THE FLOOGIE BIRD
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
The Floogie Bird Or, How the GOP Manages to Fly Backwards By WILLIAM E. BOHN SENATOR HENRY CABOT LODGE told only half the truth when he remarked the other day that the Republican bureaucrats,...
...And then there was George Norris—even nearer to our own time...
...If the present Republican leaders do not clearly recall the men and events of 1896, they should, at least, be able to think back to 1912...
...Among the Republicans there must be some whose memories go back beyond Mark Hanna...
...The Senators, Representatives and National Committeemen who drew up the new statement seem to think that what may be called the paralytic or Casper Milquetoast theory of government became standard for Republicans beginning about 1865...
...It furnishes precious additions to the resources of memory...
...A careful scanning of the record of their own party is recommended to Republicans...
...It has been well characterized by such Republicans as Senator Ives and Senator Lodge...
...Many of the upstanding Republican liberi-ls who denounced the official credo suggested that their party is gninr back to the time of William McKi.-iley...
...When you recall the vital characters who have made our public life what it is, what names pop into your head...
...he should find it an enlightening experience...
...Another nail was hammered home in the coffin of the two-party system...
...Or, if that is overstating the case, they would agree that it became operative with the inauguration of McKinley...
...Or consider the elder Robert M. LaFollette...
...Since Wilson drew the full Democratic following, the millions who voted for Roosevelt and reform must have been Republicans...
...So Truman and a Democratic Congress were elected in 1948...
...must be able to recall John Sherman...
...Those who drew up the GOP policy statement, broadcast on February 6 as the c:eed of the party of Lincoln, suffered from a complete blackout of vision on the Lincoln side, the emancipation side, the progressive side...
...It would have been a healthy thing il they had given a good account of themselves in the 80th Congress and we had had a Republican President in 1948...
...It is true that the Democrats, in Cleveland's second administration, passed the law which ushered in the present setup...
...If the Gabrielson program is to be the only alternative to the Democratic Fair Deal, we are likely to go on for administration after administration without a real change...
...They meant that it is returning to the ideas of Mark Hanna The Gabrielson theory is that the emancipation of the black slaves was the only humanitarian flash in the history of the Republicans...
...of course, never accomplished all that its author hoped for...
...Reading has beep taught for many years in the public schools...
...These leaders have shut out of their minds all of the great ideas and great men of the Republican past...
...If T;uman is re-elected in 1952, the old GOP longevity record will be equalled...
...But it was declared unconstitutional and the long struggle to pass the income tax amendment to the Constitution was carried on largely by Republicans...
...This first great effort to use the powers of government to protect the people against the trusts, dating from 1890...
...Common folks, however, are likely to be less polite than members of the Senate in discussing the political floogie bird the Republicans have hatched...
...Whatever credit is to be assigned for our present tax system, at least half of it goes to the Republicans...
...Herbert Hoover, for one...
...The income tax, too, dates from this period...
...The debates about it...
...AS ONE WHO BEGAN life as an Ohio Republican in the age of McKinley and Hanna, I wish to protest against this way of reading history or forgetting history or disregarding history...
...It has been whittled down and misapplied...
...Though they actually date from the administration of Grover Cleveland, it was chiefly due to the activities of Republicans that they were established...
...What a man he was...
...It goes back much further and the Republicans have a right to claim a good part of the credit for it...
...was a result of Republican initiative...
...They were so out of touch with the impulses of the average man that they could not think of anything else...
...This would be a catastrophe for the entire country...
...Our first income tax was levied by them from 1862 to 1872...
...Their platform of 1948 was a declaration of flaming revolution in comparison with the flat words which they now offer the world...
...And that was all there was—all the Republicans had to bank on...
...But its passage marked the beginning of our long effort to deal with industry and business in their modern form...
...The great man of those days was Senator John Sherman...
...THERE IB NO NEED to undertake an analysis of the new declaration of faith published by the GOP...
...You will think of Theodore Roosevelt, of Bob LaFollettc, of George Norris...
...All the time that Marcus A. Hanna was gaining control of his party and preparing to run William McKinley as candidate for President, there was one stern old Republican leader whom he could not touch...
...Let any Republican leader run down the list of men who followed Teddy Roosevelt in that great escapade...
