Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 4, 1939. MR ROOSEVELT’S PROSPECTS.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 January 1939, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 4, 1939. MR ROOSEVELT’S PROSPECTS.

SOME very important questions will come up for settlement, though in certain instances perhaps only for anticipatory settlement, during the session of the American Congress which has just opened. Amongst other things there should be clear indications before long of the measure of influence Franklin D. Roosevelt is likely to exercise during the remainder of his second term as President and also of the likelihood or otherwise of his seeking election for a third term. In his first public comment on the Congressional elections of November last. Mr Roosevelt said that the nation had endorsed his liberal policies. On the bald facts of the polling results, that claim may appear to be ill-supported. In the election, the Republicans captured 71 seats in the House of Representatives-previously held by Democrats and took nine> Senate seats from Democrats or insurgents. After beingreduced in earlier elections to a mere ragged remnant, the Republicans have become an Opposition of respectable numerical strength. Against that, it is true, the Republicans have by no means been returned as a party opposed to the New Deal. Some of them, -in stating their policy to the electors, seemed to be inlent on going in certain respects even further than enthusiastic New Dealers and drew from Mr Secretary Ickes the sarcastic comment that they “heard what the Democrats had to offer, and then doubled it.” On the whole, the election appears to have vindicated much of the New Deal programme and may be taken as ensuring that no attempt will be made to repeal the more important policy measures that have been enacted since President Roosevelt went to the White House. There is stated, however, to have been a considerable revolt of small business people and middle class folks of moderate means against the more extreme developments of the spending and lending policy that have taken place during the last .two years. To that extent and in that respect the forces of conservatism have been strengthened in Congress. The state of the two Houses from that standpoint was roughly defined as follows not long ago by a well-informed Washington correspondent:— In the Senate there will be about 47 members who might be classified as New Dealers; 22 Conservative Democrats and 23 Republicans. In the House there are about 190 New Dealers, 70 Conservative Democrats, and 169 Republicans. There are, in short, really three parties in Congress—as there usually are. ... It will be in the uncertain waters of log-rolling and coalition, forming and dissolving fpr each Bill, that the President’s new legislative programme will be tested. The New Deal apparently will be in a minority on its furthest left legislation in the House, while in the Senate it will have only a bare majority. As Congress is now constituted, the President evidently cannot hope to exercise an unquestioned dominance. On the other hand, the conservative elements in his own party and on the other side of the political fence who are anxious to hold him in check have their own rather difficult problems to solve. It has been suggested that if they go to extremes in opposing the President’s programme they .wilt provide him with excellent reasons for taking the course that has been forecasted freely by some of his more ardent supporters—that of seeking election for a third term in order, as these supporters have put it, “to justify himself,” and the national policy for which he stands’.

Traditionally, an American President exercises a waning influence in the last two years of his second term and it has yet to appear whether history is to repeat itself in this respect where Mr Roosevelt is concerned. The existing position at all events has its unusual features. The President is a far greater national figure than any of his opponents. Even by many of those who oppose him in this or that detail of policy it is recognised that lie has opened up a new political horizon in the United States by boldly attacking unexampled problems. His mistakes and failures count on the whole for much less than the undoubted success with which he has led and energised the nation in times of extraordinary difficulty. He is bound to be curbed in some details by the Congress which has now met for its opening session, but it also seems likely that if his opponents attempt to carry the curbing process too far they mav overreach themselves.