Word: vandenbergers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Thus the wise men came back to the possibility that this fight may make either Arthur Vandenberg or Franklin Roosevelt the Mr. Big of 1940. All the soothsayers realized that the vast unpredictability of World War II might make fine hash of their predictions at any minute. But in shooting guesses from the hip, they aimed at the biggest possibilities as last week's shifting targets slid...
Shall or May. Like all political fights, this one could be minimized into a quarrel over terms-in this case a grammarian's choice: the word "may" or the word "shall." Vandenberg helped draft the arms embargo clause for the Neutrality Act; in it he insisted that when a state of war was found to exist, the President "shall proclaim" an embargo on sales of arms to belligerents...
...Great Debate had split Big Business as it had split party lines. Such men as Ernest Tener Weir of Weirton Steel, who sees no sense in costly plant expansion to make munitions for profits the Government will then confiscate, moved to support Vandenberg. But Washington lobbies were thick with the agents of Big Business, plugging embargo repeal furiously over the fumes of free cigars. And such business-sensitive newspapers as the Wall Street Journal and the New York Herald Tribune were hailing their onetime target, Franklin Roosevelt, and sniping anti-repealers...
...looked as if Arthur Hendrick Vandenberg was the biggest paradox of all. Vandenberg best symbolized all phases and shades of the opposition to embargo repeal, thus was chosen to open debate for the antis, while Clark (diehard extremist) was to manage the Floor fight; and Borah (traditional romantic) was to have the last word. Thus the "Big Michigander,"* always safe, sound, middle-of-the-road, now stood up to the Pretorian Guard of his party-Big Business. For there was no doubt he was flying in the face of Michigan's corporate empire-General Motors. Henry Ford, however, vigorously...
With this limited delivery and this one gesture he kept the Republican Party alive in the Senate from 1934 to 1939. He developed a new system of attack on the New Deal. Instead of useless frontal offensives, Vandenberg went along with the New Deal far enough to find the flaws; then by reading and study mastered the technical answers to those flaws; then amended constructively. In this way he exposed the "dangers" of the Social Security's so-called $47,000,000,000 old-age reserve fund of the future. Similarly he won smashing victories over Franklin Roosevelt when...