Dewey's Triumvirate
Dewey's Triumvirate Edwin F. Jaeckle—Storm Center of GOP Politics By Vincent Riordan rp TjtD. w»*uM be a'seted President of the United m*es* next month the men least likely to go with aha to...
...In very few does the voter have the chance to choose the candidate who, to his mind, is perfect...
...Far the Isst sis yesrs Jaeckle's star has risen...
...and that they parrot the rhetoric of progress, only in order to hold on...
...His enemies, alluding to his German origin, call him a Prussian tyrant...
...America's blessed destiny, in this crisis, is to have produced, a leader whose eyes are open (whatever his mistakes) and whose heart is strong...
...The hsrdest fighting still confronts us—in terms of peace, in terms of our economic life and of our international relations...
...If the high command thould decide to put him on the scrap heap it will not be without s rigorouM fight For the next few weeks everyone is keeping quiet in the hope that all their inner difficulties will be resolved when Dewey marches on Washington...
...But Jaeekle himself is extremely proud...
...DlJRING the last year Jaeekle has come into behindthi-tcenet conflict with other party leaders, because Dewey entrusted him with the job ef pushing through, the Legislature hit 1944 legislative program, such as it was...
...Part of Jaeckle's difficulties may be laid to the Intense individualism of New York State Republicans, With them "rugged individualism" it not a theory, it's a practice...
...But to petty politicians it's the little things that count...
...Jasskla is a victim of what might be celled the poetical theory of declining usefulness...
...Mruk said that he was showing bias...
...during the days of the Hit lei Stalin pact he denounced the CommuniMt "imperialist war" attitude...
...America's battle to protect the growing, struggling principles of democracy will be infinitely harder to win than even the battle of France, even the battle of Germany...
...Along »ith J. Bussel Sprague, G.O.P...
...But Jaeekle, taking bit role ef "Boss" seriously, nsver let snything go by of which Dswty disapproved...
...He has had the job of reconciling their differences but at the tame time carrying out orders which frequently wounded their tentitive pocketbookt...
...Whatever may be our judgment of specific actions in the Roosevelt administration (and I, for one, find much to criticise adversely), the dominant fact remains that Frsnklin Roosevelt from the very beginning has been vividly snd intelligently conscious of the dangers fscing America and the world...
...and made us ready...
...Whatever the truth, Jaeckle's arbitrary action has alienated many Poles—at the moment when Republicans were counting on a huge disaffection from the Democratic ranks be cause of events abroad...
...It ssems that Mmk, although a conservative, wanted to make up hit own mind about how he should conduct himself as a member of Congress...
...But usual* the splits come later, when the spoils are to be divided...
...Unfortunately for himself he decided to support the Worley bill which would give servicemen the right to a federal ballot where they could not Obtain a state ballot Thi* hsresy came just before Dewey was about to advocate "states' rights" in the soldier-vote fight...
...The Election Issue Dollars vs...
...At usual there were a host of minor bills, important for the local bosses, mainly because of patronage...
...In the depreKNion, Frank turned to t omomnium as a solution and toured with Karl Browder...
...Jaecklt joined the vendetta...
...Jaeekle denies this...
...boas of wealthy Nassau County, and Herbert Brownell, Jr., Dewey's handpicked national chairman, Jaeekle has helped to bring Tseng T*m into the big-time...
...Incidentally thit man it not returning to the Senate this year...
...Their pride was bsdly hurt...
...Jaeekle has been the military genius...
...LoOK at the record of Dewey and his crowd...
...has striven to guide us through mortal dangers in accord with high human values...
...But at the moment of their greatest triumph, this triumvirate shows signs of wear...
...not only for his defiance in this instance but for numerous brushes with the powers...
...Riordan would be subject to political reprisals if his name and the nam* of hi* paper were revealed:: such i* the machine power of the Republicans npatat...
...Carrying the analogy just one step further, it might be said that Jaeekle is the Pompey of the present team...
...The incident grew until many Buffalo Polish-Americans felt that Jaeekle'* action was a reflection on them...
...In their inner circlet they fight like eats and Democrats...
...It infuriated Marvin...
...This Deep...
...We find a man like Bricker, who sickeningly reminds us of the Harding* of a disgraceful past...
...He soon discovered the corruption of Stalinism and repudiated it...
...But Jaeekle stubbornly refused to back down...
...The excuse given was that under reapportionment being a Catholic and of Polish descent, he could not win in the new district Mruk felt thet hi* fa n h and ancestry should not be the determining factor...
...He carried out the orders...
...This, despite the fact that he knew most of the legislators and their county bosses had given commitments in the teachers' lobby against the measure...
...It is the alternative between going ahead or turning back...
...One of our foremost novelist* and e*sayi«ln, he has been received with more appreciation abroad and in South America than here...
...This assemblyman is not returning either...
...So when Jaeekle recently had a public brush with another independent Republican politician, practically no one in the party rushed to hit defense—except one of his own hanilpickeif office-holders, —J * • ? I'I"S the Mi'uk incident which tin catena Jaeckle's standing in the Dewey family...
...On a relatively unimportant measurs to reduce New York City's school board of superintendents from nine to one man, Jaeekle insisted on passage—at Dewty'a orders...
...POLITICS at best is a choice between alternatives...
...But if the Governor's hope should be dashed, neit year's New York State Republican polities will be interesting...
...Now, who is on the other side of the alternative...
...Only the first stage of that fight is behind us...
