The Press WEDNESDAY, JULY 21, 1948. Revolt Against Truman

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25552, 21 July 1948, Page 4

The Press WEDNESDAY, JULY 21, 1948. Revolt Against Truman

The refusal of the Southern States’ representatives at the Democratic Party convention in Philadelphia to join in the junketings that usually accompany the nomination of the party’s presidential candidate was apparently more than passive acceptance of the inevitable. That is evident from the revolt staged on Saturday at the Southern Democratic Party convention at Birmingham, Alabama, at which two Southern candidates were nominated to oppose President Truman and Senator Barkley for the Presidency and Vice-Presidency. To say that there was no overwhelming demand in the first place for the President’s nomination is a considerable overstatement. . The President was wanted neither by the North nor the South—but for different reasons. He was originally a compromise candidate for Vice-President; indeed. it was his lack of colour that prompted his choice. .But when the accident of President Roosevelt’s death pitched him into the Presidency it was the beginning of the decline of any popularity he had formerly enjoyed. He has neither the personality that sometimes hides the shortcomings of incapable men nor the strength and capacity that occasionally rise to meet high responsibility. He is a small man in a job too big for him, as his political history shows. Fourteen years ago Harry S. Truman was an obscure county judge in Missouri. Elected to the Senate through the influence of “ Boss ” Tom Prendergast’s corrunt political machine, he served an undistinguished term of six years and narrowly escaped defeat when he stood for re-election. He became better known when his capable investigations into war frauds threw him into prominence; but he was still a comparatively small figure on the political scene, even when he became Vice-President. He was there because he was believed to be harmless.

Roosevelt’s death was a tragedy for the world, for the American nation, and for his party, the more so because the leadership of the world’s most powerful nation descended from a political giant to a political pigmy. Truman’s three years’ record in the highest office has been described as “ a welter of “ contradictions in aims, accomplish- “ ments, character, and influence ”, Roosevelt’s death not only left the new President under the handicap of succeeding a glamorous political figure, but also left him an awesome legacy of problems to be solved. The sympathy of the nation and the world was with him. He undertook to follow the Roosevelt “ slightly left of centre ” policies; and that might have been his intention. But he early succumbed to outside pressure and his own personal inclinations in getting rid of men of Roosevelt’s choice from the Cabinet and other executive positions and replacing them with military and Wall Street figures; and at the White House he surrounded himself with a collection of old personal and political friends. And these were only the first of his mistakes. His negotiations, through Mr James Byrnes, with Russia were marked by extraordinary switches of policy. He blew hot and cold, hot and cold again, concluding with the extraordinary blunder of approving a speech by Henry Wallace, who was then a member of the Cabinet, in which Wallace condemned American actions and attitude towards Russia. It became obvious that he had either not read the speech or had not understood its implications. Though Wallace was removed, the taint of the president’s ineptitude remained. In domestic politics he was no more happy, His sudden lifting of price controls led to violent inflation; and though he had offered alternative price regulations, which Congress later refused to pass, this was forgotten by an electorate that remembered only his first act and was suffering its consequences. Decline of popular support for the policies of Truman and his party was drastically reflected in the results of the tongressional elections in November last year, which gave the Republicans big majorities both in the House of Representatives and in the Senate. But the drift was temporarily arrested. The new Congress passed, against the President’s veto, the punitive Taft-Hart-ley labour law and a tax bill favouring the higher income groups. At the same time his strong stand to break the coal and railway strikes increased his popularity. These actions, together with the promulgation of the “ Truman doctrine ”, which pledged “ containment ” of international Communism, and the Marshall Plan for European reconstruction, rallied Liberal support to the President. But it was shortlived. The President again fumbled badly in his handling of the Palestine issue; and northern Democrats were appalled when Henry Wallace’s Third Party candidate won a Congressional by-election in a New York Democratic stronghold in a campaign largely conducted on the Palestine issue.

The Southern revolt against the President has been inspired by his thoroughly liberal and praiseworthy attempt, in his Civil Rights programme, to ensure for negroes practical recognition of their rights under the Constitution—rights which have long been denied them in the Southern States. As a representative of the “ Manchester Guardian ” in the United States has said, the revolt “ looks like a primitive reac“tion against the President’s Civil “ Rights programme ”, That President Truman, in spite of everything. Still gaiqed the Democratic nomination, seems to be nothing more than another political accident. He is there simply because men who might have superseded him, notably General Eisenhower and Mr Justice Douglas, refused nomination. The Democrats, against their strong inclination, and revealing the bareness of their political cupboard, chose Truman because they had no other choice. A corre-

spondent in the “ Sydney Morning “Herald” has said, “Mr Dewey’s “strength lies in himself more than “in his party; Mr Truman’s weak- “ ness is more in his party than in “himself”. However that may be, unless another unlikely swing in his favour occurs between now and November, President Truman seems doomed to political extinction.