Anything for a Vote

by Joseph Cummins

  DEMOCRAT: FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT Franklin Roosevelt was the first American president to even consider running for a third term and probably the only one, short of George Washington, who could have pulled it off. He was at the height of his popularity—a dazzling yet wholly human figure whose “fireside chats” reached more than sixty million listeners and whose New Deal programs had begun to revive the economy.

  REPUBLICAN: WENDELL WILLKIE Wendell Willkie was a forty-eight-year-old utilities executive who, until 1939, had been a Democrat and even a delegate at the 1932 Democratic National Convention. Although he had never held elective office, he was a maverick politician with a strong following of avid supporters who loved his crusading, aggressive style. Willkie was tall, shambling, folksy, and charismatic. Taking his grassroots organization into the Republican National Convention in June 1940, he beat out experienced campaigners, including District Attorney Thomas E. Dewey of New York and Senator Robert Taft of Ohio, son of the twenty-seventh president.

  THE CAMPAIGN

  Willkie literally rolled up his sleeves and launched a powerful whistlestop campaign, traveling 19,000 miles in fifty-one days and making more than 500 speeches. His dramatic speaking manner—hair tousled, arms waving wildly—earned him plenty of favorable press, as did his populist stance against political bosses. “Bosses don’t hurt me,” he once said. “All I ask is a fair shake.”

  He attacked Roosevelt for being a “third-term candidate” in favor of “one-man rule.” Although Willkie agreed with Roosevelt on the need to provide aid to Great Britain (currently being bombed by the Nazis), he preferred a more isolationist stance. “A vote for Roosevelt is a vote for war,” he cried in impassioned speeches across America. An FDR victory meant “wooden crosses for sons and brothers and sweethearts.” Like a reeling and weaving Rocky Balboa, he begged Roosevelt for a chance to debate. “Bring on the champ!” he cried.

  Naturally, the Democratic machine was not prepared to allow Roosevelt to debate the underdog. In the early stages of the campaign, the president didn’t even stump. Democrats sarcastically called Willkie “the simple, barefoot, Wall Street lawyer” whose utility company had used spies to bust up labor unions. It wasn’t long before the smears became a whole lot worse. Democrats claimed that Willkie’s hometown of Elwood, Indiana, had signs that read, “Nigger, don’t let the sun go down on you.” And numerous Democratic pamphlets featured a photograph of Willkie’s father’s grave to show that the man had been buried in a neglected potter’s field.

  But Willkie’s fevered campaigning began to pay off. Early pollsters like the American Institute of Public Opinion showed Roosevelt leading by a surprisingly slim margin. Some newspaper surveys even put Willkie on top. Roosevelt, who had not taken Willkie seriously at first, now began to exaggerate his opponent’s isolationist stance and told reporters that “anyone who is pro-Hitler in this country is also pro-Willkie.” The Republican candidate stepped up his campaigning, even though his throat was so hoarse he had to be accompanied everywhere by a doctor. FDR finally took to the stump, giving five fiery speeches in the last week of campaigning, telling aides that Willkie “didn’t know that he was up against a buzzsaw.”

  THE WINNER: FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT

  Roosevelt, up against the strongest opponent he had ever faced, won the election 27,313,041 votes to Willkie’s 22,348,480, a substantial margin but not quite as good as his previous victories. It was a sweet win for Roosevelt, but he was about to face one of the biggest challenges an American president has ever faced.

  THE GREAT (UNTOLD) REPUBLICAN SMEAR Henry Wallace was Roosevelt’s secretary of agriculture and a pretty good one, too—but this liberal politician had a dreamy, spiritual side. To the horror of President Roosevelt’s men, just after Wallace accepted the VP nod, Republicans discovered photostats of letters written by Wallace to a strange Russian mystic named Nicholas Roerich. In one note, Wallace wrote: “I must read Agny Yoga and sit by myself once in a while. We are dealing with the first crude beginnings of a new age. May the peace of the Great One descend upon you.”

