(3 of 6)
The firm's long-range objective is to put through and then defend the Client's social legislation. Since they wrote a lot of it, it is natural that their fight for it is personally motivated, for even lawyers have emotions. Partner Cohen says: "If we have to become propagandists, we were driven to it." When Senator Tydings of Maryland or Senator George of Georgia snarls at "two little Wall Street lawyers who want the power to say who shall or shall not be Senators," they know well that their quarrel is not with Lawyers Corcoran & Cohen but with Client Roosevelt.
First Object: 1940. The statesmen of Capitol Hill were rudely jolted by the energy and ingenuity of Corcoran & Cohen in the days when the firm was steering New Deal legislation—Ben Cohen sitting at committee chairmen's elbows as prompter at hearings, Tom Corcoran whisking through Capitol corridors to trade, purr, cajole, threaten or crack down for votes. Many a Congressman sensed that these high-powered lobbyists for the President had a low opinion of most U. S. politicians. More shocking to traditional statesmen—especially to old-line, locally intrenched Democrats—was the conception of a Liberal party which Corcoran & Cohen helped Client Roosevelt to rationalize.
This rationalizing is hard-boiled and runs as follows: 1) The Liberal party's present leader and inspirer was the creature of the Democratic political barons. In fact, until Jim Farley did his job in 1932, Franklin Roosevelt was only one more baron; 2) A Liberal party will always be a "poor" party, therefore ideas must make it tick instead of money; 3) If the New Deal is to survive under Franklin Roosevelt or anyone else, as a Liberal party beyond 1940, its ideas must be churned into the local electorates, right down into the precincts whence Congressional and Presidential majorities sprout; 4) Any political baron who will not join in the churning process had best be read out of the new party at once, even if that means local defeats this year. For 1940 will be a far more important, national year and if beginnings, however brutal, are made now, new Liberal machinery may be got ready by then.
In the hot hatchet-work of primary politics, rugged, mercurial Tommy the Cork is the partner who is getting it done. (Shy, cool Partner Cohen jaunted to Europe last week.) Putting inde-goddam-pendent journalists up to playing his game is one of his methods. The journalistic team of Drew Pearson & Robert S. Allen are Tom Corcoran's natural mouthpieces; his temperature and blood pressure are accurately reflected in what they have to say to their syndicate readers daily. This is not just because Allen is the Neanderthal type of Liberal and Pearson the parlor mauve type—a perfect team—but because their mental agility matches Corcoran's, and in dull Washington they would be starved for interesting copy but for him.
Members of Congress tremble before what "Washington Merry-Go-Round" may say about them—and T. Corcoran provides it with plenty to say. Evidence of his press sagacity is his occasional use also of such panting Liberals as Columnist John F. Carter (alias Jay Franklin).