The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Digital Edition > My Day
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt

      

NEW YORK, Friday—One of the really interesting announcements of the last few days was that made by Senator Robert A. Taft concerning next year's political conventions and the Presidential election. And, like all condidates, he exuded utmost confidence when he stated: "I will be nominated and elected."

How anyone knows so far ahead what a convention will do or what the citizens of the country will decide is difficult for me to understand. But I suppose Senator Taft's backers have counted noses and think they have a sufficient number of votes in the convention to defeat all comers, including General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Governor Earl Warren, and that after that there will be clear sailing.

It is interesting to have a statement from Senator Taft that he will restore "liberty, integrity and sound judgment" to the councils of the nation. It seems to me there are a good many men who are now included among those who counsel, who think they have liberty and integrity. Sound judgment is always a matter of opinion on decisions taken after the results of the judgment are available.

Senator Taft is going to carry on an active campaign and not make the mistake made by Governor Thomas E. Dewey when he ran for the Presidency. The Senator's platform seems to be condensed in the three following Points:

1. Opposition to what he called "socialism and excessive spending of the New Deal on the domestic front." This has a familiar ring, but it doesn't mean much until you really sit down and put into words what you are going to do away with. Would it be old-age pensions, social security, unemployment insurance, an effort to improve housing, care for the handicapped or the blind? Just what are you going to consider as socialistic and stop spending on it?

2. Criticism of the Truman Administration's "fatal mistakes" in foreign policy, including the War in Korea, the "building up of Russia," and "other disastrous occurrences due to their judgment." We will hope that the Korean War will be at an end before Senator Taft is called upon to correct these "fatal mistakes." If not, he will have something difficult to handle. I would like to have explained to me just how he feels Russia has been built up and what are the disastrous occurrences he refers to before I can get a picture of what he is planning as our foreign policy.

3. "Restoration of honesty and integrity in government." I think there is no candidate who would not make this last statement. All are for honesty and integrity in government, but the Senator will have to depend on others besides himself to make good on this promise—and that is where the best of intentions sometimes fail.

Senator Taft's answer to the question, however, put by the reporters as whether he would welcome Senator McCarthy's backing was that he would like to have the Senator with him. This makes one wonder about this honesty and integrity with which he hopes to surround himself.

Sunday, October 21, marks the dedication of a two-million-dollar Federal housing project in San Francisco's Chinatown.

Years ago I made a comment on the slums that there were to be found in Chinatown and I am very glad now to be told that this project will change the area covered by some of these slums and give a number of people a chance to live decently. I hope this means the eventual wiping out in that area of all slums.

That is what I feel should happen throughout the whole United States and I am glad to see that San Francisco is one of the cities leading in this type of better housing for those who lived in substandard conditions.

E. R.

(WORLD COPYRIGHT, 1951, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC. REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART PROHIBITED.)


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, October 20, 1951

Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884-1962
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Digital edition created by The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project The George Washington University 312 Academic Building 2100 Foxhall Road, NW Washington, DC 20007

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Transcription created from a photocopy of a UFS wire copy of a My Day column instance archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library.
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