The Definitive FDR

by James Macgregor Burns

  Smith was waiting to outflank him on the right. “I will take off my coat and vest,” he said shortly after Roosevelt’s Forgotten Man speech, “and fight to the end any candidate who persists in any demagogic appeal to the masses of the working people of this country to destroy themselves by setting class against class and rich against poor.”

  While fighting Smith with his right hand, Roosevelt had to hold off other candidates with his left. Newton D. Baker was an especially worrisome threat. A reform mayor of Cleveland, secretary of war under Wilson, an eminent corporation lawyer, Baker had not been taken seriously as a possible candidate because of his repeated advocacy of United States entry into the League of Nations. In January 1932, however, he backslid, stating that he would not take the country into the League “unless an enlightened majority of the people favored the step.” As the convention neared, Farley and Howe busily stoked backfires against Baker’s possible candidacy, warning Westerners that Baker was pro-League and labor leaders that he was the candidate of the “financial crowd.”

  But all eyes came back to Smith. “I do hope that Al will not make a bitter or a mean fight,” Roosevelt wrote to a friend in June. “It does nobody any good and, though he may block the convention and raise cain generally, it would be much better for the country if he would forget self and work primarily for the country itself.…”

  THE MAGIC TWO-THIRDS

  At Roosevelt headquarters in Chicago Farley posted a gaudy map —“Field Marshal Farley’s map,” it was soon dubbed—showing his chief’s strength across the nation. The map also showed Roosevelt’s weakness. For it was clear when the Democratic convention opened on June 27, 1932, that Roosevelt could not win the often predicted first-ballot victory unless a stampede was touched off at the end of the roll. Who would touch it off? Farley still did not know. He had met disappointment after disappointment in trying to win the extra one hundred votes that would mean victory.

  The key, he felt, lay in a bloc of three Midwestern states: Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Earlier Ohio had looked hopeful, but now it was holding its delegates behind its favorite son, Governor George White, in order, according to reports, to lead a procession to Baker later. Indiana was a baffling disappointment; Farley offered a high convention post to Paul V. McNutt if he would help negotiate an instructed delegation for Roosevelt, but McNutt would not, or could not, come across. Illinois was the worst blow of all. Senator Lewis withdrew just before the convention and his votes were expected to go to the New York governor, but the withdrawal was timed too early. The Illinois delegation simply trotted out another favorite son, a Chicago banker, and stood pat.

  Under mounting pressure, the Roosevelt forces at the eleventh hour embarked on a risky maneuver that almost lost them the fight. This was the repeal of the two-thirds rule. The idea was simple: Each national convention at the outset adopted its own rules by straight majority vote; sure of commanding such a majority the Roosevelt men needed only to change the rules and then nominate their candidate by a straight majority.

  The tactic might have worked if it had been properly timed. But it was not. The issue came up at an organization meeting of Roosevelt delegates called by Farley before the convention opened. Suddenly Senator Huey P. Long of Louisiana took the floor to offer a resolution setting forth that the governor’s friends would fight for a straight majority rule. Coat open, arms pumping, the Kingfish raised his pudgy, pock-marked face in a bellowing call to action. Farley dared not restrain the man who held Louisiana’s delegates’ votes in his pocket, and who had told Flynn that he backed Roosevelt only because he had met the other contenders. The resolution went through.

  The opposition blazed up in wrathful indignation. A nomination won in such a way, said Senator Carter Glass, would be “damaged goods obtained by a gambler’s trick.” Roosevelt’s opponents, hitherto divided, now had a moral issue around which to unite. Even worse, pro-Roosevelt delegations in the South showed signs of deserting on the majority rule issue, for the two-thirds rule had become a venerable mechanism for protecting the power of the South in the party.

