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<text> <title> (40 Elect) Third Term:The Big Deal </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1940 Election </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> September 16, 1940 THE PRESIDENCY The Big Deal </hdr> <body> The newspapermen assigned to the President were curious. At the last stop on his "non-political" trip to Tennessee they had trailed him all morning on a tour of an armor-plate mill in South Charleston, W.Va. As they climbed into their car on the Presidential Special they were surprised by word that the President would hold a special press conference after they got under way. The train pulled out of Charleston, rocked along the bank of the torrential Kanawha. At 11:30, the reporters got up, filed through the swaying train to the President's car in the rear. In a sitting room just inside the observation platform he awaited them, barrel-chested, massive, smiling over his secret. His big head, white at the temples, cocked back & forth as he greeted correspondents, directed them to their places in the little room. It comfortably accommodates seven, but 20-odd jammed in, jostling each other as the train rolled along. He did not have much news, the President said half apologetically. The sun slanted through the half-shaded windows, fell across the shoulders of his blue tropic-weight suit. It was quiet in the stifling room. What he was going to tell them about, the President continued, was the most important event in the defense of the U.S. since Thomas Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase; it would be announced within 22 minutes to the House of Representatives in Washington; from there it would be flashed to all their newspapers. Mr. Roosevelt grinned at his audience's chagrin--a story and no chance to send it. Flourishing his ivory cigaret holder, professorial, relishing the historicity of the scene, he explained. The U.S. said he, had acquired from the British Government the right to lease naval and air bases in Newfoundland, Bermuda, the Bahamas, Jamaica, St. Lucia, Trinidad, Antigua, British Guiana. The Newfoundland and Bermuda bases were gifts, "gratefully received." In return for the other bases, the U.S. had given England 50 over-age U.S. destroyers. He called it "epochal." The deal itself had been foreshadowed. In a speech at the dedication of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park day before, the President said: "New bases must be established--and I think they will be established--to enable our fleet to defend our shores." Three weeks before, correspondents had already questioned him about the possibility of trading destroyers for bases, and Franklin Roosevelt had flatly denied any connection--but reporters know better than to believe him implicitly. What electrified the crowded roomful of correspondents was the audacity with which the deal was consummated: it would not be presented to Congress for approval. A Congressional veto was out of the question. Congress was being told about it as a fait accompli. Casually he compared himself to Thomas Jefferson, and the circumstances of the trade to that which had faced Jefferson when, without Congressional authorization, he bought for $27,267,622 the whole vast territory from the Gulf to Canada, west of the Mississippi to the Rockies. That was Mr. Roosevelt's historical precedent for the Big Deal of the New Deal. To the question, how soon the destroyers would be sent, he started to say they were already on the way, stopped himself and answered that he did not know. And with evident satisfaction he announced that England had restated an earlier announcement by Winston Churchill that the British Fleet would not be surrendered or sunk, but would be sent to wherever it was needed for the defense of other ports in the empire. He smiled at what he called the "coincidence" of Mr. Churchill's reassurances, coming on top of the deal. By the time the conference in the hot and rocking room was over, the House of Representatives in Washington had heard the message the President had prepared; and in London, the British Government had released the story. The reporters worked their way out of the room, filed back to their own car. The train chugged through the West Virginia mountains. One stop was made to take on ice and water. A crowd began to cheer, waved placards which read: "We want a Blue Stone Dam." The drawn shade of a window shot up, revealing Franklin Roosevelt, massive-grey-headed, smiling. The train moved on. Past Precedent. When Napoleon took the first step in his intended occupation of New Orleans, President Jefferson wrote in alarm to the U.S. Minister in Paris, Robert Livingston: "From that moment we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation." The marriage was postponed. Livingston, pertinacious, deaf, scholarly, distant relative of Franklin Roosevelt's wife, and James Monroe, whom Jefferson sent to France with instruction to do what he could to discourage Napoleon's ambitions in the New World, returned with news of an amazing bargain they had made. It ended for all time the danger of a foreign neighbor settling on the west bank of the Mississippi. They had in their pockets a contract for the Louisiana Purchase. Congress was not in session. To delay might mean losing the chance. Napoleon might change his mind. It was of vital importance in the future security of the young nation. Jefferson made the deal. President Roosevelt suggested that Jefferson's situation was a parallel to his. The parallel was not perfect. Franklin Roosevelt's Congress was in session. A unique opportunity had not been presented to him by surprise. He had prepared the deal in secrecy without taking Congress or public into his confidence. Moreover, to Jefferson, who helped write the Constitution, unauthorized rise of power, no matter how justified, was cause for anxiety and doubt. Jefferson wrote: "The Executive, in seizing the fugitive occurrence which so much advances the good of their country, has done an act beyond the Constitution." He said he would go to Congress as a guardian who has invested the money of a ward might go to him when he came of age and say: "I did this for your good; I pretend no right to bind you; you may disavow me, and I must get out of the scrape as I can; I thought it my duty to risk myself for you." Jefferson, a tall, thin, freckled, worried man, even proposed to his Cabinet a Constitutional amendment to cover the case. His Cabinet voted the idea down. In October the Senate convened. Jefferson presented the treaties covering the transaction for ratification, and the Senate gave consent. Though rival Federalists were glum, in Washington, "every pig, goose and duck, far and near." was rounded up for two days of feasting and cheers. Future Consequences. Whether or not 50 destroyers will save Britain from defeat, Franklin Roosevelt's deal was destined to be historic. The advantage to the U.S. of the new bases may alter the course of history by preventing enemies from attacking the U.S., making possible their defeat if they attempt it. Also historic may be: 1) the repercussions of the deal in the campaign of 1940, and 2) the precedent set for executive action without approval of Congress. Snorted William Allen White, chairman of the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies: "The only