Jean Edward Smith

by FDR

  FDR’s momentum continued. The week after North Dakota went to the polls, Georgia gave Roosevelt a resounding 8-to-1 victory against a stand-in favorite son.53 FDR captured all twenty-eight delegates and carried Warm Springs 218–1. The following week Iowa and Maine met in convention. The Stop Roosevelt forces had been active in both states, and there was substantial support for sending uncommitted delegations to Chicago. Farley made a special trip to Davenport to keep the Iowans in line, and Robert Jackson intervened in Maine.54 Both states voted to send delegations to Chicago pledged to Roosevelt.

  “We always looked back upon March 29 as a red-letter day for the Roosevelt candidacy, if not the turning point of the entire campaign,” wrote Farley. “Iowa gave us twenty-six votes and Maine twelve. Those two states are far apart on the map—their people have little in common politically. When they took similar action on the same day, it demonstrated to us and to the country that Roosevelt had nationwide appeal.”55

  Missouri and Maryland also met in convention at the end of March. As expected, Missouri voted to send its thirty-six delegates to Chicago pledged to its favorite son, former senator James M. Reed. In 1928, Missouri had supported Reed down the line, but this time he was a stalking horse for the real boss of Missouri politics, Tom Pendergast. “Pendergast assured me,” a Roosevelt scout wrote Howe, “that he informed Senator Reed that he might have the Missouri delegation as a complimentary vote until it was needed by Roosevelt.” At that time Pendergast said he would cast Missouri’s vote as a unit for FDR.56

  Maryland, also as expected, chose to support its favorite son, Governor Albert C. Ritchie. Unlike Reed, or Murray for that matter, Ritchie was a serious candidate who was hoping for a convention deadlock. A probusiness Democrat, Ritchie had been governor of Maryland since 1920. He opposed government intervention in the economy (“Let natural forces take their course, as free and untrammeled as possible”) and was the beau ideal of the party’s conservatives.57 As The New York Times reported, “Governor Ritchie is looked upon as the candidate to whom the anti-Roosevelt forces may rally if they can delay Governor Roosevelt’s nomination.”58

  Maryland was the first state to defect from the Roosevelt column. But the loss was offset the following day, when Arkansas senator Joseph T. Robinson withdrew from the race. Robinson told supporters he did not wish to contribute to another deadlocked convention. Left without its favorite son, Arkansas chose an uninstructed delegation, which gave Roosevelt all eighteen votes under the unit rule.

  With the campaign unfolding as planned—actually, better than planned—Roosevelt considered the future. Howe and Farley were unexcelled as political managers but had little interest in policy. That deficiency would become a problem unless it was fixed. Sam Rosenman suggested that FDR tap the universities. “You have been having good experiences with college professors. If we can get a small group together willing to give us some time, they can prepare memoranda for you. You’ll want to talk with them yourself, and maybe out of all the talk some concrete ideas will come.”59

  Roosevelt was intrigued. Did Rosenman have anyone in mind? he asked. Rosenman suggested Raymond Moley at Columbia. “He believes in your social philosophy and objectives, and he has a clear and forceful style of writing.” Roosevelt agreed. “We’ll have to keep this whole thing pretty quiet,” he told Rosenman. “Do you think these professors can be trusted not to talk about it on the outside? If it gets into the papers too soon it might be bad.”60

  Roosevelt thought it over while Rosenman wheeled him into his bedroom for the night. FDR shifted himself from his wheelchair to his bed. “Well,” he said, “we’ll just have to take our chances on that.”61

