely an expression of the boredom, impatience, surfeit which he has lately shown toward the professional politicos of his party. Some shrewd observers had it figured out another way: that he had a gloomy conviction that Great Britain was going to be defeated within the next 60 days; that the impact of the defeat upon the U. S. people would nullify all the rules of a campaign year; that in the lurid light of such an event, ordinary political needs, courtesies, funds, managers, candidates, deals would make little difference; that it was no matter if Jim Farley went, if Jack Garner hunted, fished, sulked, if political hacks carried the Party banner in State races; that with England gone, and the U. S. isolated in a hostile world, the Presidential election could not be close: whoever won was going to win by a landslide--that probably Franklin Roosevelt was going to win but neither he nor Wendell Willkie could do much about it.

When Mr. Roosevelt received Nominee Wallace and Janizary Harry Hopkins the same day, a White House secretary insisted that Messrs. Wallace & Hopkins saw the President separately, that Mr. Roosevelt was not campaigning, would not campaign. When Wendell Willkie, frankly campaigning (see p. 16), proposed publicity for Presidential wealth, Mr. Roosevelt distantly replied that he was poorer and wiser than he was in 1928 when he was elected Governor of New York. When Postmaster General Farley resigned (National Chairman Farley had already quit) to go to work for the New York Yankees and Coca-Cola, a hint of human regret tinged Mr. Roosevelt's reply: "I accept with real regret . . . sincere sorrow. . . . All of us . . . will miss you deeply. . . . I need not tell you that you have always my affectionate regards."

Pals. Last week one of Mr. Roosevelt's disdained politicos was spotted on vacation in Portland, Ore. Said a Portland reporter, cornering Jersey City's Boss Frank Hague: "How's the new national chairman, Edward J. Flynn?" Said Frank Hague: "He's my pal! He's a million! Ed Flynn is a very capable leader, he has shown that in the way he handled his county."

Chairman Flynn has undoubtedly handled New York's Bronx County very capably. But anxious Democrats wanted to know how he would handle the whole U. S. The first signs encouraged only the opposition. At a press conference in Washington, Ed Flynn 1) announced that Democratic leaders will have to come to New York if they want to see him; 2) displayed distressing ignorance. When Ed Flynn airily dismissed the Democrats who have bolted to Wendell Willkie, a reporter mentioned Ohio's potent, onetime Governor George White, who was national chairman in 1920-21 and bolted to Willkie last fortnight. Ed Flynn paused in genuine surprise, then gulped: "Well, that is every man's privilege in this country, and I hope it always will be."

Equally unhappy was Mr. Flynn when his questioners harped on the Democrats' ill-famed campaign books (1936 proceeds: $400,000). Democratic Attorney General Robert H. Jackson had just ruled that the Hatch Act forbade purchase (but not sale) of these campaign tokens, had urged the national committee to forego them this year. Mr. Flynn and his committee's wizened Publicity Man Charles Michelson announced that advertising for the books (rate: whatever the traffic will bear) had been sold before the Hatch Act went into effect. As for distribution, said Mr. Michelson: "I don't know what expedient we'll resort to, but we'll find something."

Proud was Ed Flynn of something he found in Wendell Willkie's Democratic past. Said he, irritated by a reminder that he is a Boss: "This twaddle about this, that or the other boss of a political machine is silly. . . . Coming from Mr. Willkie, the charge is particularly foolish, for the record shows that only a few short years ago [in 1935], Mr. Willkie was a paying member of the Grover Cleveland Democratic Club in . . . Manhattan and, with Mrs. Willkie, ran for County Committeeman on the sarra ticket with Jim Farley. . . . This club is a district club of . . . Tammany Hall. . . ." According to Mr. Flynn, this made Mr, Willkie a machine man from way back. Ed Flynn also remembered, perhaps with lass delight, that Mr. & Mrs. Willkie, on that occasion, had won.

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