CONGRESS: Pons Asinorum

The donkey has long been the popular symbol of the Democratic Party. At the Democratic Convention last week, there seemed to be a movement on foot to do away with the little beast. A picture of a donkey in the Chicago Stadium was taken down and replaced by one of Franklin D.

Roosevelt. Campaign buttons, distributed by the thousands, displayed not a donkey but a rooster. Last week donkey-minded Democrats, alarmed at this monkey business, were circulating pro-donkey propaganda—a stylish speech made by Arizona’s Democratic Senator Henry F. Ashurst in 1930:

The donkey (said the Senator) “is a compendium of endurance, patience, fortitude and stately dignity; he is a seriocomic philosopher whose stamina and stoicism conquered the wilderness and sustained the pioneer; the donkey uncomplainingly bears heavy burdens; he is a surefooted, trustworthy creature of epicurean taste and gargantuan appetite, but his appetite and taste, happily enough, may be satisfied by a nibble at a desert cactus, and he is then ready for another long and lonely journey.

“The donkey is the personification of the sublime virtues of moderation, forbearance, restraint and rigid economy. . . . The donkey must not be abandoned, for upon his back the Democratic hosts ascend the steep acclivity to power, or, to change the figure of speech, he is the pons asinorum over which they march to victory, and we should be ingrates if … we . . . offered to his lips the cup of neglect and oblivion.”