  Raymond Moley was a Columbia political science professor who specialized in criminal justice. FDR had appointed him to the Governor’s Commission on the Administration of Justice, and from time to time Moley had drafted policy statements for Roosevelt on judicial reform. In that capacity he had worked with Rosenman, and it was natural that Rosenman should have suggested him. Among academics, Moley was an organizer and manager, not a scholar, and he became, in Arthur Schlesinger’s words, a “ringmaster of the experts,” a middleman for their ideas.62 When approached by Rosenman, Moley not only accepted but recommended a number of his colleagues who might be willing to contribute. Two who made the cut were Rexford G. Tugwell and Adolf A. Berle.* Tugwell’s specialty was agriculture, and he was highly regarded as an articulate, original thinker who liked to shock his audience and often succeeded. Berle had been a child prodigy, graduating from Harvard Law School at twenty-one. He was now thirty-seven and a star at Columbia’s law school, where he was the resident expert on corporate finance.63 Joining the group were FDR’s law partner Basil “Doc” O’Connor and Rosenman. Roosevelt called the group his privy council. James Kieran, writing in The New York Times, referred to it as “FDR’s brains trust.”64 That name, shortened to “brain trust,” stuck. Roosevelt did not use the brain trust, or privy council, to provide him with new ideas. He engaged its members to flesh out, articulate, and refine the position he had come to embrace: a readiness to use the power of government to redress the economic ills from which the nation suffered.65

  The first product of the brain trust was Roosevelt’s “forgotten man” speech of April 7, 1932. Roosevelt was scheduled to speak for ten minutes coast to coast on NBC’s Lucky Strike Hour, sponsored by the American Tobacco Company. He told Moley he wanted something that would address the economic problems confronting the nation. Written jointly by FDR, Moley, and Rosenman at the executive mansion, the speech was a shot across the bow of the nation’s economic conservatives.66 Roosevelt excoriated the Hoover administration for attacking the symptoms of the Depression, not the cause. “It has sought temporary relief from the top down rather than permanent relief from the bottom up. These unhappy times call for the building of plans that put their faith once more in the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid.”67

  The following week Roosevelt carried the message to the Democratic party’s Jefferson Day dinner in Saint Paul, Minnesota. The economic problem was national in scope, said FDR, and required “imaginative and purposeful planning.”68 Roosevelt’s final speech before the convention was delivered at Oglethorpe University in Georgia on May 22, 1932.* “Must the country remain hungry and jobless while raw materials stand unused and factories idle?” he asked. “The country needs, the country demands, bold, persistent experimentation. Take a method and try it. If it fails admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.”69

  When the convention met on June 27, Roosevelt was still about 100 votes short of the 770 needed for the nomination. Except for the Yankee Kingdom (Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont), he had lost the Northeast to Smith; the delegations from New York and Pennsylvania were split; and in Virginia, Harry F. Byrd, anticipating that lightning might strike, had emerged as a favorite son. In the heartland, Ohio’s 52 votes were locked in behind its governor, George White—presumably a stand-in for Newton D. Baker; Illinois, with 58 votes, was backing its favorite son, Senator J. Hamilton Lewis; and Indiana’s delegation (30 votes) was uncommitted. The biggest obstacle—also the biggest surprise—lay in the West, where Texas and California (a total of 90 votes) were bound to House Speaker John Nance Garner.* Add Ritchie in Maryland and Murray in Oklahoma, and the recipe for a deadlocked convention seemed at hand. The key, as Roosevelt confided to Josephus Daniels, lay in the votes committed to Garner. If he could secure them, said FDR, that “would cinch the matter.”70

  “The brethren sniff the scent of battle,” H. L. Mencken wrote as the delegates descended on Chicago. “The air will be full of hair and ears within twenty-four hours. God save the Republic.”71 The new Chicago Stadium, where the convention would meet, dwarfed Madison Square Garden and was the first indoor arena to provide an unobstructed view from every seat. Twenty-five thousand people could be accommodated in the galleries and another six thousand on the floor. And the stadium was air-conditioned—not necessaril
y a good omen to those who traditionally counted on the summer heat to break a convention deadlock.72

  Farley and Ed Flynn went to Chicago a week early to set up Roosevelt headquarters, stroke delegates as they arrived, and keep watch over the three principal committees of the convention: Rules, Credentials, and the Platform. Given their overall majority, the Roosevelt forces controlled all three, but there were any number of problems that might arise. “I was aware that the national political field was a new one for me and that one bad slip might prove my undoing,” said Farley.73

