U.S. ELECTIONS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 229, 28 September 1938, Page 6

U.S. ELECTIONS.

AND THE PRESIDENT

RUNNING THE CRITICS'

GAUNTLET.

EVER WASHINGTON FELL FROM GRACE. (By WILLTAM C. McCLOY.) I. WASHINGTON. From all indications 19.'<8's mid-term Congressional elections will be more bitterly contested than many Presidential elections have been in years gone by.

These mid-term elections, especially in the middle of a President's second term, are of crucial importance. In addition to determining the make-up of the next Congress, they serve as a sort of straw vote, forecasting with amazing accuracy the trend of the Presidential struggle two years later.

In a month or two the United States will elect 435 representatives to Congress and 35 United States Senators, constituting the entire House, and the usual one-third of the whole Senate elected every two years.

At the moment both House and Senate are overwhelmingly Democratic and, for the most part, in accord with the Administration. No matter how many of the Senators newly elected will be opposed to the President politically, there will not be enough to affect his control of that body. But the election of the 435 members of the House is another matter. The changes here are more apt to be indicative of the real temper ef the electorate. In the past Presidents seemingly popular and secure have experienced severe jolts when thev received the mid term verdicts of the voters during their second terms.

It is no coincidence that the flrst President to receive such a setback was the first President of the United States. Washington was elected for his second term by the largest vote ever cast for President-* unanimously. Because of thia, Washington tried to maintain a non-partisan administration. This he found impossible and. just before he left office he frankly said so.

Two Factions Developed. TOe war between France and England Sad developed two factions—one favourable to the British and the other favourable to the French. The crisis came whai a treaty—called the Jay treaty in America and the Grenville treatv in England—came before the Senate "dur- !!!?_ Middle of Washington's second >Tl>e French faction denounced it M nothing more than an alliance between Great Britain and the United States, the terms of which were distinctly favourable to Great Britain.

, Washington was determined to keep Otttof the European wars and ready to •eeapt what he could get and give the war-impoverished new nation a chance to grow strong. His party—the Federal Party—had a safe majority in the Senate when the treaty first appeared before the mid-term elections, and he forced it to a discussion in "executive seaaion." After 18 days, the Federalists compelled the adoption of the treaty, by • vote of 20 to 10, and also decided to keep the treaty from publication. But ■ Senator Mason, of Virginia, a member of the Jeffersonian or Republican party that was opposed to the Federalists party of Washington and Jay, took his copy of the treaty to Benjamin Franklin Bache, who promptly published it in "The Aurora."

The wave of popular indignation that followed was tremendous—as the Federalists had feared when they decided to keep the treaty secret. The pro-French faction was enraged. Even neutral Americans felt Jay should have obtained better terms. Public indignation centred on Jay only at first. He was burned in effigy throughout the country. When Alexander Hamilton tried to defend him at a public meeting, Hamilton was howled down and stoned by a mob.

Jut Eaeapad Adverse Vote. After aeven weeks of delay, Washington signed the treaty. The rage of the public then turned to him. The man who had been unanimously elected President tor the second time was derisively called "the stepfather of hie country." Some extremists demanded his impeachment. When the Congressional elections in the middle of Washington's second term were concluded, the Federalists bad a smaller majority in the Senate and had been reduced to a minority in the House of Representatives.

Then occurred one of the strangest events in Parliamentary history.. Fisher Ames, a chronic invalid, rose in the House and spoke in defence of Jay's treaty. Dr. Priestly, the discoverer ot oxygen, a visiting Englishman, described Ames' speech as "the most bewitching piece of Parliamentary oratory I have ever listened to"—and Priestly had often heard Pitt, Fox and Burke at their best in the House of Commons.

Ames' speech appealed directly to the Western members of Congress—the rugged, 'homespmi frontiersmen who were beginning to appear in the legislative body among the sophisticated merchants of the Xorth and the suave planters of the South. Ames pointed out that, whatever .Tay had done or failed to do in drawing up his treaty, he had at least succeeded in abolishing for *11 time the western forts held by the British during the Revolution as rally-

ing places for Indian raiders and which still served for forays against the settlers of the west. The suppression of tliese sporadic Indian outbreaks was more important to these westerners than the politics of lawyer-politicians in the protected cities of the East nild South. I hey refused to muddle Washington's plans by messing up the Jay treaty in the House of Representatives.

But Washington just escai>ed a vote of lack of confidence in him by the House by a narrow margin, after--as he said himself—he had been attacked "in terms so exaggerated ami indecent as could be applied only to a Nero, a notorious defaulter or a common pickpocket." The Monroe Collapse. Those whose prophesy that Franklin Roosevelt's huge majority for re-election in l!*3(i will prevent, iu his case, the traditional reaction against a president during the Congressional elections of his second term might do well to compare Roosevelt's situation with that of President Monroe during his second term which began in 1820.

Monroe's second term started with an even bigger majority than Roosevelt's in the Electoral College, for there was only one vote against him. An elector from New Hampshire decided at the last moment to vote for John Qnincy Adams to prevent anyone but Washington from winning the honour of a unanimous vote. Vermont, on that occasion went with the rest of the country.

The Federalists—the only large party opposed to Monroe's Republicans —had been so certain of Monroe's victory they had not taken the trouble to nominate a presidential candidate against him, and this fact was hailed by idealists of the day as the sign of an "era of good feelings" in which there would be no party politics and merit alone would cause a man's elevation to office.

But factionalism ip the disease of big majorities and, by the time Monroe's second term began, the inevitable issue among the factions was the choice of his successor. That issue destroyed Monroe's big following as it threatens to divide Roosevelt's followers to-day. Exacabated by the inter-party strife stirred up in the mid-term elections. Monroe' followers hurled charges and counter-charges at each other more and more furiously as the last two years of his second administration drew to their close—a situation that may raise today after the mid-term elections of Koosevelt's second term if we can give credence to the persistent reports of disaffection among the old line Democrats, including even the canny Mr. Farley. By the time Monroe's second term ended, Lowndes had been eliminated from the struggle by death and Calhoun by voluntary withdrawal, leaving four active candidates in the field—Jackson, Adams, Crawford and Clay. The election result was indecisive. There were fl9 electoral votes for Jackson, 84 for Adams, 41 for Crawford the paralytic, and 37 for Clay, the coming legislative power. Under the law, this eliminated Clay as a Presidential candidate. But it was none the less Clay, whose growing power was first revealed in the mid" term elections, who now decided the Presidential election. For the House of Representatives had to choose a President from among the three other candidates, and Clay turned his votes over to Adams, thus causing the House to \ote 87 for Adatns, 71 for Jackson and 54 for Crawford.— (N.A.N.A.) (To be concluded.)