  Another letter to Roerich talked about current events in a weird code: “The rumor is the Monkeys are seeking friendship with the Rulers so as to divide the Land of the Masters between them. The Wandering One thinks this is very suspicious of the Monkeys.” Translation: The Japanese (the Monkeys) wanted to divide Manchuria (the Land of the Masters, which the Japanese had invaded) with the British (the Rulers). And Roosevelt (the Wandering One) didn’t like it.

  The Republican national chairman, Joseph W. Martin, told the Democrats that the original copies of the letters were being held by the treasurer of the Republican National Committee in a bank vault. He threatened to make them public—did the Democrats want people to know that a lunatic like Wallace was only a heartbeat away from the presidency?

  This alarmed the Democrats greatly, but oddly enough, at Wendell Willkie’s personal order, these letters were never used.

  Was this because he held his own “secret”?

  THE GREAT (UNTOLD) DEMOCRATIC SMEAR Roosevelt knew that the married Wendell Willkie had a mistress in New York City, a writer and editor named Irita Van Doren. As it turned out, Irita used to be the mistress of Jimmy Walker, the flamboyant New York mayor. This liaison outraged Walker’s wife so much that Jimmy was forced to pay her $10,000 each time she made a personal appearance with him.

  Roosevelt wondered humorously to aides if Willkie’s wife had to be hired in the same fashion to smile at the press during campaign stops. Perhaps, he suggested, the voters might be interested to learn about Willkie’s girlfriend.

  But voters never did, and they never learned about Henry Wallace’s letters, either. There is no knowledge of direct communications between Roosevelt and Willkie, but it’s only natural to suspect that some agreement was worked out. Russian mystics? Coded messages? New York mistresses? In a race this close, campaign managers would have been foolish to let such opportunities go to waste.

  PLAYING THE RACE CARD African Americans had been able to vote since the post–Civil War period, but often, especially in the South, they were discouraged from casting their ballots by white segregationists using poll taxes and other means of intimidation. But the rise of black labor leaders and the unionization of many black workers in the 1930s helped turn out blacks to vote for Roosevelt in record numbers. Roosevelt was considered a friend of the working man, and it didn’t hurt that his wife, Eleanor, was an outspoken advocate of civil rights. But as the country geared up for war, black leaders were concerned that blacks would be segregated into jobs as cooks and support troops, as they had been in World War I, and not given a chance to prove their mettle on an equal basis with whites.

  At Eleanor’s suggestion, Roosevelt met with black leaders William White of the NAACP and A. Phillip Randolph of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Roosevelt gave them the impression that he was going to help end military segregation—in return for black votes, of course. But then Roosevelt’s press secretary, Steve Early, later announced that blacks and whites would not be intermingled; worse, Early claimed that this policy had been approved by White, Randolph, and others who had met with the president.

  White and Randolph were furious, and Roosevelt hastily tried to make amends. He met with Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox and made this suggestion: “Since we are training a certain amount of musicians on board ship—the ship’s band—there’s no reason why we shouldn’t have a colored band on some of these ships, because they’re darned good at it.”

  Race relations took another turn for the worse just a week before the election, when the president made a rousing speech at Madison Square Garden in New York City and then returned to Penn Station to board his train back to Washington. Press Secretary Steve Early attempted to get on the train, but a black New York City policeman named James Sloan didn’t know who he was and prevented him from boarding. Whereupon Early, a Southerner, kicked Sloan in the groin, sending the cop—who had just returned to work after a
hernia operation—straight back to the hospital.

  The tussle made headlines, and Republicans distributed leaflets showing pictures of Sloan in his hospital bed, with a caption that read: “Negroes: If you want your President to be surrounded by Southern influences of this kind, vote for Roosevelt. If you want to be treated with respect, vote for Wendell Willkie.”

  Fortunately for Roosevelt, Early apologized, Sloan declared himself a tried-and-true Democrat, and the entire incident was defused.

  SPECIAL DELIVERY BY AIR When making appearances in factory towns and other Democratic strongholds, Willkie found himself attacked consistently with flying vegetables and other projectiles. Commentators noted that never before had any candidate had so many objects hurled in his direction—they included, by one reporter’s count, cantaloupes, potatoes, tomatoes, oranges, eggs, ashtrays, rocks, chairs, a phone book, and even a bedspread. Willkie usually took such attacks in stride, but outside Detroit, he lunged at one protestor who had spattered his wife with an egg.

