CHANGE IN TIDE

Waikato Times, Volume 121, Issue 20255, 26 July 1937, Page 7

CHANGE IN TIDE

AMERICAN POLITICS. DEFEAT OF THE PRESIDENT. THE SUPREME COURT PROPOSALS. United press Assn.—Elec. Tel. Copyright. WASHINGTON, July 24. The seriousness of the consequences of the defeat by the Senate of President Roosevelt's Supreme Court reform proposals is becoming increasingly clear. It is apparent that Mr Roosevelt has suffered the greatest defeat of his career, and it was the greatest defeat by Congress that any President has suffered since the Senate rejected Mr Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations plan. Two conflicting reports are in circulation to-night. One is that the President has given up the fight for the time being but will reintroduce Supreme Court reform later in the session, and the other that he recognises that the fight is over, feeling that the agitation over the plan produced a change In the attitude of the Court Itself and that to that extent his objectives were won, since the Court had plainly reversed itself. Fate of Leadership.

However, It Is obvious to observers that the. Supreme Court question is only a small part of the situation. Other, possibly more important, parts are the fate of Mr Roosevelt's own leadership and the whole of his second term New Deal legislation, for which the people ostensibly re-elected him President, and which he avowedly considers to be most essential for giving effect to his first term legislation.

The Vice-President, Mr J. N., Garner, has assumed the leadership of the New Deal Democrat Senators, who defeated the Supreme Court proposals. The question is being asked whether this group, now in the ascendancy, may not wholly defeat Mr Roosevelt’s legislative programme.

It seems to he Indicated that the adjournment of Congress will occur on August 14 and that none of Mr Roosevelt’s major measures, including drought and flood and production control, Governmental administrative reform and the so-called new National Recovery Act, will receive consideration, and may possibly suffer partial abandonment. Only relatively minor measures can hope to secure consideration in the present session.

There appears clearly to have been a change in the tide of the President’s affairs.