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Show GOP Sweep Frees Truman Of Burdensome Program By BAUKIIAGE Piewt Amdyit and Commentator. WW Service, 1616 Eye Street. N.W., Washington, D. C. WASHINGTON. There Is a feel of Christmas in the Washington air which is prompted by more than the evanescence of the joyous spirit of Noel - just try -mw to get onto a j & j Connecticut ave- f, ' ; j j nue car headed t for the F street V ' I stopping district. J The White House jltwy ' presents its usual jLW jT-decor jT-decor of pine and p A ribboned wreath. fetA! PI ,: And. at this writ- .4 I tng. the chief ten- VJL (&A ant is, I believe. )&fkrJ? dreaming of a $223t Missouri Christ- u.JZ mas among his mtimmmi3B!M friends. Baukhage Whether tie spends the holiday beneath his own ronftree or the one which Uncle Satn so generously provides, it can be said that it will be a far merrier occasion than a year ago. He will be among his friends as well as his family, and as one of his official eircle put it, with his "professed" enemies (the opposite party) In power pow-er his "unprofessed" enemies (officially (offi-cially hie. friends) having no further opportunity to toss brickbats or bandy threats about his head. I recall another crisp, cool winter day last February a year ago, when we wended our way to the President's Presi-dent's weekly press and radio conference. con-ference. Bemused pansles (I recorded re-corded in this space) showed frostbitten frost-bitten faces in the garden of the White House grounds. We were discussing the difficulties and differences which President Truman already was encountering at the hands of his own party in congress. "Congress has to be realistic In an election year," I quoted someone some-one as saying, "They are facing real Issues. And the President's program pro-gram isn't realistic." "Whether or not it is realistic," another member of the group replied, re-plied, "It isn't his program. He inherited in-herited It. It's New Deal and New Deal is Old Hat now. It doesn't represent rep-resent Harry Truman's Ideas at all, but he has to go through with it." As we look back, it is plain enough that whether It was New Deal or what it was, the program of the President was one that the people rejected on election day, the moral obligations of the past, the effect ef-fect of the pressure groups, the ukase of the party of bigwigs were swept away and Harry Truman, who didn't want the job that was thrust upon him when death commanded, com-manded, was made a free man. The President's satisfaction springs not from any spirit of "I told you so" hurled at his alleged supporters, not from any lack of loyalty to a cause well lost. It was simply the weary but happy flood of relief of a man who, having attempted attempt-ed what he knew was an impossible task, saw that task ended, and friend and foe forced fairly into the open. War Terminated Honeymoon With Congress My mind goes back to another scene shortly before the death of President Roosevelt I sat in the office of-fice of the vice president talking of days when the caissons went rolling along and both of us many miles apart rode beside them. We talked also of the then forthcoming San Francisco conference of the United Nations and Mr. Truman's theme wan what he felt to bo his function. Paradoxically enough as it turned out later it was helping establish liaison between congress and the White House, complementing complement-ing the highly successful effort of Secretary of State Hull which re-suited re-suited in the forging of a biparti-san biparti-san foreign policy. And in so short a time, after Mr. Truman became President, thut liaison between Capitol Hill and 1600 Pennsylvania avenue snapped in twain, never to be reunited. Three months after the President took office I recorded: "The political politi-cal armistice In Washington will end shortly after the President's (Truman's! return from Berlin by that time domestic discontent will be crystallising, the honeymoon will be on the wane. ..." And I then had the temerity to predict that If . . .. "the Japanese war should end . . . within the year . . . President Truman will be stripped of the protecting armor of the Commander-in-Chief. Then i the slings and arrows which even I Roosevelt's enemies were wont to I deflect to congress and other gov-1 ernment agencies will be aimed i squarely at the man in the White 1 House." That prophesy required no gift of the occult. Mr. Truman knew it j then or I wouldn't have. j From now on the President Is his ! own man. The legislation he offers, of-fers, whatever its fate may be, will be moulded to suit his own heart's , desire. He has fought the fight to ' the best of his ability, assailed from the right and the left and the rear as well as the front. Now he will write his own ticket, be it good or bad. Few Presidents have had such an opportunity or faced a more severe test. Presidential Bee Hum in Capitol Dome Washington withdraws from om- J clal activity for tjie holidays with- i out getting any real impact of the ; advent of the new regime. There has been the preliminary hurly- burly of reorganization on Capitol Hill but the same old faces are evident and the same old voices I speak. The active Republican lead- ' ers In both houses of congress have : been so much in the limelight for the last year anyhow that they j merely appear to be stepping up, rather than stepping in. It all seems quite routine and casual. There was Just a touch of the excitement of the beginning of a new era when house and senate steering committees had their first meetings and made their first o'Jl- V" if t ' ' 'I u.o U Senator Taft Politically Cautious clal statements concerning legislation legisla-tion and policy. Most of the steps had been foreshadowed and the change of venue was not fanfared. The last 14 years make up the longest period of lean years that any party has suffered, I witnessed the end of two 12-year drouths through which the Democrats thirsted; thirst-ed; close of the one that began with William McKinley and ended with William Howard Taft, when Wilson accompanied the "new freedom" free-dom" to the White House. And the next, another 12-year period, when the New Deal followed Hoover's exit. The Democrats had only a short interlude at the pie-counter between Taft and Harding and their return in 1933 came in the midst of such a domestic crisis, with the mad days of the NRA following on the heels of the bank holiday, that our attentioi. was diverted from poli-ics. poli-ics. But what the Democrats did to the Republican officeholders "wasn't good," as one Republican put it recently. He added: "We are going to do the same for them." Congress begins with the Republican Repub-lican Presidential plum within easier eas-ier reach than any which have dangled dan-gled In many a year and it is no wonder many hands are reaching hox.'fully for It. In fact. Senator Vandenberg early sounded the warning that more thoughts should be concentrated on the responsibilities responsibil-ities following the victory of '48, and less on the possibilities of '4B, for the good of all concerned. The battle between the Taftites and the antl-Taflitcs began even before election and the Ohio senator sena-tor himself is so determined that this time he will v !n the nomination nomina-tion that he leans over backward to avoid criticism. He refused to d tii a broadcast for even a three-minute three-minute statement of Republican policy and he took oft for Central America shortly thereafter. |
