VICE PRESIDENCY: Mr. Commonsense

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In 1932 William Randolph Hearst came out for Garner-for-President as the best way of stopping the nomination of Al Smith. Nobody was more surprised or pleased than Democrat Garner who, up to that time, had had no close ties, personal or political, with the California publisher. Then Boss James A. Farley made a deal at Chicago with the Hearst forces, and Garner was nominated for Vice President—"just the waterboy on the team," as he later called himself. Neither Publisher Hearst nor Nominee Roosevelt understood the calibre of their man. If Publisher Hearst expected John Garner to become a supporter of Hearstian policies he was mistaken. During the few months after the new Vice President took office, Mr. Hearst's contact men, James T. Williams Jr. and John A. Kennedy, used to call often on Mr. Garner. Now their visits are few & far between. Nominee Roosevelt made a different mistake. He feared that his running mate might make the ticket look ridiculous. So the Brain Trust sent a bright journalist, Charles Hand, to act as censor of the Garner utterances. To a man who had been a practicing politician when Roosevelt was in short pants, this was the ultimate insult.

But many a man who voted for Garner for Vice President thought as Franklin Roosevelt did. Jittery journalists wrote pieces to the effect that never before was the health of a President more important. On the evening of Feb. 15, 1933, when an assassin in Miami pumped a gunful of bullets at the President-elect and succeeded in fatally wounding Mayor Cermak of Chicago,* many a voter sighed with relief that the U. S. had been spared Garner as President.

Then came the Inaugural and so far as the public was concerned John Nance Garner was just one more Alexander Throttlebottom.† He made no public speeches, seldom said anything to the Press, refused to go out socially. Once a year he clapped on his silk hat like a sombrero and dined formally with the President at the White House. Once a year he returned the President's invitation at his hotel. Outside the Senate he was seen three or four afternoons a week in his reserved box at the ball park or occasionally riding through the streets in the Vice President's 16-cylinder Cadillac bearing the number 111. But if for a time Congressmen thought as the public did, they have since changed their mind, for Throttlebottom has a hand on the throttle.

Like other recent Vice Presidents, John Garner was invited to attend Cabinet meetings. Unlike Messrs. Coolidge, Dawes and Curtis before him, he not only attended regularly, but spoke his mind forcefully. Such meetings are naturally as secret as they can be made. Hence only an occasional leak disclosed the part the red-faced, blue-eyed, white-haired Vice President played around the Cabinet table. Significant is the fact, however, that after one of his discourses Franklin Roosevelt, a great giver of nicknames, dubbed him "Mr. Commonsense." Significant, too, are the things the stubby little Texan is generally given credit for having achieved within the Cabinet. He, as much as any one man, quashed the idea of armed U. S. intervention in Cuba when the Cabinet had it under consideration because of the series of Cuban revolutions in the autumn of 1933. Supposed dialog:

Roosevelt: But suppose an American is killed?

Gamer: I'd wait and see which American it is.