...between working with eyes open for a progressive future in which humanity may breathe—or trying to ' reproduce the past, a hopeless effort which can only lead us to a disastrous future...
...We find a small local lawyer, Tom Dewey: a man utterly without experience in world affairs and— which it worse—utterly without the vision to cope with them, without true awareness of the dangers, greater than the military threat of Hitler, which confront the post-war world...
...These men have not changed...
...It means Business as Usual—which is what brought on this war...
...Among observers of politicel trends and students of political affairs these things seem unimportant...
...Naterally, this sort of assignment has won for him many enemies...
...legislators don't like to be told ia January when the session is going to end...
...Browuell and Sprague have provided the ideas, lathered the coin of the realm and supplied the tart...
...For example: The G.O.P...
...It means Special Privilege, parading as "free enterprise...
...w»*uM be a'seted President of the United m*es* next month the men least likely to go with aha to Washington ia Edwin F. Jaeekle, the brusque, tdi-deefer, white-haired boss of the New York State ajeobliean machine...
...That has been the fat* ef other triumvirates, not excluding the First Triviavirste of Caeaar, Crassus and Pompey...
...and has successfully led us through the first stage of the battle for survival...
...One of Jaeckle's pwn men stood up to vote as ordered, but holding his fingers to his nostrils—at if to keep out a fofll odor...
...Watch Jaeekle as a storm center...
...Poles make up one-third of Buffalo's population, Mruk was ths first of their number to receive such a high honor...
...Dewey vowed vengeance, including Simpson's ouster from various party posts...
...Unfortunately, Mr...
...Jaeekle got on the band wagon when he sided with Dewey in the fight against tht late Kenneth Simpson...
...In the course of a rather heated discussion Mruk was informed that he could not expect redealgnation for Congress...
...This is true in any election...
...Kiordan'a article supplement* various pieces by Desn Alfange, Robert G. Spivack, Mark Sherwin which have appeared in them page* analysing Dewey's beliefs and hia action* in New York State ¦a Governor...
...Marvin hat decided to run himself...
...They grew great, not through their own strength, but largely through the selfishness and stupidity of the kind of men who rally around Dewey...
...Kut Waldo I miik ha* alao sought to rapture the spirit of America, and in hia book Our America," and such novels as "City Hlock" and "The Death and Kit th of David Markand" he has given hia vixion of America...
...The Deweyites got one of Marvin's own men to put tuch a bill through...
...Destiny of Mankind By Waldo Frank Waldo Frank is a prophet more greatly honored in many other rountriea than his own...
...V 1NCKNT KIOHDAN i* the pseudonym of en upstate newspaperman covering Albany...
...Roosevelt, and the men who supported him, saw the menace to mankind brewing in Europe AND OUR OWN COUNTRY, before the storm broke...
...Then Mruk, acting on his own, voted in favor of subsidies, i Thit wat too much for Jaeekle...
...and has so guided us...
...With the rine of Hitler, Waldo Frank called for immediate action against Nazism, and never wavered in that belief...
...Like Dewey, he has tried to rule with an iron fiat...
...War between progress and darkness will not be won—not by a long shot, when Hitler and Hirohito lay down their arms...
...Yet most of the growing friction can be laid to Jaeekle himself...
...We find a man like Dulles, whose record in the years when the Storm was brewing, was one of ignorance, of complacency, of secret sympathy with the power* of reaction...
...I do not see how the conscientious men and woman of America—the common man and woman who have a stake in our country's glorious promise, can hesitate in this election...
...Hi* short article here on why he support* Roosevelt is a reasoned analysis, The New Leader believe*, of the political situation today...
...America'* place tomorrow will be in a dangerous world...
...Roosevelt and his supporters—against the inertia, ignorance and isolationism of great bodies of American opinion—labored to prepare our country to be ready...
...Hia "Virgin Spain" and "South American Journey" were hailed a* the best interpretations of Latin culture...
...He was one of the few New York Republicans to join the Willkie forces...
...But Jaeekle snd Dewey told them it would be over by mid-March...
...Mruk says it .is so...
...We find, in fact, all the Old Guard of reactionary business, reactionary politics, reactionary columnists and radioprima-donnas, whose devotion to Money and Vested Interest were one of the responsible factors-in the rise of Fascism...
...But in this election, certainly the most important since Abraham Lincoln, and probably the most crucial in all our history, a deeper alternative than specific candidates or specific issues faces us all...
...An independent politician, Simpson had defied Dewey prior to the 1940 convention...
...It means catastrophe in the future, ss sure ss s dollar is a dollar—and as the fact that to these men a dollar is a lot more than the destiny of mankind...
...It's his faculty for getting into such brushes that makes other Republican leaders want te keep Jaeekle in the background...
...RoHend Marvin, boss of Syracuse and formerly Willkie's upstste leader, opposed a measure to advance the Spring primaries to March 28—thereby shortening the time to get convention delegates for Willkie...
...Unlike Jim.rarity, Jaeekle never w-arned to say "no," without getting somebody mad at hint He hss some of the other sttrrbutes of old-time political bosses, including a paunch, but he does not knew hew to win friends or keep them...
...Congressman Joseph Mmk, a Polish Catholic of Buffalo, was called into Jaeckle's office last February and reprimanded for getting off the reservation...
...and if history proves anything, it Is that they do not want to change: that they would lather sec the world go down, than change...
Vol. 27 • October 1944 • No. 43