...There are those who were pleased by it There are arguments to be made in favor of it...
...The unbroken Republican regime from 1861 to 1885 was bad...
...i'he Interstate Commerce Act and the establishment of the Interstate Commerce Commission go back even further...
...Since then Republicans, especially Theodore Roosevelt, have been largely responsible for their development...
...Our two-party system has served us long and well...
...But—even if you are a Democrat—there will be Republican names pushing their way in along with these...
...In a sense TVA is the crowning achievement of American progressivi.tm...
...But as an American I am more troubled by the threat to our whole political system than I am pleased by the prospect of a party victory...
...From there on, leaping lightly across great stretches of history, they would include Harding, Coolidge and Hoover in their Republican canon and exclude all — no matter how distinguished or how authentically Republican — who are out of line with them...
...The voters proved this in the Congressional election of 1946...
...It is impossible to put down here any list of his achievements on the issues of railway rate regulation, trust regulation, better labor legislation and protection for women und children...
...And yet this accomplishment we owe not to Roosevelt or any Democrat—the father of it was George Norris, a man who all his life was a Republican...
...As a supporter of President Truman and his Fair Deal, I might be expected to take pleasure in this backward - looking performance...
...The Democrats had been in for 15 years...
...This act...
...Sputtering journalists and blimpy industrialists will be calling him "that man...
...Now whether that act is right or wrong, good or bad, is is nothing for ordinary folks to shout about...
...But what happened...
...All the world looks to it as an inspiration and a model...
...THIS BECOMES even clearer if we think about men rather than about measures...
...Roosevelt, running on this platform, received 4,119,507 votes in comparison with 3,484,956 cast for William Howard Taft...
...Gabrielson and his supporters have their way, it takes no prophet to foresee that our Harry will move back in to the refurnished White House and serve out his time until 1957...
...1896 or 1920...
...But it was never intended to make life better for ordinary people Even those who argued for it couldn't work up anything in the way of popular enthusiasm...
...The "great achievement" of two years of Congressional control was the Taft-Hartley Act...
...Roosevelt was gone For the first tirhe voters felt free to make a change...
...They may, with profit, start almost anywhere: 1856, 1865...
...The Floogie Bird Or, How the GOP Manages to Fly Backwards By WILLIAM E. BOHN SENATOR HENRY CABOT LODGE told only half the truth when he remarked the other day that the Republican bureaucrats, like the floogie bird, fly backward and can therefore observe the diminishing perspective of the pest but get no notion of the future...
...It is taken for gianted that the upward strivings of Lincoln's followers were laid in the grave' along with the great emancipator's bones...
...Even those who have no idea of political theory like it, trust it, and want to keep it going...
...But now the official Republicans threaten to go backward instead of forward...
...But he will be their own creation — just as Roosevelt was...
...And they went straight for it...
...It is filled with the sort of phrases which are put together by men who want to get elected without shouldering the responsibility which goes with definite promises...
...How alive, how venturesome, how imaginative...
...The war was over...
...They were either ignorant of their own history or they consciously belied and denitc...
...And if Mr...
...The Republicans were sent back with a good majority...
...What I am getting at is that what we call the New Deal or the Fair Deal didn't start with Franklin D. Roosevelt or even with Woodrow Wilson...
...The Bull Moose platform ol that year included practically all- of the humanitarian planks which William Jennings Bryan had advocated earlier...
...The name of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act should do something to keep his memory green...
...the amendments to it, the other measures passed as a result of our experience with it—all of these are an important part of our legislative and social history...
...It lasted 24 years...
...The unbroken rule of the Democrats started in 1933 and will run to 1953...
...If Senators Ives and Lodge fail to change their party, if narrow orthodoxy prevails, it will mean the death of the great organization which started in 1856 and from which the name, the ideas and the achievements of Abraham Lincoln art inseparable...
...By the time the Democrats came back to power in 1913, the job had been done...
...Those whom they recognize as authentic are Coolidge, Harding and Mark Hanna...
...He might mention the name of that great statesman to younger colleagues and they could look it up in histories and encyclopedias...
...The resulting platform is a threat to some of our most precious and most vital political traditions...
...Among them, of course, will be Woodrow Wilson, Al Smith and Franklin D. Roosevelt...
Vol. 33 • February 1950 • No. 7
