National Affairs: Unhappy Has-Beens

In the fifth-floor Founders Room of Detroit’s Book-Cadillac Hotel assembled last week a group of Democrats burning to pronounce a malediction on the New Deal. They included Missouri’s onetime Senator James A. Reed, Woodrow Wilson’s onetime Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby, Massachusetts’ onetime Governor Joseph B. Ely, Col. Henry Breckenridge, who ran this year in many a primary as an anti-Roosevelt Democrat, Joseph W. Bailey Jr., son of Texas’ late great Senator, some twoscore political has-beens. Virtually every anti-Roosevelt Democrat who still has political ambitions stayed discreetly away.

Democrat Reed, rheumatic and weak from age (74) and rage, had a speech in his system for which he needed an audience. Democrat Ely had a hope in his bosom that the meeting might openly come out for Landon. The emotional needs of the others were vague but earnest, so earnest that, although in the sumptuous suite where they were assembled a private bar had been provided, they were too busy to patronize it.

Jim Reed had an audience of less than 50 when he delivered his speech behind closed doors. Before its end he broke down and wept. Joe Ely could not win the Southerners present to support Landon. He had to be content with an enthusiastic agreement to oppose Roosevelt. Ablest work at the meeting was done by Bainbridge Colby, who wrote its resolution declaring that Franklin Roosevelt had turned his back on his 1932 platform, that his administration had tried in every way to strike down “the beneficent structures of Democratic Government.” Said the Colby pronunciamento:

“This is more than a deviation which can be corrected, or a lapse which can be cured, or an honest mistake which can be forgiven. It discloses a perversion of heart and spirit which can neither be remedied nor condoned.

“It is indeed fundamental and all-controlling, presenting to the loyal members of such a party the duty of abstention from its evil courses and of applying such punishment and discipline as can only be inflicted by the defeat of a party that has so far forgotten its mission and its duty.”

Only practical accomplishment of the Detroit meeting was the formation of the “National Jeffersonian Democrats.” an organization (not a political party) which will give anti-New Deal Democrats a chance to make speeches under auspices other than those of: 1) the Republican Party; 2) the Liberty League.