THE PRESIDENCY: Taking It

• Share

The strong chin of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, with the cigaret-holder slanting rakishly upward above a cloven bulb that is the delight of world cartoonists, last week took a series of blows such as no President of the U. S. ever suffered and survived. The blows would not, of course, have fallen had Mr. Roosevelt not stuck his chin out farther than any President since Woodrow Wilson. He could have seen the attack coming had he not blinded himself to the meaning of the last Congressional election. Fighter that he is, it is doubtful that he would have withdrawn his chin even then. All during the first session of the 76th Congress he absorbed attack, going back for more on one issue after another. But now came the terrible closing rounds, as an angry and rebellious Congress fought toward the adjournment bell.

A drive to deprive him of his unprecedented monetary powers the President had parried (TIME, July 10). But within six historic days: the legal authority of most of the "alphabet" administrative agencies set up under the New Deal was gravely threatened, its Labor program was imperiled, its yardstick utility plan was circumscribed and back to the State machines went a great share of the political power that Franklin Roosevelt had spent six years gathering into Federal hands. Hardest blow of all landed on his nose, which the Senate feared he wanted to stick too far into international power politics.

One evening last week, the Roosevelt chin protruded over a small table drawn up before his couch in the Oval Room, his upstairs White House study. Seated on straight-backed chairs facing him were Charles McNary and Warren Austin, the No. 1 & 2 Republicans of the Senate, and William Edgar Borah, the Senate's dean on Foreign Affairs. Seated nearby also were "Dear Alben" Barkley, the loyal but bemused Senate Majority Leader; Secretary of State Hull; Chairman Key Pittman of the Foreign Relations Committee, White House Secretary Steve Early. Slowly revolving a cigar between pursed lips, looking more than ever owlish, Vice President "Cactus Jack" Garner was also there.

This meeting was at Franklin Roosevelt's invitation. It was an act, not of self-abasement like Neville Chamberlain's trip to Munich, but of cheerful desperation. He wanted to tell the Senate's leaders face to face why he needed a free hand in world power politics, what was going on in the mad world abroad.

Master word-painter that he is, Mr. Roosevelt painted once more the sombre scene of war preparations in Europe, of foreboding peoples, massing armies, cities full of women & children trembling beneath a sky that soon might rain horror. (Ambassador Joe Davies had reported home from Belgium that very morning, "not at all happy about the situation.") Cordell Hull picked up the narrative when his chief was through, but was presently interrupted by leonine Senator Borah. He, too, he said, receives advices from abroad. Moreover, he reads foreign newspapers. He begged to differ with the chiefs of state that war was as imminent abroad as they let themselves think.

Secretary Hull demurred: surely the Senator did not propose to match his sources of intelligence with those of the U. S. State Department? The lion of Idaho, who has never been abroad, denied this implication—but now came a fresh interruption.