PRESIDENT’S DEFEAT.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 201, 26 July 1937, Page 7

PRESIDENT’S DEFEAT.

SUPREME COURT PLAN. FATE OF LEADERSHIP. WASHINGTON, July 23. The seriousness of the consequences of the defeat in the Senate of- President Roosevelt’s Supreme Court proposals is becoming increasingly clear. It is apparent that President Roosevelt suffered the greatest defeat of his career, and it was the greatest defeat by Congress any President has suffered since the Senate rejected President Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations plan. Two conflicting reports are in circulation to-night, one that the President has given up the fight and will reintroduce his Supreme Court reform later in the session. The other is that he recognises the fight is over, feeling that the agitation over the Supreme Court plan produced a change in the attitude of the Court itself and that to that extent the, objectives have been won, since the Court plainly has reversed its opinions in later decisions.

But it is obvious to observers that the Supremo Court questions were onlv a small part of the situation, and that other and possibly more important/ parts are the fate of President Roosevelt’s own leadership and the whole second term New Deal legislation, for which the people ostensibly re-elected him President and which he avowedly considers most essential for making the first term effectual. The Vice-President (Mr J. ,N. Garner) has assumed the leadership of the anti-New Deal Democratic Senators who defeated the Supreme Court proposals. The question is being asked whether this group is now in the ascendancy, and whether it may not wholly defeat President Roosevelt’s legislative programme. It seems indicated that an adjournment will occur on August 14. None of President Roosevelt’s major measures, even the normal Granary Laws including drought, flood and production control, Governmental administrative reform and the so-called new N.R.A., will now receive consideration and may possibly suffer partial abandonment. Only relatively minor measures can hope to secure consideration in the present session. It appears clearly that there has been a change in the tide of the President’s affairs.