objection seems to be that Roosevelt didn't cross Niagara Falls on a tight rope, leading a brass band. When you're negotiating a horse trade you can't take all the neighbors into your confidence." Out of Congress, Representatives and Senators spoke according to their isolationist, interventionist, ethical views. But on the floor they were baffled and silent. John T. Flynn, chairman of the Keep America Out of War Congress, who saw the U.S. walking "the last mile in the fatal descent into war," proclaimed that the President would be impeached if it were not for Congress' "long record of servile submission to the executive." It would be politically difficult to impeach the President for the reason that the Democrats could not attack the head of their ticket in a campaign year. Besides, Mr. Roosevelt, more forehanded than Jefferson, had thought to arm himself. Attorney General Jackson in an opinion had found that the President, as Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, was not only authorized to provide bases to defend the U.S., he was forbidden to "risk any delay." He also argued that the President had authority to dispose of naval vessels. And since no money was involved in the deal Congress did not have to be asked for an appropriation. Legal or not, the deal was done. <list> <l>September 30, 1940</l> <l>CAMPAIGN</l> <l>Sleeping Duty</l> </list> The national fever rose last week. Up zoomed the sales of political buttons. Movie theatres rocked to applause for newsreel shots of the candidates. Everywhere headquarters bloomed with bunting, boomed with antlike activity. Bettors bet more; arguments got louder; radio listeners found less swing and more oratory. The 1940 campaign was really on. But one thing was strangely missing: one issue which by all historical precedents should have loomed large if not largest in the campaign was at least half-forgotten. At Amarillo, Tex. last week and at Sacramento, Calif. Candidate Willkie told Democrats they had to choose between the tradition of voting for their party and the tradition against a third term. But the low ebb of public attention to the third-term issue was exemplified by hearings held in Washington on Senator Burke's proposed Constitutional amendment for a single, six-year Presidential term: so meagre was the audience that the hearings were transferred from the marble Senate Caucus room to the cozier Claims Committee room. Yet the argument over how long a President should serve began 153 years ago, before there was a United States, a President or even a Constitution. Monday, May 14, 1787, was fair and clear in Philadelphia as the men from the colonial seats of government began to assemble. Only the day before General George Washington, coming with reluctance from his seat in Virginia, had arrived; he had been met by a troop of horse and the entire populace, while muskets banged and bells chimed in his honor. Over the cobblestones of Chestnut Street the carriages rolled to the Old State House (Independence Hall). Day after day thereafter the sages, the patriots, the thoughtful men of the Colonial States gathered, debated, voted, reconsidered, revised, labored mightily, always in the light of Ben Franklin's wise words...."We are sent here to consult, not to contend." In that long, fateful summer's debate no subject was more fully argued, more carefully considered, than the manner of election and the term of office of the Chief Executive. To men who had suffered under monarchy the question of rotation in high office was desperately real, its solution a matter of counsel as grave as prayer. For three days in June, for five days in July, the delegates debated their jealousy of Executive power, a jealousy whose roots ran far back into the American past. The delegates had generally held, with Hamilton and Madison, that the true source of security in a representative republic came from frequent election and rotation in office, had agreed with George Mason of Virginia that "the very palladium of civil liberty" lay in "that the great officers of State and particularly the Executive, should at fixed periods return to that mass from which they were at first taken, in order that they may feel and respect those rights and interests which are again to be personally valuable to them." Concurred Benjamin Franklin: "In free governments, the rulers are the servants, and the people their superiors. For the former, therefore, to return among the latter was not to degrade but to promote them." But by September the delegates had swung around more & more to the view of Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania, that this doctrine of rotation might form "a political school in which we were always governed by scholars and not by the masters"; that rotation would produce "instability of councils." Morris argued that ineligibility to re-election "tended to destroy the great motive to good behavior, the hope of being rewarded by a reappointment. It was saying to him, make hay while the sun shines." This view finally prevailed. The Constitution was written, signed, adopted with a four-year term for the Executive, and no mention of ineligibility. The decision on eligibility was left to the people. In the intervening years, down to last week, on the Constitution's 153rd anniversary, the U.S. people have never finally made that decision. Jefferson, a democrat with a little as well as a big D, made the decision for himself, refused a third term and declared: "Should a President consent to be a candidate for a third election, I trust he would be rejected on this demonstration of ambitious views." But the issue, never joined flatly and directly in an election, always remained a matter of vital concern. Theodore Roosevelt stepped down after his second term but changed his mind four years later and lost his chance for a third term (non-consecutive) chiefly through a party split. Last week no great anti-Third-Term voice but Willkie's cried abroad in the land--and he did not concentrate his case against Term III but against the New Deal. Two voices too politically accursed to be audible from the hustings came last week from men whose public position assured them a respectful hearing in the press: Wall Street's No. I lawyer, eloquent John W. Davis, onetime (1924) Democratic Presidential nominee, and wealthy, aged (86) Jacob Gould Schurman, educator and onetime Ambassador to Germany, who received an Olympic medal from Adolf Hitler in 1936 for his praise of Nazi doctrines. Said Mr. Davis: "The man is not yet born of woman to whom I would entrust for more than eight years at the most the vast, the expanding, the fateful powers of the Presidency." Whether the U.S. people shared his distrust remained to be seen. But the question had not yet been raised on high, to be explored, pondered, decided. Wendell Willkie had not yet been able to attract the nation's attention to it. Franklin Roosevelt was certainly not going to. Only once before in U.S. history, when Roosevelt I ran in 1912, had the U.S. people had a chance to vote on sending a man to the White House for a Third Term. Never before had the people had a chance to vote whether a President should be allowed to spend twelve consecutive years in the White House. Yet there was a fair chance that an issue older than the Republic might be settled in 1940 by default. </body> </article> </text>