  IMAGE CONTROL Stricken by polio in 1921, Franklin Roosevelt was partially paralyzed from the waist down and forced to use a wheelchair and heavy leg braces for the rest of his life. Yet the American public almost never saw him that way, thanks to a carefully orchestrated campaign to make Roosevelt seem as vital as anyone else. Roosevelt arrived at least an hour early for public speaking events, so people did not view him being lifted out of cars, and he used his Secret Service agents and his sons as supports when he stood to make speeches. At one point, when Roosevelt had to attend the funeral of a prominent congressman, the street outside the church was raised to the level of the church floor so that Roosevelt might appear to walk in under his own power. And one reason his wife, Eleanor, became so prominent in politics at a time when most first ladies kept to domestic White House matters was because she was his “eyes and ears,” going out to give speeches and gather reaction from around the country.

  Of course, none of this would have worked had the press not cooperated. They almost never took pictures of the president’s wheelchairs and braces—but when they did, their cameras were quickly destroyed by the Secret Service.

  Crowds hurled everything but the kitchen sink at Wendell Willkie, yet he kept coming back for more.

  FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

  VS. THOMAS DEWEY

  By the summer of 1944, Franklin Roosevelt had led America through the deadliest war in history, bringing the nation to the brink of a victory he would not live to see. At the age of sixty-two, the president suffered from heart disease and high blood pressure, and he was prone to bouts of bronchitis that further worsened his chronic insomnia. Nevertheless, he managed to keep his health problems under wraps, and his doctor, Vice Admiral Ross McIntire, issued reassuring public announcements that Roosevelt was in wonderful shape.

  If the country had not been at war, it is almost certain that Roosevelt would not have sought a fourth term. But he told friends and advisors that he would not stand to see a Republican victory, which would mean a Republican president presiding over what promised to be a powerful post-war era for America. At the Democratic National Convention, Roosevelt was nominated on the first ballot. The only suspense came in the choice of a vice president since it was very likely that Roosevelt might not live out a full term. After some debate, Roosevelt ended up choosing Senator Harry Truman of Missouri, a well-liked politician who had received national attention for rooting out corruption in defense contracts.

  Meanwhile, Republicans toyed with the possible candidacy of General Douglas MacArthur, hero of the Philippines, but the general’s presidential boat was sunk when he was found to have criticized Roosevelt, his commander-in-chief, in letters written to a Nebraska congressmen. (Also working against him were some recently discovered letters of a very different sort, written by MacArthur to an ex-Singapore chorus girl who called him “Daddy.”)

  In search of safer waters, Republicans nominated forty-two-year-old Thomas E. Dewey, governor of New York, with Ohio Governor John Bricker as his running mate. Dewey had a record as being an honest governor (and he had been an aggressive New York D.A. who prosecuted mobsters like Legs Diamond and Lucky Luciano). He was the first presidential candidate to be born in the twentieth century, and he had an air of efficiency that struck some people as drably modern, especially in comparison to Roosevelt.

  THE CAMPAIGN This was America’s first war-time general election since 1864, and the Democrats made the war the issue, praising Roosevelt’s successful management of the conflict and his worldwide status as a leader to show the inadvisability of changing commanders at the current time. And the economy, buoyed by defense contracts, was booming.

  As in 1940, FDR did little campaigning until the last weeks of the election, but Dewey stumped hard. Because of his pencil moustache, slim stature, and neatly combed black hair, Roosevelt called him “the little man on the wedding cake.” This line has been attributed to everyone from actress Ethel Barrymore to Alice Roosevelt Longworth (Teddy Roosevelt’s daughter), but FDR made full use of it.

  Dewey returned fire, saying Roosevelt was a leftist who had become the darling of American communists. And though he rarely mentioned Roosevelt’s health directly, he harped on the “tired old men” of Washington and how they needed to be replaced by young and energetic visionaries like himself.

