Browning chief. [volume] (Browning, Mont.) 1941-1953, 1946-11-01
Must Keep Close
Check on Aides

A pitiful example of the break
down of the White House machinery
was the recent Wallace ruckus. The
President never need have been
placed in the position he was.
1t is not Presidents job to read
over every document submitted to
him. No head of a business as big
as the government would dream of
trying to do that. But somebody
should have read both the Wallace
memorandum on foreign policy and
the Wallace speech and appraised the
President of what they contained
and implied. Whether it is the Pres
ident's fault that he didn't have
properly experienced hired help, is
another matter. That his hired
help didn't function, caused the
damage.
An explanation, if not an excuse,
has been offered in this case. The
job of reading over public state-
ments of administration men,
bers to see that they didn't conflict
was handled by the owl during the
war. Before that the White House
machinery had always taken care
of such matters. That machin-
cry had not been again set in mo-
ton when Owl ceased to function.
The fault was not that the Presi-
dent didn't prevent the Wallace
Byrnes clash, but that he was not
prevented from preventing it.
l can think of only one similar bad
mistake made by President Roose-
welt which parallels the Wallace
mix-up and it was due to a similar
but not the same cause. 1t involved
the highly technical question of the
public debt. An assistant" sup
posed to be an expert, furnished the
figures on which the President based
an important public statement. The
eagle-eyed financial writer's caught
it. The expert" was called to ac-
count; he furnished new figures,
was wrong again and caught again.
The President was forced to make
a second public correction.
The duties of President are SIM
ply too great for any one man. So
Presidents have always had person.
al advisors, some times they were
given an office, some times they
had no official title-like Colonel
House in the Wilson regime. To-
day we hear little about presidential
administrative assistants" but we
hear great deal about a group of
advisors" who have failed to func-
ton properly in spite of the fact that
unlike the executive assistants they
lack authority. These advisors are
too "close" to the President. And
they have been criticized by other
members of the administration for
standing between department heads,
the congressional and party leaders.
They are all old, close, personal
friends of the President. They are
inexperienced in government.
Whether President Humans little
circle of "cronies" has helped or
hindered him is beside the question.
No one can dispute the fact that
they were chosen because of their
loyalty rather than because of their
experience. The question is wheth-
- P1SSAASAtAoA u0l4Soy do IllGy tAlSI
today, can be delegated even to a
well-trained, highly capable staff.
They can, is the answer, IF such a
staff is. not blocked by higher au-
thorities who, from motives of love,
hate, politics, religion, temporal
ment, taste or previous condition of
servitude, use such authority, 9TH
er than in the public good.
When Oscar, pet seal of the Cali
fornia Academy of Science, died, it
was found that he had swallowed
$7.54 in pennies, nickels and dimes,
plus a Canadian penny and an
amusement token. But it was the
pennies which were fatal-the zinc
ones developed poison.
A Russian engineer claims he has
perfected ballbearings so small that
$4,000 can be placed in a match box.
But will that make it any easier to
roll your own?