The Wilmington morning star., 1947-06-24
AsPeglerSeesH
BY wEsTBRoOK PEGLR

maintain our cynicism for more than a few
hours at a time. Consequently we are forever
being taken dirty advantage of by men who
clay politics strictly according to the prac1l-
cal rules of the profession. They put us on
warnir 6 time and again mat tney nav
I neither ideals nor principles and that we have
cnlv ourselves to blame for disenchantments
suffered when they run true to form. Yet we
never do learn.
Although they make an effort to seem TO
he very bitter fellows, most OF our poltlcal
renorters, from the courthouse savants OF lne
,cnntv seats to the mealy bores OF the pack
age-goods trade in Washington, who call Hen
w Wallace a ''liberal' and the boss union
aers Labor likewise are just too DUMB fr
this world. They try to remember never to
+~,,st anyone and to assume that the more
wirsome the politician the worse rogue :he.
Eut then they adopt personal heroes, even
deities, end devils, make fools OF themselves
ana lead their unsuspectin2 readers into pit
falls paved with spikes and pottle-glass: "A
few repetitions of the terms, "forthrlght,
notwithstanding" and "blunt-speaklng all
cl;ches of the new and almost i%lliterate I'M
ionjzec school of newspaper and magazine
Journalism, and millions Of g%ulllbles. includ-
ing misanthropic professors of political SCI
ence in the colleges across the country, are
convinced that some new congressman OF
bureaucrat embodies all the sterling virtues
of which they have enormously been led to
believe both the Roosevelts, theodore ana
Franklin, were compounded.
TO be sure, a few OF this school of compo-
s:lon-writers are ~rascals themselves, trading
their compliments for favors, such as exclu-
sive tips on manufactured trtfles Of news or
Jobs fer dependent relatives. But, though little
else can be said in favor ct the rest OF them,
the majority are jus! honestly unqualified Tor
4Lo~ 4hot nf phnn-
ing in fires and traffic accidents. They not
only report what they are told, but they be-
!ieve it and bespeak belief among those who
read the naive messages which they spell
out with their blocks. 1t would be a. comfort,
rather than the reverse, to believe that they
were all sinister liars in a black conspiracy
of secret forces to foist Henry Wallace on
the people as a man OF molly motives ana
honest heart. The devil Of it is, however, that
fl ON the late Ray Clapper, who first gave
us This idiotic estimate of a man as full of
guile as Hitler and capable of lnestimable
furies once he were down to a
wet-brain founding father OF Alcoholics Anon
ynlous, these people are sincere and the very
cl,l!nsiness and raw-boned crudity of their es-
says are accepted as a Lincolnian virtue. Peo-
Pile believe and trust them and are honestly
but effectively deluded.
There are pathetic expressions of the inno-
Cence that l have in mind in some OF the
editorial remarks on President Truman's veto
of the tax-bil. Editors, on the whole, are
more worldly than readers and certainly any
editor of experience knows that Mr.. Truman's
conduct Mere was not to be measured by such
standards as sincerity or honesty or any
cher than political experience. All his pro-
ferred reasons for the veto had been met
and rtfuted in debate and it was just smart
politics to put an arm around the 81, 500 fam
lily and glare brave defiance at the half dozen
i ~ orico ~ vphN still {ao1jch no11oh To
cept $500, 900 a year as income, taxable at 81
per cent, instead of sluicing the same money
tc the same destination by the device called
a capital gain.
To point out that Truman challenged the
constitutional obligation of Congress to lay
taxes is &c suggest 4 childish belief that he
wasn't conscious Of Going this and wouldn't
have done it if he had been. We know in our
moments Of clear. cynical intelligence that
there is nothing that he wouldn't do for a
political advantage, short of personal homi-
eide, and Of course all such robust vu1garity
as may be left to his old friends of the
Kansas City Underworld. In this respect he is
no worse than the late Roosevelt. Indeed,
there Is no difference except that Roosevelt
had a mere melodious knack of pietistical
n etense which used to drive SO many of us
wild.
Truman friend, George Allen, wrote a me-
molr recently in which he casually told us
that Truman got his nomination for the vice
presidency by Roosevelt's personal decision
at a meeting in the White House in the sum-
mer OF 1914. The usual crowd Of currently
Tlgnt members of the constantly changing
palace guard had dined with the master and
they had decided that Henry Wallace
wouldn't do
Let's make it Truman q" Allen wrote. But
NOBODY told Truman and it was left to Sidney
Hi.]man, a naturalized but utterly unassimi-
lated immigrant from the Baltic slums, so
alien to our language that he couldn't pro-
nIounce his own name and equally alien to
American ideals. to tell the man who would
De the next president of the United States
that he was ''labor's" choice and therefore
1t. Sidney called himself Hickman"
For years before, as Frances Perkins wrote
in her book, it was Roosevelt, in a telephone
call from the White House to her in Chicago.
who selected Wallace. In each case the econ
%vention'' only ratified his will. In the first
case. by this process, the country might have
inherited q wartime president who had asso-
clated with table-tappers and a mystic whose
disciples thought he was God Almighty. In
the second, Roosevelt gave a foreigner whose
own fellow immigrants %disowned him as an
agent OF the: communists, the privilege of rat
flying Truman in the name of American
labor.
~" VI 40 die CdPdplc VI Inauguration ABOUT
such things, the more SO when we recall the
Roosevelt scorn OF the "smoke-filled ROOM
In the republican convention which nominated
Harding. But we shouldn't forget that these
are the ways of American politics. We have
had a thousand demonstrations that they will
always be. We never had a more resounding
deceiver than Roosevelt in all our history
and Allen roguishly tells us that Roosevelt
was embarrassed. but only embarrassed, not
consclence-tricken when ne had to go back
to Pittsburgh in 1886 and advocate extrava-
CANT spending in the same city where, four
years earlier, he had damned the paltry
spending of Hoover's regime.