The Hate Debate

Senator Joseph F. Guffey, most vociferous of the Senate's tiny handful of New Dealers, set off a political volcano last week. The volcano might be just the Democratic Party, or it might be the nation. The oratorical lava which seethed out revealed a shocking depth of Senate bitterness against President Roosevelt and his inner circle--at the least. At its worst, it widened a split between Congress and the President which may be symptomatic of national disunity.

Slick, sleek Joe Guffey, in a press release, asserted that the Senate vote rejecting the Administration soldier-vote bill (TIME, Dec. 13) had been the work of "a combination of Northern Republicans, under the leadership of Joe Pew, and of Southern Democrats, under the leadership of Harry Byrd." He called this an "unpatriotic and unholy alliance."

Three Southern Democrats rose up in the Senate to reply, in an extraordinary spate of oratory--Virginia's Harry Byrd, North Carolina's Josiah Bailey, South Carolina's Cotton Ed Smith (see p. 14). They tore Joe Guffey to shreds, came close to out-&-out denunciation of Mr. Roosevelt. Senators Bailey and Smith talked threateningly about a new Southern Democratic Party.

Reverse Pyrge. Was the South really going to secede again--this time from the Democratic Party? Not even Joe Bailey thought that probable. "I have been thinking over the burden of that speech for a long time," he said afterward, "and I felt that the time had come to utter it. The important thing is not that the announcement was made. The important thing was that, for the first time in 79 years, it could be justifiably made."

But what did the Southerners expect to accomplish? In their private talk they said: election of a Republican President in 1944, giving Democrats four years to purge the New Dealers, might be the best thing for the Democratic Party.

Roosevelt henchmen scoffed. They hold that when the dissidents squarely face the loss of their patronage, their Congressional chairmanships, and in some cases their jobs, they will swing back into line. But after nearly eleven years, the Southerners are gorged with patronage, and many expect their party to lose control of the House, possibly of the Senate, and perhaps of the Presidency--even if Roosevelt runs. And the inner circle's analysis ignored, too, the fact that the recent Kentucky elections gave Southern politicians reason to believe that the Southern masses are now ready to follow them. It also underestimated, as Northerners did in 1860, the quality of Southern hatred.

The hatred now directed against the New Deal is clearly deep and sincere. The list of Southern grievances is long: "coddling" of the Negro, "coddling" of labor, attacks on the poll tax, upping of Southern pay scales, failure to redress discriminatory freight rates, the 1938 Purge. But the Southerners' anger is also compounded of resentment against long-continued rebuffs and slights. And their passion is fiercely personal, not only against the President but even more bitterly against the White House inner circle--Harry Hopkins, Dave Niles, Sam Rosenman, Felix Frankfurter--whose group tactlessness in dealing with Congress has long been notorious.

Waiting for Sumter. Last week the Democratic rebels were not yet ready to speak out their true sentiments fully and openly. But a sampling of their private, not-for-attribution talk indicated that they are primed to let fly whenever they can lay hands on a real issue, whenever the President gives them a Fort Sumter to shoot at.

Senator X: "It is my opinion that another four years of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the White House will destroy not only the Democratic Party but our existing form of government."

Senator Y: "One of the most fundamental issues is this fool idea of Roosevelt's that he can set up some sort of fair employment practice committee and make the South accept the Negro as an equal. This has fanned the fires of hatred against the Roosevelt Administration. The feeling is very bitter."

Senator Z: "This thing is very deepseated, more so than those people around the White House believe. Take the tax bill. There is no question in my mind that this country's economy can stand a ten or eleven billion dollar tax burden. But there is a widespread feeling that those fellows--Roosevelt, Morgenthau, Rosenman, Hopkins, Frankfurter--won't use the money the right way. ... So there is the feeling that we just won't put the burden on the people to supply the little clique now in control with that revenue."

A border-State Senator: "Yeah, there are a lot of people who feel that they'd rather have a Republican Administration for the next four years. I tell you, the feeling is deep. I don't think it [a G.O.P. victory] would be any catastrophe at all." The bitterness is not confined to Southerners. Said one Western Democratic Senator (not Burton K. Wheeler): "I would prefer any other Democrat to Roosevelt." Said a famed politician: "I am sorry to say that right now I haven't an ounce of confidence in anything that Roosevelt does. I wouldn't believe anything he said."

Congress v. Roosevelt. The undecided rebels may find their Fort Sumter, but the Presidential strategy will be to avoid and postpone it at all costs. But as he wings homeward from Teheran, his mind intent on global strategy and global peace, there is one question he cannot postpone: Can he succeed in re-establishing a working relationship with Congress?

The plain fact is that, without any necessity for an imagined conspiracy between Joe Pew and Harry Byrd, mutual opposition to the President unites the Republicans and the dissident Democrats who now control Congress. Everywhere--on taxes, on subsidies, on price and wage control--the Administration has been battered and defeated. Led by Assistant President Jimmy Byrnes, the President's lieutenants are frantically trying to stem the tide. But one & all agree that only one man can succeed: the President himself. And even he may be too late, or too busy with the war. Forthe nation, the tragedy is twofold: 1) the President needs all his mind and energy for the war; 2) Congress, vigorous in obstruction, lacks the organization and leadership to initiate its own program.

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