  After conferring over the telephone with Roosevelt in Albany and with Howe in Chicago, Farley decided to surrender. He had been careful not to implicate his chief in the original decision. Actually, Roosevelt had been directly involved in the two-thirds maneuver just as he was in all major decisions in the nomination fight, but he and Farley had lost control of the timing through Long’s precipitous action. The governor’s withdrawal was as graceful as circumstances allowed. “I believe and always have believed,” he said, “that the two thirds rule should no longer be adopted. It is undemocratic. Nevertheless, it is true that the issue was not raised until after the delegates to the convention had been selected, and I decline to permit either myself or my friends to be open to the accusation of poor sportsmanship or to the use of methods which could be called, even falsely, those of a steam-roller.…”

  Repairing their fractured ranks, the Roosevelt men now faced the first battles over convention organization. In these tests of strength only a straight majority was needed to win, and the Roosevelt forces mobilized enough votes to seat friendly delegations from Louisiana and Minnesota and elect Senator Thomas Walsh of Montana as permanent chairman over Smith’s candidate, Jouett Shouse. The permanent chairman contest aroused new charges of deceit against the Roosevelt men, who had indicated earlier in the year that they would back Shouse. The 626 to 528 vote on the chairman race suggested how close the nomination race might be. The Smith forces, however, gained heart from a smashing victory for a “dripping wet” repeal plank—a plank that drew far more attention than the party’s declarations on economic recovery.

  At last came the roll call on nomination. Farley was everywhere, pumping hands, claiming victory, exhorting delegations to get on the bandwagon while there was still room. In a hotel room Howe was conducting last-minute espionage operations and putting out feelers to key men in favorite-son delegations. In Albany, Roosevelt waited by the radio, frequently counseling with his lieutenants over a private telephone wire. Biting on a cigar, Smith sat amid Tammany delegates so hostile to Roosevelt that Farley had difficulty finding a seat in order to vote during roll calls. It was past four o’clock on the morning of July 1 when the nominating and seconding speeches finally came to an end. Exhausted by ten hours of turgid oratory, demonstrations, and blaring band music, the delegates slumped in their chairs.

  The first roll call went according to expectations. Roosevelt moved far ahead near the outset and kept a long lead. His final tally on the first roll call of 666¼ dwarfed Smith’s 201¾, Garner’s 90¼, and White’s 52, but it was about one hundred short of two-thirds. While tellers were making their check, Farley sat back on the platform, waiting for the bandwagon rush to start.

  Nothing happened.

  Farley sprinted down to the floor and pleaded with delegations to shift. He had the vice-presidential nomination to offer, but the delegations were stalling while they waited to see if the current went in another direction. Weary delegates were eager to adjourn but the Roosevelt forces wanted another roll call before their own delegations weakened. On the second roll call Roosevelt picked up 11½ votes, an increase so small that it dramatized the extent to which Farley had staked his hopes on the first ballot.

  Still no delegation came over. Now it was the opposition forces that wanted another roll call. Roosevelt, they proclaimed, was stopped. On the third ballot Roosevelt crept up five more votes. His ranks at least were holding firm—but so were the enemy’s. At 9 A.M., after the third roll call, the convention adjourned and the delegates tottered out into the sunshine.

  The next few hours would be decisive. Farley had to win a sizable bloc of votes before his own ranks buckled. The breaking away of one delegation might start an avalanche toward Garner, who had picked up eleven votes on the third ballot. Already Mississippi’s twenty votes were in jeopardy; this delegation was supporting Roosevelt under the unit rule by a 10½ to 9½ vote, and had been bare
ly saved for the governor on the third roll call. Alabama, Arkansas, and Minnesota also had soft spots.

  The only card Farley had left was a big one. For some time he had been in touch with a group of men close to Garner, including Representative Sam Rayburn of Texas. Garner was a serious candidate, but he did not want a deadlocked convention, and he person ally opposed the two-thirds rule. Farley had also been in direct touch with Hearst, warning him that in a deadlock the prize might go to Baker, whose internationalist views the publisher hated. Hearst hated Smith even more. Farley had been putting every possible form of pressure on Garner’s men at the convention. Now—while Roosevelt leaders were proffering the vice-presidency in a dozen different directions—Farley was able to make a definitive offer. The deal was quickly made. All during the day Smith was trying to reach Garner in Washington, but the Speaker would talk to no one but Rayburn. Late in the afternoon Rayburn got an official release from Garner. It was none too soon. Mississippi had cracked and gone over to the coalition.

