Mcallen Daily Monitor

POLITICS at
RANDOM

By BYRON PRICE
(Chief Of Bureau,
The Associated Press, Washington)

So many things are involved in the
legislative stalemate at Washington
that there is wide disagreement just
where the responsibility lies.

The theory advanced by Mr. Roosevelt's political foes is that the balance
of public opinion has turned against
him at last, and that this will be the
end of his domination over congress.

The President's friends ridicule that
view. Many of them say resentment
over patronage distribution and other
purely administrative policies merely
has resulted in a temporary revolt.

There are those who put much responsibility on organized labor whose
leaders were offended by the automobile
code settlement. The "prevailing wage" amendment, adoption
of which stopped the progress of the
work-relief bill, had labor's militant
backing.

Still another idea speculated upon
by politicians is that Mr. Roosevelt,
who likes games, is just playing with
congress; that he is quite willing to
sit back and let the legislators quarrel
and tear each other to pieces, believing that in due course they will
demonstrate their inability to accomplish anything without his leadership.

Possibilities Galore

Whichever of these premises may
be correct, there is no dispute which
of them is the most interesting. Any
supposition that the President definitely has lost his grip on popular
sentiment has the widest of possibilities should future events prove its
soundness.

The legislative work of the session
Monday, March 11, 1935,
hardly can be said to have begun.

Appropriation bills, carrying the routine provision for continuing the regular departments of the government,
have had most of the attention thus
far. Not a single one of the major administration measures has been written into law.

That means that if congress now
definitely takes the ball away from
the President, and takes it away in
response to what it regards as a majority reaction against the Roosevelt
policies, the most urgent questions of
public policy will be settled in a manner which might turn out to be exactly opposite to the trend of the past
two years.

It means that the whole theory of
the recovery program up to date may
be superseded by a new and different
theory.

A Trial Balloon

It is interesting to speculate what a
change it would mean if congress
should clip emergency spending to
the bone, refuse to reenact those provisions of NRA about which there has
been loud popular complaint, or do
any or all of a dozen other things
which have been proposed from various quarters.

Of course no one speaks of such a
development except as a bare possibility. With Mr. Roosevelt holding the
veto power, congress would have
great difficulty, indeed, if it tried to
take matters into its own hands. A
series of compromises would be the
natural expectation.

It may be that Washington will not
have to wait long for the answer to a
legislative puzzle which for the moment is baffling.

What the senate has done to the
big work-relief bill is expected by
politicians on all sides to prove a sort
of trial balloon. When it is established
definitely how the wind of popular
favor is blowing, the situation will be
much clearer.

Testing Strength

Within a year republican aspirants
for the presidency will be testing out
their respective strength in many
states, but today the party outlook
remains almost as indistinct as it was
a year ago.

If any candidate is setting up even
the beginnings of a campaign organization, he is doing it so silently that
his rivals have been unable to find it
out.

In congress the several republican
blocs continue to travel their several
ways, and a unified party policy seems
about as remote as ever.

Republican national headquarters
in Washington is listening and waiting, saying little. What it is concerned
about immediately is money to pay its
rent and keep its skeleton organization together.

No one professes to know how long
National Chairman Fletcher will stay
in office, and no formidable candidate
to succeed him has appeared on the
horizon.

Altogether, it would be difficult to
imagine a situation of greater party
uncertainty. Few politicians expect
anything exciting to happen for some
months to come.

The Letters Deluge

It appears that the country no longer
takes Washington for granted. Letter-
writing among the voters is distinctly
on the increase.

Of course many of the letters deluging congress are devoted to specific
issues and obviously are part of organized campaigns on the part of
special groups.

It is the other kind, however, which
are causing comment-the kind which
obviously are not inspired, which do
not hold up one single issue as all-
important but speak generally of the
state of the Union, and what should
be done about it.

"At no previous time since this administration began," said one senator
recently, "have so many people in my
state taken the time to sit down and
write out-often in long-hand-their
ideas about the basic trend of national affairs."

This began long before both sides
more or less appealed to the country
in the work-relief deadlock. In the
abstract it has represented one of the
most notable political surprises of
1935.

Whatever it may mean, it prevents
members of congress from forgetting
that they will be on the spot in 1936.