PRESIDENT COOLIDGE LONG WAY FROM GOAL
President Coolidge Long Way From Goal CALVIN COOLIDGE gives every indication of being an active and aggressive candidate for a third term as President of the United States. The campaign apparently...
...These are but a few of the items in President Coolidge's record which he will have to meet in a campaign for re-nomination and re-election for a third term...
...Those who profess to view the President's campaign as already won, overlook the fact that he will likely face a very different situation in the next Congress than he has yet confronted as Chief Executive...
...The campaign apparently started in earnest when President Cooiidge went to the Black Hills in South Dakota for his vacation, in the center of the agricultural regions hostile to his attitude on the farm problem...
...The issues of farm relief, flood relief and control, tax reduction, Muscle Shoals and Boulder Canyon dam, Nicaragua, Mexico .and the Philippines, are some of the important questions which' the Administration will have to face with a precarious control of the Senate in prospect...
...The danger that a President, when no emergency exists, out of mere greed for office, may, attempt to grasp a longer term in office than Washington, Jefferson or Lincoln enjoyed, is imminent, not academic...
...imperialistic policy in Nicaragua and Mexico with loss of friendship and trade of Central and South America...
...If Vare and Smith are refused admission to the Senate, it will stand 46 Republicans, 47 Democrats, and one Farmer-Labor...
...But I do not believe it...
...Perhaps the farmers of the country will be taken in by this kind of guff...
...In his first speech since arriving at the Black Hills, the President tells the farmers: "Anyone who has an occupation or job under our flag, no matter what that occupation or job may be, in industry, agriculture, or commerce, or what his situation in life, that person can be assured that he has the best job of that kind of anyone on earth...
...They say that the people no longer fear the destruction of democracy by the election of a President for a longer tenure than eight years...
...attempt to give -away Muscle Shoals to the Power Monopoly ; indifference to the debauchery of elections in Illinois and Pennsylvania...
...Even his most ardent supporters among the press no longer write editorial panegyrics on his great ability, intellectual power and statesmanship...
...George Washington established the unwritten law that no President should have more than two terms...
...To date, President Cooiidge has not made a very auspicious start in his campaign to break the third term tradition in the United States...
...Perhaps they will forget that President Cooiidge has given the great financial interests of the country everything they have asked for from the government, while refusing to countenance any genuine measure of relief to the basic industry, agriculture...
...It is his control of this large bloc of southern delegates from territory where the Republican party has no real strength that makes President Coolidge's renomination a foregone conclusion in the minds of most political observers...
...That's what the flag means...
...The people are getting a true measure of the man as he'really is...
...Among the burdens which will prove heavy before his journey is over are the retention of Daugherty as Attorney General...
...packing of Federal Trade, Interstate Commerce, and Tariff Commissions with henchmen of special interests...
...This situation is, in and of itself, a powerful argument against a third term because it demonstrates the vast political power which the Executive wields by virtue of his control of federal patronage...
...relief of the rich of their fair share of the burden of government and cost of the late war...
...The slush fund committee will no doubt be empowered to complete its work...
...The American people are not unaware of the enormous growth of the power of the executive since Washington's time...
...refusal to call extra session to relieve flood devastated areas...
...While it is natural that we should all want to better ourselves, it is well to remember that, wherever we are in America, we are in a state far better than anywhere else in the world...
...Surrounded by newspaper reporters and photographers, with a corps of publicity men, the President is attempting to make the farmers forget his veto of farm relief legislation by wearing a ten-gallon hat and catching trout with milk-fed worms...
...The Norris resolution for an investigation of southern patronage will be adopted, involving revelation of the rotten conditions prevailing in the so-called Republican Party of the South, together with' the methods now being employed in gathering in delegates to the National Convention from those states for President Coolidge...
...In spite of the opinion of his subordinates and political hangers-on, that President Cooiidge is in a position to force his renomination and election, he is in fact a long way from his goal...
...There does not seem, at this writing, to be any mad rush of important political leaders from the west to the Black Hills...
...The President will have to find better bait than this in order to catch votes in the northwest and west...
...The President as a candidate must carry the weight of his record since he took office upon the death of President Harding...
...I believe that these gentlemen are gravely in error in their analysis of public sentiment on this very important question, particularly in the northwest...
...indifference to the oil scandals...
...They have not overlooked the tremendous federal patronage machine, carrying with it control of southern delegates when the sitting President is a Republican...
...During the past months the picture of President Coolidge, disguised as a "strong, silent man," which the newspapers built up in the public mind, is beginning to fade...
...Among the Republicans are many men elected as progressive Republicans, who can be depended upon to serve the interests of their constituents with fidelity, rather than pandering to third term aspirations in consideration for federal patronage...
...attempted appointment of Warren as Attorney General...
...Jefferson confirmed and strengthened it and every succeeding President has been forced through conviction, or by the pressure of public opinion, to adhere to that sound doctrine...
...The first problem to be met will be the organization of the Senate, which involves the issue of seating Smith and Vare...
...In other words, the farmers, having been dealt two knock-out blows by the passage of the Esch-Cummins law and the deflation policy of the Federal Reserve Board, and frustrated in their efforts for adequate relief by the great eastern industrial and financial interests acting through President Cooiidge, are told to remember that there are people in other parts of the world worse off then they are...
...Even at this early date, it appears that the President will have to do more than wear a ten-gallon hat, kiss babies and catch trout, in order to carry him to a third term in the White House...
...If one excepts that great "friend" of the farmer, Congressman Tilson, Republican floor leader from Connecticut, who thinks tax reduction more important than farm relief or flood control, General Wood, an "expert on agriculture" from the Philippines, and a very ex-Governor of Nebraska, there does not seem to be much political vitality in the list of visitors to the summer White House...
...Every person conversant with political conditions in this country knows that President Coolidge's power in the Republican party rests largely on his control of southern delegates, who are bought and sold with federal jobs serving as the medium of exchange...
...attempt to destroy federal inheritance tax...
...Many political time-servers and job-holders under the Cooiidge administration insist that there is no longer any validity in the third term tradition and that, anyway, it does not apply to the individual upon whom their jobs depend...
...The latter case brings the President prominently into the picture, -with Senator Reed of Pennsylvania, and Secretary of the Treasury Mellon supporting Vare...
...The intelligent citizens of this country know that once a President has smashed the third-term precedent, there will be no effective limit to the tenure of a chief executive who has .come to exercise kingly power which gives an unscrupulous man an opportunity to perpetuate himself in office...
...veto of farm relief legislation...
Vol. 19 • July 1927 • No. 7
