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One note that he sounded was his denial that the New Deal was liberal. Said he: a liberal is a man who believes in freedom for himself and other people. Economic freedom can mean very little to a man who is starving. "If free economic enterprise is unable to provide jobs and products for this country, then obviously some other system should be tried. . . . It is on this point that the liberal and the reactionary really find their issue: The liberal believes that the purpose of Government is to make men free and, thus having freedom, men will be able to build up a productive and prosperous society. The reactionary may desire, with equal sincerity, a prosperous society, but he believes it can be achieved only by the concentration of political or economic power." By this standard, Communists no less than Fascists are reactionary; New Dealers ("who are not Communists but who nevertheless believe in a great increase in government power") were able only by intellectual sleight-of-hand to call this reactionary doctrine liberal.
Preaching this doctrine in an occasional speech, an occasional magazine article, many a private talk, Willkie called it "spreading my ideas." Response of sympathetic listeners was about the same: each admitted that he would vote for Willkie, all right, utility magnate or not, but that "the people" would never do it. When he began to take his candidacy seriously, Willkie visualized a dark-horse campaign in the convention itself, in case it deadlocked — a long chance, but one that involved little trouble and that might work.
The rush of volunteers and the determination of Willkie Club founders ended that plan, sent Wendell Willkie pounding around the U. S., making speeches, meeting the delegates from 25 States. In St. Louis he praised Winston Churchill for making the people no promises when he took office: "It is a tragedy that England had to wait to hear those words until the invader was at her door and her sons were being slaughtered. . . . The curse of democracy today, in the U. S. as well as in Europe, is that everyone has been trying to please the public. Almost nobody ever gets up and says what he thinks. . . . We must not promise jobs unless we turn industry loose to make jobs. We must not express sympathy for the unemployed and then tax profits so outrageously that money will not flow into new industries to make new jobs. We must not say that we have a good army, when the statistics prove otherwise. . . ." In Boston: "It may be that for ten years we have made no progress. . . . We have been divided by class conflicts and weakened by a sense of defeat. But let no one — especially no dictator abroad — be misled into thinking that we are not able to rouse from this lethargy and become strong."