THE PRESIDENCY: Two Friends

In the northern wing of Mrs. Sara Delano Roosevelt’s pleasant, quasi-Georgian home at Hyde Park, is “the little study.” It is Franklin Roosevelt’s particular room—the place where he reads, works, ponders, fondles his blue-bound naval scrapbooks, welcomes intimate friends for intimate talks. One afternoon last week, the President and a friend had a long talk in the little study. The friend was James Aloysius Farley.

More than friends, they were partners in as strange and binding a relationship as any in U. S. political history. Franklin Roosevelt of the baronial Hudson Valley, of Groton, Harvard, the Wilson sub-Cabinet, was the Democratic candidate for Vice President in 1920 when he first met Jim Farley, the Irish Catholic, grubbing young politico from plebeian Grassy Point across the Hudson and downstream. Mr. Roosevelt does not remember that meeting; it was at a crowded reception in Manhattan. Jim Farley does, in every detail, down to what his bride said, and the feel of his palm in Franklin Roosevelt’s hurried clasp. Their real acquaintance began at the Democratic National Convention of 1924.

Jim Farley remembers the years: 1928, when he managed Franklin Roosevelt’s first campaign for the Governorship of New York; 1930 and immediately thereafter, when Tammany’s Farley and a few discerning others began to think that their Governor might be a President; and the Governor’s casual okay when Jim Farley put out the first Presidential feelers; 1932, and the cross-continent marathon of Farley handshaking, letter writing, spade work which preceded Mr. Roosevelt’s nomination at Chicago.

Then the years in Washington. Postmaster General and Democratic Chairman James A. Farley went deep into debt (on his $15,000-a-year salary), took many a rap while working as hard and loyally as ever for “The Boss.” But also, in the politician’s simple conviction that The Party is everything, he worked for the Democratic Party. Lately he had also worked for himself, on the thrilling but consistent premise that perhaps he might be his Party’s next instrument in the White House.

Months of Indecision. Last week Jim Farley all but said that the Party was in a hell of a shape in a hell of a year. The man who had put it in its condition was Franklin Roosevelt, to whom The Party is merely a means to a larger end. Mounting strain had become almost intolerable. It was caused by an unanswered question: Was Franklin Roosevelt going to run for a Third Term?

The question was first asked seriously in 1938. The President then probably did not have an answer; he certainly did not give one. He continued to give none. There were reports two years ago that Jim Farley resented his chief’s reticence. These rumors underestimated Jim Farley’s hard, understanding common sense (he wrote in 1938: “Roosevelt may act impulsively . . . yet … he has a curious philosophic detachment in observing what happens. . . . Knowing politics as he does, and realizing the danger of showing his hand too soon, I doubt if he has confided his actual intentions to any individual”). But by last week Jim Farley saw a danger to The Party. Some journalists had it that he was against a Third Term on principle, that he was soured on The Boss. What loyal Jim Farley was soured on was doubt, confusion, rumor and counter-rumor which rent the Democratic Party last week, and the after-effects on the Party of a Third-Term campaign. Said he in Chicago: “This feeling (against a Third Term) is deepseated, and while it would not be sufficient to defeat the Democratic ticket, it would greatly weaken the Democratic Party.” To Hyde Park last week Jim Farley carried no mere personal grouch, but a deep concern for his party in peril.

In the little study after lunch, the President’s skin looked like tired parchment; the wrinkles around his eyes had deepened; his eyes were sunken. Mr. Roosevelt saw a friend whose face was as pink, well-barbered, smooth as ever. On the study desk were newspapers with a story which to outsiders might have indicated that Roosevelt & Farley were no longer friends; that in order to force an answer to the Third-Term question that afternoon, Jim Farley had pulled a squeeze play on The Boss. The story was that Jim Farley planned to buy into the New York Yankees (with the backing of Mr. Roosevelt’s 1920 running mate, James M. Cox), intended to quit as Postmaster General and National Chairman after the Democratic Convention. Mr. Farley had indeed carefully seeded the report around Washington—but he had planned it to break (in the New York Times and Herald Tribune) a full 24 hours after he talked with Franklin Roosevelt. Hearst’s New York Mirror sniffed the yarn out, ruined Jim Farley’s friendly plan.

For three heart-to-heart hours, Roosevelt & Farley were alone. Then Jim Farley, radiating something besides barbershop ointment, faced the press. At last the party’s chairman was able to say: “I have full knowledge of the President’s thoughts and what he has in mind on the subject of a third term. . . .” But he also had to say: “I will not discuss it with any individual. It is up to the President to discuss his own plans.”

Free of the probing press, Jim Farley looked extraordinarily happy when he left Hyde Park. When Third-Term doubt was heavy on his mind, happy was not the way Mr. Farley looked.

Hour of Decision. When Mr. Roosevelt returned to Washington this week, his party’s 1940 convention in Chicago was just seven days away. In Washington was G. O. P.’s Willkie, announcing with supreme confidence that he expects to be there eight years—”and only eight.” But Mr. Roosevelt’s first concern was not for. the Democratic Party. His concern was for the U. S., which in 1940 meant the U. S. in world affairs. He had brought two like-minded Republicans into his Cabinet. Term II does not end on election day, but on January 20, 1941. His to choose at will were any number of world-minded Democrats (Cordell Hull, Justice Douglas, Attorney General Robert Houghwout Jackson). And if they lost—well, Wendell Willkie and Franklin Roosevelt were very near eye to eye on foreign policy last week.

Thus ran the argument of a few (but seasoned) die-hards that Mr. Roosevelt will not run. Against it was a nationwide refrain, drumming through the Democratic Party, that only Franklin Roosevelt could beat Wendell Willkie. Most politicians in an election year can think only of winning.