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Second Session of the Seventy-second Congress, December 5, 1932, to March 4, 19331

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

E. Pendleton Herring
E. Pendleton Herring
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Extract

The great game of politics was played throughout this session. The players, holding poor hands and distracted by thoughts of the new deal that was to come, faced a difficult situation. The presence of 158 members retired by the voters in the November elections gave a cast of uncertainty and unreality to the assembly. Deducting the six vacancies in the House, 219 Democrats confronted 209 Republicans, and in the Senate the count stood 48 Republicans to 47 Democrats. The Farmer-Laborites had one spokesman in each chamber. Here was a Congress, divided in control, weakened by the presence of repudiated representatives, and under the discredited leadership of a defeated president, but nevertheless faced with perplexing problems of national and world import arising in a highly critical period. The necessities of the time called for cooperative planning and swift, united action, but the exigencies of politics suggested procrastination and obstruction. And the latter considerations prevailed.

Type
American Government and Politics
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 27 , Issue 3 , June 1933 , pp. 404 - 422
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1933

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References

2 A shifting from the dry to the wet side is described by the New York Times for December 6, 1932, as follows: “Last March the House refused to take up a resolution for repeal submission, called the Beck-Linthicum resolution, by a vote of 227 to 187. Today, 66 of the Democrats and 13 of the Republicans who voted “no” on that resolution supported the Garner resolution. In 1917, the Eighteenth Amendment was adopted in the House by a vote of 282 to 128, and the Volstead Act carried over President Wilson's veto in 1919 by a vote of 175 to 55, with 198 not voting. Of 54 members of the present House who as members in 1919 supported the Volstead Act, 20 Democrats and 10 Republicans today voted with the Speaker, as contrasted to 9 Democrats and 15 Republicans who remained on the dry side.”