The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1936-06-18
THE GREAT
GAME OF
POLITICS . .
RY FRANK p KENT
By FRANK r. KENT,
Copyright by the Baltimore Sun and
reprinted in The Republican by
special permission.
Overtalking Himself

| CALd1hlIlS E1IHlSen
Washington, June Is.
1t is gradually sinking into the
minds of some of the more thought
full of the New Deal political strate-
gists that Mr.. James Aloysius Farley,
the great Surplus Creator, talks too
much. The immediate problem is how
to convey this idea effectively to Mr..
Farley.
In view of the fact that of all the
political strategists he is the chief
and of the further fact that he has
grown to love greatly the sound of the
human voice when uttered by himself,
this is not exactly an easy thing to do.
1t is not only that Mr.. Farley talks
more than any other member of the
Administration, and that the next
most loquacious Cabinet member is
far below his score in the matter of
speeches, but he is rapidly becoming
recognized as a real Roosevelt liza
bility.
The reasons are clear. One is be-
cause he is what an old-fashioned
Maryland man used to call "too damn
unanimous" By this he meant being
too Extensively cocksure about himself.
There is no doubt that the blatant
boasting of Mr.. Farley about the
November election being Sin the bag"
and Mr.. Roosevelt carrying all forty
eight States, and getting more cleo
toral votes than any other preceding
President is vastly irritating to great
many quiet people. Mr.. Farley seems
to be totally unaware that the con-
sistency with which he smears his
absurd claims under the popular nose
is bad psychology. He apparently does
not realize that it is human nature to
want to see men who strut and boast,
"talk big" and sling their weight
about, taken down. Beyond question,
Mr.. Farley has awakened this desire
among great many. There is a
widespread public wish to see him
slip.
A second reason is because there
is, even among some of Mr.. Roose-
| velt's strongest friends, like Senator
Norris, of Nebraska, real resentment
at the impudence of this second-rate
Tammany spokesman in piously prat
ing about principles and policies and
ideals. The facts that the thoughts
are not his own, that he has no I'M
derstanding of most of the things
about which he crates, and his acts
clash with his words, only make it
more insufferable. 1t is clearly as
sumed that the people generally are
without sense. A third reason is that
the retention of Mr.. Farley in the
Cabinet while he holds the dual polit-
ical positions Of Chairman of the
Democratic National Committee and
Chairman of the Democratic State
Committee of New York, makes Mr..
Roosevelt's pretensions of non-parti-
sanship and his appeal to the people
as from pinnacle utterly hollow and
hypocritical. No one really defends
the holding by Mr.. Farley of these
three positions. 1t, like the rape of
! the Civil Service, is one of those things
with which this Administration gets
by because there is too much to think
and write about to keep it in mind.
**#
A final reason is that, as was in
evitable in a man who talks as much
as he, Mr.. Farley has begun to make
"breaks." His sneering reference to
Governor Landon as "the Governor
of a typical Prairie State" is 60
ing to plague him quite lot. It fits
in with the calculated effort to dispar-
age Mr.. Landon, which has been made
ever since it became probable that he
would be the Republican nominee. 1t
intensifes in the Middle West the
desire to see Mr.. Farley defeated, but
it is not really as embarrassing as
his various explanations of why Mr..
Roosevelt repudiated the Democratic
platform upon which he was elected.
On this Mr.. Farley has taken strange
ly conflicting stands.
In one speech he maintained that