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Burt Wheeler is the most Democrat-Democrat in the party. He believes that the Democratic Party has a great future, but he does not think that that future is necessarily immediate. In 1924, sickened by a party that found John W. Davis the best it could do, he accepted the Vice-Presidential nomination on the elder La Toilette's third-party ticket. Wheeler campaigned with an empty chair on the plat form, representing President Coolidge; he kept asking it blunt questions, getting no more answer from the chair than from the White House.
Back in the Senate, Wheeler began to solidify his friendships with labor, farmers, underdogs. By 1932 he was a For-Roosevelt-Before-Chicago man, helped calm the rising gorge in many a Senatorial breast. As a reward Franklin Roosevelt let Burt Wheeler fight for the toughest bills he wanted sent through the Senate. In 1935 the President asked for the Cohen-Corcoran-designed Public Utilities Holding Company Act. In the hardest fight in all the New Deal, Wheeler far more than any other man got the bill passed intact with its death-sentence clause. But instead of reward, Bounding Burt got less patronage than before. By nature, ability and personal disappointment Burt Wheeler was therefore the natural leader of the opposition to Mr. Roosevelt's court-expansion bill.
Last week, although he and the President had buried the hatchet, there had been no hearty handshake, no Presidential pat on the shoulder. A few weeks before Idaho's William E. Borah died, he named Burt Wheeler as the man the Democrats should nominate, said he would bolt the G. 0. P. to stump for him; and in January Nebraska's independent George W. Norris (who wanted Mr. Roosevelt to run for Term III) named Burt Wheeler as the only thinkable alternative to Roosevelt.
Burton K. Wheeler is certainly Presidential timber, but he is nowhere as a candidate. His only friends are people. His critics are now few—severest still are the Illinois farmer's daughter, Lulu White, whom he married in 1907, his six children. That he could get the Democratic nomination if Mr. Roosevelt would forgive and anoint him as The Chosen, few observers doubt; but no one who knows the President's stubborn vindictiveness against Wheeler for leading the fight against the court-expansion bill expects Mr. Wheeler to be The Chosen.
And One Other. The U. S. last week was still breathlessly aware of another potential candidate, as yet undeclared.
Mr. Roosevelt, lonelier than in years, physically below par, still told friends his health wouldn't stand a third term, still seemed to be waiting, watching for a sign, listening for a word. But Franklin Roosevelt never was an April campaigner; he always waits for September to clap on his grey campaign sombrero, to leave the society of intellectuals and descend, like a man into a familiar bad habit, into the warm company of greasy politicians, sweat-handed citizens, the odorous pleasantries and hot cheery toil of campaigning.