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    Washington Weekly: Nothing Red but the Tape

    By Paul W. Ward

    The Nation
    January 2, 1937
    Vol. 144, No. 1, P. 8

    Washington, December 28

  1. Perhaps in the next few weeks, and certainly in the next few months, the national retina is going to catch more than one glimpse of a New Deal aspect that heretofore has been visible only to those of us who, working in Washington, see the Roosevelt Administration at close range. It is, moreover, the New Deal's most depressing aspect. I refer to its bureaucratic trends and, more particularly, to its overwhelming demonstration of the speed with which bureaucrats are made.

  2. To understand what has made this demonstration so depressing one must go back to the New Deal's beginning and recall that the hopes it inspired were in very large measure based upon the character of the personnel it brought to Washington. The army of jobholders that began trooping into the nation's capital in March, 1933, was not the usual horde of boozy precinct runners, police-court bailiffs, ambulance chasers, and assorted party hacks bent solely upon fattening themselves and their kinsmen at the public trough. It was instead—or so it seemed to be—a quite different crowd, a throng of youngish lawyers whose concepts of justice had outlived their contacts with the judicial processes, and of youngish professors whose flair for cold, bold thinking the cloisters had not diminished. And these were merely the leaders of the invading host that promised to raise the civil service to a new high.

  3. The distinguishing characteristic of this throng which comprised the New Deal's one substantial gift to American government was that its members respected facts, knew how to sift and winnow them, and were prepared to follow facts to their logical conclusions. They were objectivists, and hence it seemed that they could never fall heir to the diseases of bureaucracy. But sicken they did. It was only a matter of months before the symptoms began to manifest themselves. Now, less than four years later, most of them are in the final stages of the bureaucratic illness. Their zeal is gone; the only ambition that now consumes them is a desire to maintain their prestige by increasing their duties and powers no matter how needlessly, and by raising the number and salaries of their underlings so that they themselves may, in turn, lay claim to higher salaries, swankier offices, and more resounding titles. Press agents in some departments have become more difficult to reach than the Cabinet members who head the departments. Many bureau chiefs who prior to November 3 operated almost constantly in the public eye have since that day hidden themselves away even from their closest friends outside the Administration.

  4. I realize that what I have said may sound like nothing more than the grousing of a reporter who is having trouble with his news sources, and that a bill of particulars should be provided. However, you yourself will begin to detect the symptoms of the New Deal's bureaucratic paralysis soon after Congress meets a few days hence. You will notice that in such battles as the coming session produces the participation of the executive branch will be limited almost wholly to quarreling over bureaucratic prerogatives; there will be almost no attempt by that branch to revive the New Deal's early promises and to force legislation of fundamental importance. To be sure, the executive branch is not supposed to have any part in the legislative process under the Constitution, but the truth is that most of the vital legislation passed by Congress is shaped and drafted in the executive branch. It is also true that, under the New Deal at least, the participation of executive departments in the legislative process has not been channeled exclusively through the White House and that in past days of zeal executive departments have contrived to press forward in Congress measures too strong for the President's stomach. As the New Deal enters upon its second term, you will find most of the departments, bureaus, and agencies lacking in any thing recognizable as a legislative program, and you will note this down as a manifestation of the lassitude accompanies the bureaucratic plague.

  5. I use the phrase "bureaucratic plague" to describe not the excessive officiousness usually associated with bureaucracy but that far more dangerous condition in which the jobholders place their personal fortunes and comfort above those of the nation that employs them. That disposition is not confined to the New Deal's bureau chiefs and their underlings. It is alarmingly apparent at the White House, which has never been as zealous the New Deal's avowed purposes as many of the subordinate officials of the New Deal were in the beginning and a few still are today. It is too much to hope that a Congress even more overwhelmingly Democratic the last one will show a contrary disposition and carry on where the New Deal's titular leader all too obviously has left off. We may expect instead to see a Congress performing in the true tradition of party wheel horses and party drudges, obediently turning out only those statutes the White House requests or smiles upon using the brute strength of the majority to crush and stifle minority opposition. We may expect to see the President requesting and smiling upon very little, unless forced into new fields of positive action by developments beyond his control. The chances either for NRA legislation of the O'Mahoney-bill type or for simpler wage hour regulation are hardly worth reckoning, and there is even less chance of action toward amendment of the Constitution. The executive branch will concentrate its attention on getting from Congress extensions of its present powers, including the President's monetary manipulation authority and the State Department's power to negotiate reciprocal trade agreements without ratification by the Senate. If Roosevelt has not misled his rich friends, there will be some softening up of the last tax bill.

  6. The Great Peacemaker—who is about to have the most militaristic inaugural Washington has seen since the war years—also seems ready to press for a softening of the neutrality bill to the extent of demanding for himself broader discretionary powers in picking our next war. There will be legislation setting up a form of crop insurance for the benefit of speculative wheat producers—"suitcase farmers"—in the Plains states; meanwhile, without legislative or Supreme Court sanction, the AAA openly will return to production control, having at last found how to make its "soil-conservation" program perform that feat. Legislation aimed at the farm-tenancy problem but falling far short of the mark is certain to find a place on the session's agenda, but anything properly describable as housing legislation is likely to get little attention. The Social Security Act may come in for some administrative amendments, but its basic flaws almost certainly will be preserved despite fright-born campaign insinuations to the contrary. And the tea leaves indicate that the coming session's record on public-works and unemployment-relief legislation will be worse than that of the last, as a result of Mr. Roosevelt's desire to make a stab at budget-balancing.