  Winning Garner’s consent to release his delegates was one thing; winning his supporters’ was something else. The big Texas delegation had come to Chicago to nominate Jack Garner. Farley, moreover, faced a special handicap. Early in the spring the Roosevelt forces had tried to capture the Texas delegation; they had failed badly, and the Garner forces kept all but a few Roosevelt men off the delegation. Now the Texans balked at going to the New York governor. Their caucus was tumultuous: last-ditch Garner leaders were pleading with the delegates to stand firm; women were crying hysterically; and delegates from other states had filtered into the room and were busy promising more votes for Garner oil the next ballot. Ironically, a good many anti-Roosevelt delegates, were absent trying to win votes for the Speaker in other delegations. In the confusion Rayburn barely managed to push the pro-Roosevelt stand through, fifty-four to fifty-one.

  Now the Roosevelt avalanche began. The shift of Texas brought around California too. On the fourth roll call McAdoo, a victim of the two-thirds rule eight years before, came to the rostrum. The pro-Smith galleries drowned him out with groans and boos, but finally his voice came through. “California came here to nominate a President of the United States,” he shouted. “She did not come to deadlock the Convention or to engage in another devastating contest like that of 1924. California casts 44 votes for Franklin D. Roosevelt.”

  The frenzied cheering echoed over the radio in Roosevelt’s study. He leaned back and grinned broadly. “Good old McAdoo.” The delegations swiftly fell in line—all but Smith’s diehard supporters, who refused to make the nomination unanimous.

  On a roof garden in Washington a little man sat smoking a cigar. A reporter recognized him. “You’ve gone to Roosevelt?” “That’s right, son.” The reporter expressed surprise. The cigar glowed. “I’m a little older than you are, son. And politics is funny.” In Chicago the delegates were asking why Garner had shifted. Even as he was giving way, several states were breaking loose for him. To be sure, he was duly nominated for vice-president, but exchanging the certainty of the speakership for the uncertainty of the vice-presidency seemed a strange swap for the canny Texan. Was it really fear of a deadlock? Was it Hearst? His supporters were at a loss. “It’s a kangaroo ticket,” said a disappointed Texas politician. “Stronger in the hindquarter than in front.”

  The Roosevelt forces had won—yet they had lost too. They had gone for a running mate to a section of the country that was certain to vote Democratic in November. They had disappointed some of their Western supporters who had worked for Roosevelt long before Chicago. They had made some serious mistakes. Yet the nomination fight had shown the essential strength of their candidate—a strength that could weather his and his lieutenants’ errors. The real test lay ahead.

  EIGHT

  The Curious Campaign

  ROOSEVELT BEGAN HIS election campaign with the kind of dramatic gesture he loved. While the convention waited, he flew from Albany to accept the nomination on the spot rather than follow tradition and acknowledge it weeks later. Buffeted by head winds, the flimsy trimotored plane was hours late, and convention chiefs, for once out of Democratic speeches, had to turn to bandleaders and songsters to keep the weary delegates in their seats. During the flight the governor serenely worked on his speech and then fell asleep, while Mrs. Roosevelt, Rosenman, and the others shivered, and son John was quietly sick in the tail of the plane.

  The trip from the airport to the convention was a triumphant procession. His coming out to accept the nomination, Roosevelt told the convention, was a symbol of his intention to avoid hypocrisy and sham. “Let it also be symbolic that in so doing I broke traditions. Let it be from now on the task of our Party to break foolish traditions and leave it to the Republican leadership, far more skilled in that art, to break promises.”

  The speech was long and rambling—due in part to a fierce struggle that had been waged over its composition by Roosevelt’s advisers and to Roosevelt’s willingness—while he was bowing and waving to the crowds between airport and convention hall—to placate Howe by substituting the latter’s opening paragraphs for his own. The speech was essentially an appeal for an experimental program of recovery that would steer between radicalism and reaction, that would benefit all the people without falling into an “improvised, hit-or-miss, irresponsible opportunism.” The people that year wanted a real choice, he said. “Ours must be a party of liberal thought, of planned action, of enlightened international outlook, and of the greatest good to the greatest number of our citizens.” Endorsing the party platform “100 per cent,” he lambasted the Republican leaders for their failures and set out in hazy terms a program on taxes, agriculture, tariffs, and recovery.

