THE PRESIDENCY: Foxy Grandpa

For a President who loves both traveling and political maneuvering, nothing is more fun than to combine the two. In high good humor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt last week boarded a train at Hyde Park, N.Y., to spend twelve days doing exactly that. Ostensible purpose of the trip was to see his daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren in Seattle, pick up first-hand impressions on how the Northwest felt about things in general and the New Deal in particular. But even if Franklin Roosevelt did not love campaigning so much that he does it from sheer force of habit, his visit to his grandchildren would inevitably have been the week’s major U. S. political news.

To Franklin Roosevelt a cross-country jaunt for a family reunion means a special train whose ten cars house a retinue of newspaper correspondents, radio broadcasters, photographers and secret service men. It means a series of rear platform talks, carried to the train’s press car by wire and amplified for the cheering thousands behind the train. All this produces a steady crackling of political electricity, which makes Governors, Senators and Representatives stand on end to join the Presidential special as it rolls across their States.

Last week the electrical display, as President Roosevelt set out to see his grandchildren, was unusually effective. For two days the Presidential special rolled across Grandfather Roosevelt’s constituency—until it came to the home States of three Democratic Senators who last spring helped defeat the Roosevelt plan to enlarge the Supreme Court: Wyoming’s Joseph C. O’Mahoney, Nebraska’s Edward Raymond Burke and Montana’s Burton Kendall Wheeler. Its first scheduled stop was Cheyenne, Wyo.*

When Senator O’Mahoney learned that the President’s first pause would be Wyoming’s capital, he and Mrs. O’Mahoney were in Chicago where they had just bought a new La Salle for $900 cash and $450 allowance on their old car. Disregarding the caution to go slowly for 1,000 miles, they jumped in, made

Cheyenne in 25 hr. 25 min. hard driving. En route in Omaha, when an interviewer asked Senator O’Mahoney if he were hurrying home to lay the groundwork for the President’s visit, Mrs. O’Mahoney answered for her husband: “Perhaps ‘allay’ is the better word.” They arrived a day ahead of the Presidential special. Before the train reached Cheyenne, it stopped long enough for Cheyenne papers to be put aboard. Front-page headlines told about a testimonial banquet which Cheyenne Democrats had “only yesterday” decided to give Senator O’Mahoney. When the train stopped at Cheyenne, New Deal Senator H. Harry Schwartz, Governor Miller and Wyoming’s one Representative, Paul R. Greever, who had all been invited aboard, were on hand. So was Senator O’Mahoney, uninvited but a member of a Citizens’ Welcoming Committee. The joke appeared to be on Franklin Roosevelt. Said the President with gusto: “Hello, Joe! Glad to see you!”

Whether or not President Roosevelt ever errs in grand political strategy, he seldom errs in immediate political tactics. With both Wyoming’s Senators sharing the rear platform with him he spoke for 20 minutes, avoided mentioning either Senator O’Mahoney or the Court Bill. For seven hours Senator O’Mahoney enjoyed the hospitality of the Presidential special. When it stopped at Casper, Wyo., he finally detrained, and the President, going out to the back platform, made an effective little talk. In it he dropped just one scathing reference to politicians who paid lip service to the New Deal while frustrating its objectives.

The next two days of Franklin Roosevelt’s journey to his grandchildren were uneventfully successful. Back at Omaha, Neb. dour Senator Burke had not been asked to join the party, had made no effort to do so. It was similar in Montana where New Deal Senator James E. Murray met the train at Gardiner but senior Senator Burton Wheeler was speechmaking in California. There the President left his train for a drive into Yellowstone Park, where political electricity for a day at least ceased to crackle. Publisher John Boettiger, Anna Roosevelt Boettiger and her children were to meet the President at Mammoth Hot Springs. The party spent the week end motoring about the Park and Grandfather Roosevelt had the pleasure of watching Sistie and Buzzie Dall feed cookies to Yellowstone’s greedy, ingratiating bears.

First stop when the tour resumed was Boise, Idaho, where Grandfather Roosevelt, welcomed by Republican William Borah, and Democrat James Pope, complimented a crowd of 5,000 on both their Senators, Boise’s children and its trees.

* Results of FORTUNE’S quarterly survey, which were published this week in its October issue, and which last year differed from National electic results by less than 1%, show that Franklin Roosevelt’s prestige and popularity have declined with all classes in all sections of the country since his reelection. Smallest decline is less than 1% in the Southwest. Biggest is some 20% in the Mountain States. Said FORTUNE: “This is the section through which it is predicted the President will make a disciplinary tour. . . . Unless these steps are taken with consummate finesse, it is here, rather than in the South, that the first serious break in Democratic ranks may come.”