Term IV

The fourth term campaign got off last week to a somewhat embarrassing start. A crew of some of the least-known political hacks in the Democratic Party, headed by Postmaster General Frank C. Walker, appeared at the White House and mumbled to the President to run again. Said Walker to reporters:

"I heard some of the men say that if the war was on, the President should be the candidate. I don't know that the President even heard them. . . . If he did, he smiled it off."

Next day another 100% New Dealer spoke up loudly enough to be heard. In the Senate up rose Pennsylvania's Senator Joseph F. Guffey. Said he:

"There is no American tradition which says that a good President cannot serve four terms in the White House."

Guffey said the Republicans were desperate because they knew there was no such tradition.* He added: "Unless the war is won in 1944, President Roosevelt will again be drafted and chosen to lead our country."

Where the draft was coming from no one could guess. In 1940 many an Administration bigwig, and some citizens, demanded that the President run again. This political year had seen the President drafted only by Illinois's aged (76) Representative Adolph J. Sabath (TIME, March 1) and by West Virginia's Governor Matthew M. Neely, overwhelmingly repudiated by his State's voters in last autumn's election and since defeated in his State Legislature on every turn.

-Said a political wag: "There's a law against bigamy but none against trigamy."

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