Waning Power

Probably the most frequent phrase heard in connection with the coal and railroad strikes was: "Why doesn't he do something about them?"

By "he," the people meant the President of the United States.

Many who said this had once damned Franklin Roosevelt every time he did something about anything. The contrast between a strong-willed Roosevelt and an indecisive Truman had set the nation to thinking about the powers of a democratic leader.

In Manhattan, James Aloysius Farley, a political realist and a shrewd observer of trends, said: "I have an uneasy feeling that the belief is spreading that people are not capable of governing themselves; that the problems today are so complex that the citizens at large must of necessity be detached from their own difficulties. The concept of the political elite is growing."

Were the U.S. people really prepared--had twelve years of the Roosevelt New Deal prepared them--to let their President and his Administration do their thinking for them? If so, they had at least two and a half years more of unhappiness ahead of them. Harry Truman's philosophy of government was obviously far from the Roosevelt philosophy of centralization of power; it lay instead close to the traditional, democratic ideal.

The Traffic Jam. Harry Truman had entered office with the firm belief that government must, as far as possible, stay out of labor-management disputes. His failure lay in the fact that the people--their representatives, their unions and their industrialists--were not ready to resume their responsibilities. By going on the assumption that they were, he had weakened the authority and position of the presidency.

In Washington a Senator who had once been a judge reminisced of his days on the bench, when he had frequently taken two stubborn contestants into chambers and talked them into a sensible agreement. "It wasn't because it was I who did it," he said. "It was the power and prestige of the court, and the willingness of the court to speak firmly and reasonably."

After a year on the job, Harry Truman still spoke reasonably, but the people around the table with him paid him little heed. As his troubles piled around him like cars in a hopeless traffic jam, he got little help from the people, none from Congress --e.g., in such matters as the inequalities of the Wagner Act. Perhaps the concept of the political elite was growing. In Washington one Government labor adviser said: "The only solution to the coal strike is federal seizure, and then let the Government hand the miners and operators a contract." Other extremists, including Socialists with an eye to the future, proposed nationalization of the mines.

Almost no one--except the President--proposed that the only answer to a political elite was a conscientious and responsible citizenry.

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