Word: rooseveltisms
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Borah's shadow, and the threat it represented, had caused Franklin Roosevelt to change his mood and tactics. Suddenly honey-sweet to the press he had often lambasted, Franklin Roosevelt now turned his full charm on his opponents: solicitously he consulted Republican leaders about a special session; then on the dissident Democrats. Twice he called the Mississippi fox, Pat Harrison, by long-distance telephone. He condoled Georgia's Walter George on an eye-operation (13 months ago he strove to end George's career). He appointed James Elliott Heath (a close crony of Virginia's Carter...
...political battle to come was the undenied report that South Carolina's Jimmy Byrnes would manage the Administration's floor fight for repeal of the embargo. After two years' agonized observation of Senate Leader Alben Barkley's dazed fumbling with New Deal legislation, Franklin Roosevelt was apparently turning to the slickest, most persuasive man in the Senate for leadership to combat an isolationist filibuster...
...needs 15 men.*Last week Washington observers gave the Borah anti-repeal forces a minimum of 25 men, a maximum of 40. Therefore Jimmy Byrnes knew he had the most important thing-the votes-in the bag. But well he knew that only such a magnificent optimist as Franklin Roosevelt could seriously believe that 435 brass-tongued, leather-lunged Congressmen would meekly report to Washington, legislate one bill, then go quietly home in a time of crisis. Byrnes said nothing, silently agreed with Bennett Clark that the Congress, once called, would stay for the duration of World...
...radio speech, old Senator Borah served notice that Franklin Roosevelt could expect no Blitzkrieg victory over Congress: "The only matter of difference ... is the sole question of whether we shall sell arms or not sell arms." Quickly Clark and Vandenberg followed this line, insisting it would be unneutral now, with war under way, to revise U. S. law to favor one set of belligerents against another. It was obvious that one serious display of over-caginess on the President's part could ruin his chances of success...
Last week began the Great Debate on U. S. Neutrality. Franklin Roosevelt argued for action, short of war (see p. 11), Idaho's Borah for Isolation (see p. 12), Elder Statesman Henry Lewis Stimson for traditional neutrality. These and many another who joined issue were professional exponents of known views. None owned a fresh voice to bespeak the people's horror of war. But at 10:45 o'clock (E.D.S.T.) one night last week that voice was heard, the voice of the one U. S. citizen who could command a radio audience comparable to Franklin Roosevelt...