  Flynn said, “We were green at national politics. When Farley and I set off for Chicago we confessed to each other that we felt pretty new at this game.”74

  Their inexperience showed quickly. On Thursday, June 23, Farley convened a strategy session attended by sixty or so leaders in the Roosevelt camp. “Almost before we realized what was taking place,” Farley later recalled, “the meeting was stampeded into taking hasty and ill-advised action.” Prodded by Senators Huey Long, Burton K. Wheeler, and Cordell Hull, with Josephus Daniels putting in his oar, the conclave voted unanimously to seek abolition of the two-thirds rule—that sacrosanct principle of Democratic conventions since Andrew Jackson first called the party together in 1832.75 “The incident hit me like a blow on the nose,” Farley confessed.76

  Pro-Roosevelt delegates from the cotton belt were apoplectic. Senator Josiah W. Bailey of North Carolina told Farley that FDR had put his entire southern support at risk. Pat Harrison, who was holding Mississippi for Roosevelt by a single vote, called the proposal “foolhardy and asinine.” John Sharp Williams, the grand old man of Southern Democracy, waded in from Yazoo City: “The two-thirds rule has been for a century the South’s defense,” he telegraphed friends at the convention. “It would be idiotic on her part to surrender it.”77

  With his coalition in danger of falling apart, Roosevelt threw in the towel. In a statement that Farley released to the convention, FDR said he thought the two-thirds rule was undemocratic and should be abolished. “Nevertheless, 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.… I am accordingly asking my friends in Chicago to cease their activities to secure the adoption of the majority nominating rule.”78

  The first day of the convention was sawdust and sideshow. Senator Alben Barkley of Kentucky, the temporary chairman, treated delegates to a two-hour stemwinder—one of the longest keynote addresses on record. “It had to be a long speech,” Will Rogers quipped. “When you start enumerating the things the Republicans have got away with in the last twelve years you have cut yourself out a job.”79 The initial test of strength came on day two, when the convention considered the report of the Credentials Committee and chose a permanent chairman. The credentials of the Louisiana, Minnesota, and Puerto Rico delegations were being challenged by the Stop Roosevelt forces. To lose would not only deprive FDR of the fifty votes involved; it would shift the momentum of the Convention against him.80

  In all three instances the Credentials Committee had voted to seat the pro-Roosevelt delegations. But a floor fight loomed. Louisiana was first. Long, often predisposed to buffoonery, played it straight and delivered a masterly presentation. Clarence Darrow, Chicago’s renowned trial lawyer, said it was “one of the greatest summaries of fact and evidence” he had ever heard.81 A hush settled over Chicago Stadium as the clerk called the roll of the states. Alabama, Arizona, and Arkansas cast forty-eight votes for Long. California answered with forty-four against. The count seesawed until Michigan, Minnesota, and Mississippi put Long ahead. Roosevelt’s lines were holding. The final tally was 638¾–514¼ to seat the Long delegation. Farley later called it “the most vital moment of the Convention.”82 The Minnesota and Puerto Rico delegations were seated in due course by even larger margins.83

  When it came time to choose a permanent chairman, the Roosevelt forces were in firm control. The organization candidate for the post was Raskob’s deputy, Jouett Shouse—whose opposition to Roosevelt was a matter of record. Senator Wheeler had warned FDR several months before the convention that if Shouse became the permanent chairman, “You will never be nominated.” Farley said, “Mr. Shouse had permitted his zeal in opposing the Governor to bias his actions.”84 As an alternative the Roosevelt camp chose to support Senator Thomas J. Walsh of Montana. Walsh had chaired the marathon 1924 convention with remarkable evenhandedness and had become a Democratic idol for his role spearheading the Senate’s Teapot Dome investigation. The vote was tight, but Roosevelt’s ranks held. When Michigan was called, Walsh took the lead and ultimately defeated Shouse 626–528. “It was a fight to the death,” Ed Flynn recalled. “Moreover, we had the moral advantage because every delegate in the hall knew that Walsh would be eminently fair. His decisions certainly could not, (and, in fact, were not) called into question.”85