  “I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American People,” Roosevelt wound up in his peroration. The two words nestling in the speech had meant little to Roosevelt and the other speech writers; soon they were to be more important than the sum of all the other words. Next day a cartoon by Rollin Kirby showed a new “man with a hoe” looking up puzzled but hopeful at an airplane labeled “New Deal.”

  THE FOX AND THE ELEPHANT

  How to get the new program off the ground was the mission of Farley, who on Roosevelt’s recommendation was elected the chairman of the Democratic National Committee. The new chairman inherited a superb publicity man in Charles Michelson, ghost writer of scores of speeches that had slashed and pummeled the Hoover administration. Roosevelt’s personal organization was quickly converted into the campaign high command, with headquarters in New York. Soon six hundred people were working through a score of specialized divisions. Considerable attention was devoted to the women’s division, which was headed by a group of imaginative and indefatigable women workers, including Eleanor Roosevelt.

  May 26. 1932, Elmer Messner, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle

  HELPFUL FARM HINTS FROM HYDE PARK, Oct. 25, 1932, Ding Darling, © 1932, New York Herald Tribune, Inc.

  On one thing Roosevelt and Farley were insistent: they must bypass the cumbersome pyramid of state and county committees and establish a direct personal link with 140,000 local party workers whose names had been collected during the preconvention campaign. Along with millions of buttons and leaflets these committeemen received personal letters from Roosevelt and Farley, the latter’s signed in green ink. Farley saw the campaign as a party battle and sought to keep control under the top Democratic regulars. “We are going to have every kind of club function we can,” he told a meeting of party leaders early in August, “but we don’t want them running wild.” Farley wanted to prevent crossed wires, but straight party control had its disadvantages too. Special groups did not get full attention; labor especially was handled in a slipshod fashion.

  The softest spot in the Roosevelt forces, however, was Tammany. What would the Sachems do? Farley got an answer the day he returned from Chicago, when he had the temerity to invade the Hall during a patriotic ceremony. The gallery hissed; the Sachems on the platform sat in stony sile
nce. But Tammany had little freedom of action; its course depended largely on two men, Smith and Walker.

  Crushed and bitter, Smith had left Chicago before Roosevelt arrived. It was nip and tuck for a while whether he would openly attack the victor. He did not—but when Roosevelt emissaries urged him to support the ticket, he balked. “I think he wants to work it out in his own way and in his own time,” Roosevelt wrote Frankfurter. Al did; in the final weeks before the election he campaigned vigorously for Roosevelt in Massachusetts and Connecticut.

  Walker presented a different problem. Seabury’s probe of corruption in New York City had come to a head—as it had been deliberately timed to do in order to embarrass him, Roosevelt suspected—in the weeks just before the convention with charges against the mayor. Walker, who had swaggeringly voted against Roosevelt in the convention, shortly afterward filed his answers. During late August, with the election campaign under way, Roosevelt presided over a series of hearings in Albany. The situation required all his political finesse. Some Tammany leaders were in an ugly mood and openly talked of bolting the ticket; even Father Charles Coughlin, the radio priest, wrote from Detroit asking that Walker be given his day in court. The Republicans blew the case into a national issue of Roosevelt and Tammanyism. Day after day the governor in judicial mien patiently questioned the mayor about his tangled affairs. Under mounting pressure, Walker suddenly resigned, accusing Roosevelt of “unfair, unAmerican” conduct of the hearing. The governor had walked the political tightrope expertly. He stripped the Republicans of a national issue without losing Tammany, which was divided on the matter and in any case did not dare to turn against Roosevelt openly.

  With the Walker case disposed of, Roosevelt could begin his campaign in earnest. He had received a good deal of advice to the effect that (a) the election was already “in the bag,” and (b) a campaign tour might jeopardize the Democratic lead. Roosevelt spurned both ideas. He was cautious—almost superstitious—about assuming victory. He believed that a campaign trip would carry the attack to Hoover; moreover, it would demonstrate his physical vigor and silence the whispering against his health. Besides—he simply wanted to go. “My Dutch is up,” he told Farley.