VICE PRESIDENCY: Mr. Commonsense

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Occasionally, like Mr. Dawes, he has tried to hurry up Senate proceedings, has threatened, in disputes with the House, to appoint Senate conferees who would favor Administration bills but his net accomplishment of such rough & ready shortcuts has been negligible. His real work begins when he turns the chair over to a colleague and wanders down to the floor to confer with Senators, when he chats with Senatorial friends over a few highballs in his office, when Leader Robinson, Whip Harrison and other Administration men of House and Senate drop in to consult him. For he is recognized as a wise old man of Congress. A word from him and the strategy of handling a bill may be changed overnight. Seldom does he speak of the merits of a bill, but to those who want to know he drops a hint of how a bill may be passed. That work relief was finally enacted as the President wanted it was largely due to Vice President Garner's advice to the bill's managers to withdraw it from the floor when it was blocked by the McCarran prevailing wage amendment, reform their lines in committee for a second and successful drive.

Thus he is a very useful helper to the New Deal. When he dropped a hint, to Franklin Roosevelt's annoyance, that Congressmen would be doing the President a favor if they passed the Bonus over his veto, there is little doubt that he was trying to be politically helpful by killing the Bonus issue before the next election.

To all appearances John Nance Garner is just a good-natured man, with a shrewd tongue and no worries in his head, who likes to sit convivially in his office, or go to a baseball game with a few chosen friends. To Washington wiseacres, however, he is recognized and respected as a real political power in a politically powerless office.