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was nudged along into a situation which I can't say he was unwilling to be put into. There was a certain willingness on his part, but he was nudged into a situation which he didn't thoroughly comprehend and in which his political judgment, for once, failed him. I think that the fact that Homer Cummings had been a political peer, a politician all his life, always believed that he had great political judgment, political insight, knowing what the people would do and what public reactions would be, affected Roosevelt more than if Cummings had only been a great lawyer and an Attorney General. It was the politics of it which, piped from Cummings, became effective arguments politically with Roosevelt. I would have expected Roosevelt to have more political judgment. I wouldn't have expected him to have any legal judgment, but I would have expected him to have better political judgment. This was a political mistake.

At any rate, on the day after the Schechter case the Attorney General said in my presence, “Mr. President, this is all over. You can't do anything of that kind any more. They have set their face against us. We will have to find a way to get rid of the present membership of the Supreme Court.”