The Next Four Years

The cheers could be heard around the world. Franklin Roosevelt's victory was good news in London, in Moscow, in Paris, in Chungking. It was good news in many a humbler foreign village which the President, geography-lover though he is, had never heard of.

All the world listened to the returns. In every major Russian city, loudspeakers blared the news to street crowds; Germany's D.N.B. news agency issued bulletins all night. So did U.S. Army stations, broadcasting to troops on the Western front, to Italy and to Pacific islands.

English readers followed the election closely. Glowed the London Star: Franklin Roosevelt "has now authority to act . . . in the setting up of the world security council." Added the London Evening News: "America will hit harder now that all her belligerency can be used for export."

Only Woodrow Wilson's name had ever stood so high as a symbol of world hope. Now Franklin Roosevelt had achieved what Woodrow Wilson had not: he had won an endorsement by the people of his general international program.

This was the view of the U.S. 1944 election which the world took. To America's allies and friends, Franklin Roosevelt's re-election was a vote for U.S. participation in the ordering of the world, an endorsement of the working partnership of Stalin, Churchill, Roosevelt and Chiang Kaishek, both in war & peace -- and a promise that this time the U.S. would not withdraw. Political leaders abroad no longer hid their relief.

This international "faith in Franklin Roosevelt" was an immense asset to him -- and also to the U.S.

Commander in Chief. Many Americans would not see Franklin Roosevelt's victory in such black & white terms. Certainly millions who voted for Dewey believed that they, too, were voting for the fullest international cooperation, and Franklin Roosevelt will need their support.

Franklin Roosevelt's victory was thus a vote of confidence in the start he had made on the peace. But it was also, above all, a vote for the Commander in Chief. The U.S. appeared satisfied with his management of the war and with what they knew of the decisions made at the major strategy councils. His administration had held the inflation line, had helped blueprint the miracle of war production. On the record, the U.S. had decided that it was no time for a change.

The Challenges. What lay ahead, in the next four years? The challenges were titanic: winning the war, writing the peace, finding jobs for 11,000,000 veterans, shifting the tools of war to the tasks of peace, designing a world society, learning to get along with other nations in closer contact than the U.S. has ever been before.

How would Franklin Roosevelt meet these challenges? The U.S. had no reason to expect any sensational upheaval after Jan. 20, no exciting "Hundred Days" of drastic change, as in 1933. The U.S. had voted for continuity. The "new faces" the U.S. could expect to see were likely to be the Administration's middle-aged faces of the past grown older.

In the next four years, almost certainly, time would revise the Roosevelt Cabinet, in which four members are in their 70s. But generally the Administration team would probably stay intact. The triumphs which lay within the grasp of Term IV were those of maturity, experience, wisdom.

And still, Franklin Roosevelt, bold exponent of experimental democracy, might yet surprise the U.S. He might decide: this is really my last term; no longer must my decisions be compromised by a need to win reelection. A strong Congressional coalition would inevitably try to circumscribe the President's freedom of movement, should he strike out on new paths. But Franklin Roosevelt, the most popular U.S. political figure in history, might go over Congress' head to the people. This, too, was a Term IV possibility.

The 16 Years. No other man in U.S. history had ever been invited by the U.S. to live for 16 years in its White House. A majority of the U.S. electorate had, for a second time, been willing to break an ingrained American tradition. It did so because it did not want to rock the boat in wartime, and because it had faith in Franklin Roosevelt. The big minority which had disagreed with him or had mistrusted him would have to trust the judgment of the majority.

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