He Wouldn't Take It Back

It was after midnight when the vote came. And then by a 53-to-15 vote, the Senate decisively rejected the nomination of New Dealer Leland Olds for a third term on the Federal Power Commission.

It was the most crushing defeat President Truman has yet taken on a nomination.

Harry Truman had not helped matters by trying to apply the political thumbscrews to reluctant Democrats, after Olds had been unanimously rejected in subcommittee.

So skilled a congressional vote counter as Harry Truman knew that Olds had no chance. But since Olds had the undying opposition of the power lobby, the President was able to make a fine grandstand play against "the special interests." No one knew better than Harry Truman that an abrupt order to vote for Olds as a matter of party loyalty was no way to put Olds over. It only stimulated the opposition.

The power lobby had undoubtedly swayed some votes. Probably more were swayed by the facts summed up by Colorado's conservative Democrat Ed Johnson. His committee had given Olds a chance to take back the nasty things he wrote about capitalism 20 years before, but Olds, instead of repudiating his old wild-eyed opinions, had only admitted to phrasing them a little too strongly in order to "shock the American people" (TIME, Oct. 17). "Personally," boomed Johnson, "I regard Leland Olds as a warped, tyrannical, mischievous, egotistical chameleon whose predominant color is pink." Shortly thereafter, 58-year-old Leland Olds was also a cooked chameleon.

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