PRESTIGE SHAKEN

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23034, 11 May 1938, Page 23

PRESTIGE SHAKEN

IPKESIDENT ROOSEVELT

reorganisation bill defeat by lower house [moil our own correspondent] ' NEW YORK, April 8 Members of the President's own party in the House of Representatives, jnany of whom owed their places to his great strength before the people in 1936, struck a blow at his prestige to-day in tho defeat of the shreds of the Reorganisation Bill, which has not been equalled in intensity since the insurgent Republican revolt in the House against the Taft Administration in 1910, writes Arthur Krock in the New York Times. The unimportant remnants of the bill, shorn of almost every new power the President had sought when it was first proposed before the Supreme Court increaso battle shunted it last year, were killed for this session by the House for two reasons. One was a response to American opinion which, alarmed by the spread of executive authority over the world, preferred to defeat or postpone even a desirable reform lest any incentive be given to this Government to follow in European footsteps.

Party Leaders Unaware ol Proposals The other reason was a wish to rebuke the President personally for his long disregard of the co-ordinate place of Congress, expressed again as late as vssterday when his new Federal spending plan was permitted to be published before the party leaders knew anything about it. Republicans' in Congress, and the organised groups outside, shrewdly seizing upon this minor piece of legislation as an opportunity to make at the same time an anti-Roosevelt and an anti-autocratic gesture, were influential in the result. It is not too much to say that if the sham issue of "dictatorship" had not been raised, the House would have passed a measure more like the original proposals than the tattered fragment which was recommitted to-day. President's Lost Opportunity

But it was the response to this campaign among voters in the Democrat districts which moved into the opposition enough representatives of that party to kill, the*bill. As these Democrat members interpreted the protests, their constituents were wholly concerned with teaching any aspirant for more power in such a time in history—even if that aspirant were the President, and even conceding that he has no dictatorial inclinations or qualifications—that the United States must make a demonstration for democracy to tho world.

If the President had seized the opportunity presented by the protests as they rose; and said—what would have been true—that the measure was of no immediate consequence and might as well be deferred, he would not to-night have sustained the great blow to his prestige. A Name No Longer Magic

But Mr. Roosevelt chose instead to test his strength with a body where scores owed their seats to, him. Having done so, he must tako the consequences, which can easily grow into a <oss of influence with Congress and which may put him by 3939 in the position of political ineptitude occupied by Herbert Hoover in 1932. This may not happen. It probably will not if the President learns the lesson so implicit in what happened in the House to-day. This lesson is that his name no longer is magic with the Democrat members of Congress, resentful for years of White House driving.

This lessen is also that his name no longer is magic with the people, who, far more than, he has been willing to admit, blame him for the fear psychology to which it attributes a basic cause of the depression.