  Then Republicans made the mistake of repeating an apocryphal story about Roosevelt and his Scotch terrier Fala. According to the tale, Roosevelt was visiting the Aleutian islands and accidentally left Fala behind; he later sent a destroyer to pick up the animal. The Republicans tried to use the anecdote to illustrate the president’s extravagance, but Roosevelt diffused the charges with gentle sarcasm in a national address: “I don’t resent attacks and my family doesn’t resent attacks, but Fala does resent them … he has not been the same dog since.”

  THE WINNER: FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT Roosevelt beat Thomas Dewey 25,612,610 votes to 22,117,617, winning in the Electoral College 432 to 99. On hearing the news, Roosevelt quipped: “The first twelve years are the hardest.” And perhaps he was right. On April 12, 1945, he died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage at the presidential retreat in Warm Springs, Georgia.

  HARRY TRUMAN

  VS.

  THOMAS DEWEY

  “I know every one of these [reporters].

  There isn’t one of them has enough sense to pound sand into a rat hole.”

  —Harry Truman, on the journalists who predicted he would lose

  The presidential election of 1948 is, to date, the most amazing political upset in American history. It contains one of the best campaigns ever run by anyone—President Harry Truman’s give-’em-hell extravaganza—as well as one of the worst—that of New York Governor Thomas Dewey. But throughout 1948 and right up to Election Day, November 2, there was not a reporter, pollster, or political expert in the country who thought Truman had any chance of winning at all.

  Why was Truman held in such low esteem? After all, he had presided over victory in World War II and the hopeful beginnings of the United Nations, and he had faithfully carried on FDR’s New Deal policies. But, with the artificial wartime price controls rescinded, inflation had driven up prices by nearly 40 percent, war with the Soviets was close to breaking out over Stalin’s blockade of Berlin, the southern wing of the Democratic Party was upset by Truman’s support of civil rights, and a Republican-dominated Congress blocked Truman’s every move.

  The Gallup poll gave Truman a 36 percent approval rating—the kind of rating that takes you deep into Nixon-Watergate, Carter—Iran Hostages, and George W. Bush—Iraq War territory. Jokes were spread across the country: “I wonder what Truman would do if he were alive.” Democratic-leaning newspapers posed rhetorical headline questions like, “Must It Be Truman?” Life magazine published admiring profiles of Dewey with speculation on which worthies would make up the Dewey administration. And Truman’s own party made overtures to Dwight D. Eisenhower, the immensely popular supreme commander of allied forces dur
ing the war, since Eisenhower had not committed to being a member of any political party.

  The Republicans were delighted to see Truman in such dire straits. At their national convention, Congresswoman Clare Boothe Luce called Truman “a gone goose” and suggested (in a nod to a popular Coca-Cola ad) that his time in office had not been “the pause that refreshes.” The Republicans happily renominated their 1944 candidate, Thomas E. Dewey, along with the liberal Earl Warren, governor of California and future Supreme Court justice, to balance the ticket.

  All these insults simmered inside Truman. By the time he was nominated by his dejected party in July of 1948, with Kentucky Senator Alben Barkley as his running mate, he was ready, in the most famous sound bite from 1948, to “Give ’em hell!”

  THE CANDIDATES

  DEMOCRAT: HARRY TRUMAN Early in the campaign, the sixty-four-year-old Truman had occasional moments when his confidence vanished (meeting up with Dewey in New York, he whispered, “Tom, when you get to the White House, for God’s sakes do something about the plumbing!”), but he was fired by an almost superhuman confidence. He was determined to win this election, even though his own mother-in-law had told him he should quit.

  REPUBLICAN: THOMAS DEWEY Dewey had a lot going for him. At the young age of forty-six, he had already established a national reputation as both a crime-buster in New York and a respectable presidential candidate from 1944. This time around, Dewey assembled a team of young political experts to help put him over the top. Their chief (and fatal) advice to him: The presidency is yours. Say nothing that will get you in trouble, and you will win the election in a walkover.

  THE CAMPAIGN

  Truman had more to worry about than Thomas Dewey—he also had to fend off challenges from splinter groups within his own party. Henry Wallace, former Roosevelt vice president, was the candidate of the Progressive Party, which ran on a world peace platform and attracted quite a few liberal Democrats, students, unionists, and American Communists. On the other side of the spectrum, anti—civil rights Southerners, led by South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond, formed the so-called Dixiecrat Party.