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Whether or not President Roosevelt ever errs in grand political strategy, he seldom errs in immediate political tactics. With both Wyoming's Senators sharing the rear platform with him he spoke for 20 minutes, avoided mentioning either Senator O'Mahoney or the Court Bill. For seven hours Senator O'Mahoney enjoyed the hospitality of the Presidential special. When it stopped at Casper, Wyo., he finally detrained, and the President, going out to the back platform, made an effective little talk. In it he dropped just one scathing reference to politicians who paid lip service to the New Deal while frustrating its objectives.
The next two days of Franklin Roosevelt's journey to his grandchildren were uneventfully successful. Back at Omaha, Neb. dour Senator Burke had not been asked to join the party, had made no effort to do so. It was similar in Montana where New Deal Senator James E. Murray met the train at Gardiner but senior Senator Burton Wheeler was speechmaking in California. There the President left his train for a drive into Yellowstone Park, where political electricity for a day at least ceased to crackle. Publisher John Boettiger, Anna Roosevelt Boettiger and her children were to meet the President at Mammoth Hot Springs. The party spent the week end motoring about the Park and Grandfather Roosevelt had the pleasure of watching Sistie and Buzzie Dall feed cookies to Yellowstone's greedy, ingratiating bears.
First stop when the tour resumed was Boise, Idaho, where Grandfather Roosevelt, welcomed by Republican William Borah, and Democrat James Pope, complimented a crowd of 5,000 on both their Senators, Boise's children and its trees.
* Results of FORTUNE'S quarterly survey, which were published this week in its October issue, and which last year differed from National electic results by less than 1%, show that Franklin Roosevelt's prestige and popularity have declined with all classes in all sections of the country since his reelection. Smallest decline is less than 1% in the Southwest. Biggest is some 20% in the Mountain States. Said FORTUNE: "This is the section through which it is predicted the President will make a disciplinary tour. . . . Unless these steps are taken with consummate finesse, it is here, rather than in the South, that the first serious break in Democratic ranks may come."