Angle of Attack

This week the question of confirming Henry Wallace as Secretary of Commerce would be squarely before the Senate. But Ohio's Bob Taft, generalissimo of the anti-Wallace forces, did not wait. Last week he sent up a preliminary artillery barrage.

In the simplest and most direct way possible, Senator Taft told his colleagues that he was against Henry Wallace on any count; the fact that the George bill would take the vast federal lending agencies away, did not make Wallace a better man than he was before.

Senator Taft is against Wallace because he regards Wallace as an enemy of business and hence functionally unfitted to be Secretary of Commerce; "he shows a hostile and insulting attitude toward businessmen that certainly cannot inspire confidence on their part."

Said Bob Taft: "The attitude of Mr. Wallace in favor of Government control of, and interference with, all industry, trade, labor and agriculture is deeply ingrained in his whole philosophy. If he were Secretary of Commerce, it would certainly be completely discouraging to those who are considering the expansion and development of private industries. . . .

[His appointment] will inspire the same confidence among businessmen which the appointment of Sewell Avery as Secretary of Labor would inspire . . . from the ranks of labor."

New Dealing Senators Claude Pepper and Lister Hill promptly rose to reply. Their potshots had little effect. But meanwhile Senator Taft got involved in a terrible spat with Columnist Lippmann who is often pro-administration.

Senator Taft had called Columnist Lippmann a virtual ignoramus for daring to suggest that the great U.S. Senatorial tradition is to permit a President to select his own Cabinet, and that Cabinet choices which have been turned down were merely the exceptions which proved the rule. Now Columnist Lippmann hit back:

"What Senator Taft does not know on this subject, as on a good many others, is most of what there is to be known about it. . . . There is no single case in our whole history where a Cabinet appointment was rejected on the ground that the nominee's views were not acceptable to the Senate. . . .

"Though Mr. Taft is an intelligent man, who would always get a high mark in school, he has never acquired sufficient wisdom and understanding. . . . He is probably more responsible than any other single man for leading the Republican Party into blind alleys of dumb obstruction on the vital issues of our time. . . ."

Henry Wallace, assured by his backers in the Senate that his nomination would at least squeak by, kept his silence.

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