Politicking

Franklin Roosevelt discovered last week that being a wartime President did not make him inviolate to attacks when he acted like a politician.

"Affront." To the juicy job of Collector of Internal Revenue in Missouri he named hulking, blue-jowled Robert E. Hannegan, formerly assistant boss of as slick a political machine as St. Louis ever saw, until indignant St. Louis voters turned it out a year ago. St. Louis groaned; it had trounced the machine for giving it some of the worst circuit judges in history, for conniving in the State Democratic organization's attempt to steal the Governorship (TIME, March 23); it wanted no more of Hannegan & Co. Snapped the Post-Dispatch: "The President's action is an affront to thousands of citizens. . . ."

"Corrupt." To a newly created fifth Federal judgeship in New Jersey Mr. Roosevelt appointed 53-year-old Thomas F. Meaney, who stepped into his first judgeship 19 years ago, has been a faithful follower of Frank Hague, aging boss of New Jersey and vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Mr. Roosevelt rejected the man whom Governor Charles Edison wanted for the job.

Ever since his election to the Governorship in 1940, Edison has fought Hague --replacing Hague men with anti-Hague Democrats. It looked as if he had Boss Hague on the run.

But Edison's old friend Franklin Roosevelt thought he needed New Jersey's colorless Senator William Smathers re-elected this November (the Senator's only achievement is riding the New Deal coat tail) and knew he needed Hague's machine to turn the trick. Edison and his fight to clean up New Jersey politics must wait. Mr. Roosevelt's Justice Department took a look at Mr. Meaney and promptly pronounced him "superior" to the three other candidates.

Said the Newark Evening News, which has supported the President in the war effort: "For all their protestations of good government, Mr. Roosevelt and his Attorney General find it possible in the midst of a great war to do a turn for a corrupt political machine. . . . What made Mr. Meaney 'superior' was the fact that he was Boss Hague's candidate."

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