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An anti-League isolationist, he opposes cooperation with Europe, insists on arms cuts before debt cuts.
Legislative Hobby: ''Pork for Indiana and tax & tariff measures. He learned Government finance on the House Ways & Means Committee, has continued his education on the Senate Finance Committee. No famed bill bears his name, though he squired the Home Loan Bank Act through the last session after it had been handed to him readymade. As Republican leader, his chief job has been to smother legislation unwanted by the White House. Always a partisan optimist, he declared about a year ago: "I don't think we need to worry about the Treasury as long as Uncle Andy is at the helm.'' As the Senate was passing the Hawley-Smoot Tariff in June 1930 he 'deliberately'' predicted: This nation will be on the upgrade, financially, economically and commercially within 30 clays and within a year we shall have regained the peak of prosperity.
He has long thin legs, a paunchy body, a massive head set tight on heavy shoulders, small beady eyes behind pince-nez. His clothes are correctly impressive. He keeps his shoes well shined. From his Connecticut Avenue home he generally taxies to his Capitol office. His income is far larger than his Senate salary. His political motto is: I always try to be good-natured' and he generally succeeds. Informal, affable, amusing, he is called Jim by friend & foe. He is the Senate's most inveterate handshaker and backslapper. To a constituent who awkwardly remarks that it's pretty warm, he jovially roars: Soon'll be hotter'n hell. His formal Senate speeches are blowsy spectacles of noise and buncombe in which he rotates his arms furiously, shakes his great head, bounces up & down on his spindly legs. In private conversation he is racy and realistic, profane and pointed. Woodrow Wilson used to guffaw at his trivial witticisms. Insensitive to any form of criticism, he was caught last year buying stock in a sugar company from a tariff lobbyist, payment being made by an unsecured, unendorsed, non-interest bearing note. He wisecracked: ''The stock's no good and my note's no good, so the score is 0-to-0, with no hits, no runs, two errors—my taking their stock, their taking my note.
Outside Congress: His only diversion aside from politics, is big league baseball games for which he has begged off going to the President's Rapidan camp. His sporting companion is usually Mississippi's Senator Harrison, his bitterest Democratic critic.
This year he is in the fight of his political life to keep his Senate seat. Indiana is deeply affected by anti-Republican sentiment. Frederick Van Nuys, his Democratic opponent, is harping on his long and unsavory record. He has campaigned strenuously, even to the point of collapsing on the stump (TIME, Sept. 26). His favorite laugh-getter: Talk about the Democrats running this country! Why, it's all we Republicans can handle. Too long a yes-man to friends, he is being plagued by broken promises. At Crawfordsville his henchmen backed him up against a brick wall and angrily shook their fists in his face over promised jobs they never got.