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Show Bruckart's Washington Digest Third Term Backers Dismayed By Roosevelt's Failure to Speak Candidates Farley and Garner Confuse Issue for President's Presi-dent's Followers; Hull-Jackson Combination Further Complicates Political Scene. The story at this time is what has happened in another direction. In the efforts ol the I I LjT. a strategists to make the fences safe against the Garner , bulls, they forgot about the man who built the Democratic Democrat-ic machine of which these strategists are a part In other words, they forgot about "Big Jim" Farley, postmaster By WILLIAM BRTJCKART IVNU Service, National Press Bldg., Washington, D. C. WASHINGTON. The political situation sit-uation that fails to provide a good laugh somewhere along the line is rare, indeed. There is, of course, that time-worn expression about politics pol-itics making strange bedfellows, which frequently happens. There is just as much of a laugh for me, however, when these same strangers stran-gers have got into the same bed-mentioned bed-mentioned in the preceding sentence and the slats fall out from under one of them. Actually, collapse of the slats gives anyone quite a sinking sink-ing feeling, sort of an all-gone sensation. sen-sation. And, so, I am writing this week about how fallen slats have forced some of the boys on the Democratic team to prepare a pallet on the floor. In some quarters, I have heard expressions within the last few days indicating that there is no particular shortage of pallets, general and chair-Jim chair-Jim Farley man of the Democratic Demo-cratic national committee. com-mittee. They apparently overlooked Mr. Farley, except that they did a lot of things contrary to his idea of smart politics and fairness to those who had been riding herd in the pastures where votes grow. Mr. Farley has not been happy about the whole thing, and he has been reported on several occasions as being be-ing prepared to resign. but the would-be wheelhorses are having difficulty at discovering the proper floor. It all came about in a series of events, some of which I have discussed dis-cussed in these columns before but, of necessity, must be repeated. Everyone Ev-eryone knows, for instance, how the payroll boys, anxious to keep their jowls inside the trough, have been carrying on a great drive that they hope will eventuate in a third-term nomination for President Roosevelt. They have been doing right well by themselves, what with federal millions mil-lions to spend; a patronage army mustered by Secretary Wallace who also pays farmers to let him show them how to farm; the vast relief legions and the other government agents of one kind or another, aggregating ag-gregating nearly a million persons, not to mention postmasters, United States attorneys and marshals and the others. They are, or they were, cocky and pretty happy about the whole thing. There were such things as Vice President Garner's candidacy, which was announced without strings attached and with Farley's Candidacy Surprise to Leaders And, now, what confronts the boys? Just an announcement by Mr. Farley that he is an out-and-out candidate for the presidential nomination of the Democratic party, an announcement that ended with "that's that!" When Mr. Farley made that statement to the party leaders in Massachusetts recently, he pulled out more bed slats than you can imagine. He did not say "if the Chief does not run." He said he was running "and that's that!" There are not many folks in the country who do not realize that, as a machine politician, Mr. Farley has few equals. He has a personal following fol-lowing that he has built up throughout through-out the nation, men whom he calls by their first names and who write to him as "Dear Jim." The ranks of those who jumped too soon include a lot of senators and representatives who had arrived ar-rived at their places on the payroll by virtue of a happy ride on the Roosevelt coattails. But the Roosevelt Roose-velt coattails might not have borne up under the strain, except for the Farley direction. That is what the early bandwagon crowd is now trying try-ing to measure. They are looking around to see whether their pallet should be on the Farley floor, the Garner floor or the Roosevelt floor, and they are casting squints through partially open doors to see whether there might be comparative peace and political quiet in the next room where the second-choice delegates may have to go at convention time. Hall-Jackson Team May Enter 1940 Race This whole stage scene is further complicated by continued stories that Mr. Roosevelt looks upon Secretary Sec-retary Hull of the state department as a "good man," but with sort of a side glance that "some good liberal lib-eral like Bob Jackson (the attorney general) should be nominated with him." Of course, there is no way to substantiate the story that Mr. Roosevelt wants Hull and Jackson as the team. He has said nothing. I have said before, and there is no reason to change the belief, that Mr. Roosevelt is not going to say t ' out any reference to whether Mr. Roosevelt should decide the country needs him, again. That candidacy was not welcome; nor was it taken seriously, seri-ously, at first. But someone among the amateur strategists within the corps of Presidential advis- John Garner ers suddenly awakened awak-ened to the fact that the Garner candidacy might be regarded as serious. Well, there were deep discussions of what to do. Whatever else you can say about the true New Dealer, the hell-and-high-water New Dealer, it must be said that he is a serious person, and he plans his reform of the population popu-lation with grave determination that what is about to be done for you is, of course, always for your best interests. in-terests. Whispering Campaign Sees Garner as Stooge Out of these discussions has come a whispering campaign. It is exactly ex-actly the same type of whispering campaign as was used against Herbert Her-bert Hoover, when he was President. Presi-dent. Only, these whispers are by Democrats about a Democrat. It has a technique that is well worked out and it gets results. That is, it gets results if it goes on long enough without anyone seeing what the game is. In the current whispering campaign cam-paign and its source can be traced to an expert Mr. Garner was pictured pic-tured as just a stooge, just someone bm" ' v . 1 anything until un-til about convention con-vention time. In the meantime, mean-time, the folks who owe their political po-litical places to Mr. Farley and who have gone off the deep end for Mr. Roosevelt Roose-velt as a third - term Cordell Hull striving to break down the New Deal. He was pointed out as disloyal, dis-loyal, a personally disloyal man despite de-spite 40 years as a Democratic battler, bat-tler, and his campaign was said to have "flattened out" to such an extent ex-tent that everyone interested in the Democratic party could go home and go to bed you know, the way that is done after an election victory vic-tory is safely in the bag and the worry is over. I am not prepared to argue that Mr. Garner's candidacy is, or is not, washed up. Just as a one-man guess, I have thought he was rather popular in the parts of the country where I have traveled in recent months. But that is not the story about which I am writing. STRANGE BEDFELLOWS Strange political bedfellows result re-sult in interesting politics, according ac-cording to William Bruckart, who today discusses the third term issue in relationship to the Roosevelt Roose-velt "coattail riders." The President's Pres-ident's failure to clarify his stand has left third term advocates in an embarrassing position, according ac-cording to this veteran Washington Washing-ton commentator. I candidate are spending sleepless nights. They are afraid to make up their pallets on the floor anywhere in fear of the boogey-man. As I said at the beginning, nearly every political situation contains a good laugh. It is always the more amusing when you see the amateurs trying to play the game of professionals. profes-sionals. The final scene on the stage may not have Garner or Farley Far-ley or Roosevelt in the center to take the acclaim of the audience, but Mr. Garner is going ahead and Mr. Farley is going ahead, and the third-term leaders are practically helpless since Mr. Roosevelt steadfastly stead-fastly declines to make a public statement on his intentions. He just lets the slats stay on the floor. It is simple, of course, to understand under-stand their distress. What, for instance, in-stance, would be the position of those fellows, and their relation to the jobs they now hold, if Mr. Farley Far-ley would be the nominee? They thought they could kick the Gamer candidacy out of the window, safely. But that question is secondary now, for the Farley candidacy adds up to names on the payroll and what is a local party leader without his patronage list? Some of the wails have taken the shape of a demand that Mr. Farley rosicn as parly chairman to er.:;c their pain. |