Death of a Cause

To a stay-late guest at a White House press conference (the Cleveland Press's Preacher-Columnist Dilworth Lupton) Franklin Roosevelt confided that he wished reporters wouldn't use that term New Deal. There is no need of a New Deal now, said the President. He hoped somebody would think up a catchy way to sloganize "win the war."

Franklin Roosevelt had closed his speech and opened an era at Chicago in 1932 with his famed line: "I pledge you--I pledge myself--to a new deal for the American people."

But that mauve decade had died long ago, long before its ten years were up. The voters and the Congress and the President himself, in his swing to the right, had been busily killing the New Deal for years. Now, when only the name was left, the President suddenly obliterated even that --the name of his biggest contribution to U.S. political history.

There were some who mourned and were nameless. They were the men with a cause but no party, the remaining young hopefuls in the Wallace wing, who had looked on helplessly as the President dealt more & more with the Hagues, Kellys and Flynns, the Jesse Joneses and Big Businessmen.

There had been more than impatience with a worn-out phrase in the President's remark last week. Republicans thought they had the answer: the white lamb of 1932 had become the black sheep in the 1944 fold.

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