The Bismarck tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, N.D.) 1916-current, 1930-03-05
A Year of Hoover Beset

A Year of Hoover Beset
Darkness is said to be densest just before dawn. Fail
ure often is most overwhelming just before success.
A year of the Hoover administration at Washington
tends to an appraisal in SMILES such as these. For, not
so much because OF what is left unfinished of it's pro-
gram as because of the generalization OF the forces on
which the president must depend for the legislation he
has proposed, the year Of his exercise of the presidency
ends SO disappointingly as almost to amount to positive
failure.
The administration is OH its way somewhere, but where
to it probably itself doesn't know. 1t has got nowhere
on the tariff, in spite of a special session devoted partly
to the revision the president Congress
passed the farm board bill. but the board hasn't got any
where either. With Premier MacDonald the president
was the inspiration OF the London naval limitation con-
ference, but about the only prospect ahead of that inter-
national policy is that it will end in a fizzle. Certainly
the prospects are gloomy.
Paramount aspects in the Hoover record are the pessi-
mism over the naval conference, the hostility of the sem
ate and the fierce agitation over prohibition now at the
peak of violence and boding trouble all around. In 9TH
er words, the president confronts Generalization on all
the big items of the program he essayed to put through
at home and abroad. He is beset with disappointnents
and vexations and with critics who delight in sneering
at the stalemate he has encountered.
This situation is not significant because it is the sum-
ming up at the end Of IL months. Its import lies in the
political conditions that it implies. The fact that con-
gressional elections are coming on in which IS senate
seats are involved and a house is to be chosen suggests
even greater confusion and Generalization ahead. Ger
tainly the election Of a Democrat in the hitherto Repub-
lican Coolidge district of Massachusetts, is a sign which.
fl it means anything, signifies political disaster for the
presidents party.
So far, in a political sense, the farm board with a still
vague background also has been no asset to the presi-
dent and the Republican party. And the peace program
inaugurated by the president in the Kellogg pact and
the naval conference at London also has its political
riffs at home. Not everybody believes in these. Wheth-
er the tariff measure be passed or defeated, the damage
has been done by the long delay in considering it and
the division in the party over it. 1t can only add more
liability in the election.
Why is there such a condition when the president was
SO Overwhelmingly the choice of the people and when his
administration started out so splendidly and wisely in
taking over the problems which met MI. Hoover at the
threshold of the white house?
Anyone who will stop to consider what has taken
place in this year ending so disappointingly must realize
that, while conditions count against the president, he has
been ~singularly free of creating them. He proposed
tariff revision, but he did not then start to back fire his
proposal. He inspired the naval conference, but it has
been France and Italy and to some extent Japan which
are holding back the contamination of the purposes in
the Hoover mind when he and Ramsay Macdonald con-
ferred on the calling of the parley on an old log along the
banks of the Rapidan. It was his plan of farm board
which was enacted and which has failed to accomplish
In q few months that which congress, as Chairman Alex
ander Legge aptly expressed it, failed to accomplish in
eight years. And what is to be expected as to the form
Of adjustment of a question on which the people are SO
violently divided as on prohibition?
The truth is 1t is the hatredS and suspicious and i'm
perialstic aims Of two European nations which have been
singulary ~ungrateful toward the United States which are
~checkmating the peace program of the president abroad.
And at home it is rebellion in his party which is be-
traying the president. Senators who wear the livery of
Repubiicanism for no other end than merely to vent non
constructive spleen-serving neither those whose votes
they gained by deceit nor the opposition with which they
have not the courage openly to consort-these are the
men who are ~chargeable with the legislative failure which
has been made to reflect so adversely on the progress of
the administration and are keeping the business of the
nation in doubt and dullness.
This is all very shortsighted. The presidential election
still is two years and more away. The only political en-
titles to be killed off at this time are in the legislative
branch OF the government, when the congressional cleo
tions take place in the fall. What a stroke of retribu-
tive justice it would be if these enemies Of the president
were to dig their own political graves by their attempts
to bury him! Let but a few of the Hoover efforts swing
toward success, as his farm board plans and his efforts
to reduce une~mployment-both of which conceiyab.y
might ensue-and lie will be restored in public est.ma-
tion to that regard on which he rode so triumphantly
into the white house. /
Anyhow, the Republican insurgents can not pull down
the president without also pulling down the party, and
"a that they will include the wreck of their political for
tunes. His recommendations have been practical, his
appointments have been good. and II there is to be any |
political cyclone. It Is probable that the debris that will
= found scattered about after the storm is over will be
01npoeed rather Of the Hoover opposition, while the |
president will tower over the scene, too firmly set in the ,
GoOt win Of he people to be uprooted. As Of Grover
Cleveland it may yet be said Of Herbert Hoover that the
Joop1e love him for the enemies he has made.
~ friend Is one who can forgive you for everything
oDeept climbing above his level.
B hypocrtte u . man who cannot even believe what he
11sS Nhcn - talks q hinself.