  On day three the convention turned to the platform. The issue was Prohibition. Since the Civil War, no question had been more divisive for Democrats. The struggle between wets and drys had sent the convention of 1924 into 103 ballots, had helped defeat Al Smith in 1928, and now loomed ominously before Roosevelt. The Republicans (who also met in Chicago) had straddled the issue by endorsing state option. “It is not a plank,” jeered Barkley in his keynote. “It is a promiscuous agglomeration of scrap lumber.”86

  The mood of the country had changed, influenced perhaps by the Depression. A popular poll by Literary Digest found majorities for the repeal of Prohibition in every state except Kansas and North Carolina.87 In Democratic primaries, dry candidates were falling in droves before wet challengers. Even John D. Rockefeller, a lifelong teetotaler who had funded the Anti-Saloon League, called for repeal. “It is my profound conviction that the benefits of the Eighteenth Amendment are more than outweighed by the evils that have developed and flourished since its adoption,” said Rockefeller.88

  For the Stop Roosevelt forces, the repeal of Prohibition seemed tailor-made to embarrass FDR. Much of Roosevelt’s support came from traditionally dry areas in the South and West. With the country shouting for repeal, would he buck the tide and side with his dry supporters? Alternatively, would he back repeal and offend them? The issue before the convention was the plank recommended by the Platform Committee that called for outright repeal, versus the minority plank passing the question to the states.

  FDR refused to be drawn in. “Vote as you wish,” Farley instructed the Roosevelt delegations. FDR said he would be happy to run on whatever platform the convention adopted. In the free vote that followed, Democrats voted for repeal 934–213. “Early this morning,” Arthur Krock reported in The New York Times, “the Democratic party went as wet as the seven seas.”89*

  For Al Smith and Governor Ritchie, the vote on repeal rekindled their campaigns. Both had departed from convention tradition to appear at the rostrum and urge adoption of the majority plank. The tumultuous demonstration for Smith—heartfelt and genuine—surprised even the most hardened old pols. Whether the Happy Warrior could convert that sentiment into delegates’ votes was on everyone’s mind as they left the stadium, eager for the afternoon session when the nominations would begin.

  As the convention unfolded, Roosevelt stayed close by the telephone in Albany. Howe and Flynn kept in constant contact with FDR over a direct line in Howe’s hotel suite, while Farley marshaled the forces on the floor. From time to time Farley would bring delegates in to talk to Roosevelt. “These conversations were carried on at all hours of the day and night,” Flynn recalled. Occasionally a rudimentary speakerphone was rigged up and FDR would talk to an entire state delegation (“My friends from Nebraska …”). There was no question who was calling the shots for the campaign. All major decisions were made in Albany. “In most matters,” said Flynn, “we found it wise to get Roosevelt’s judgment. We did nothing without first consulting him.”90

  The nominating session convened at 3 P.M. Thursday, June 30.
More than three thousand delegates and alternates crammed the convention floor, waiting for the oratory to begin. Since Farley’s team dominated the Arrangements Committee, the Roosevelt delegations enjoyed prime seating. “We put California behind New York and both of them a half mile away from Texas,” said Roosevelt floor leader Arthur Mullen. The galleries, on the other hand, were controlled by Chicago mayor Anton Cermak, who packed them with anyone-but-Roosevelt partisans. FDR’s supporters received only one hundred of the twenty-five thousand passes available.91

  When the clerk called the roll, Alabama yielded to New York, and Judge John E. Mack of Poughkeepsie, FDR’s old political mentor, made his way to the podium to nominate Roosevelt. When he concluded, thirty-four state delegations and six of seven territories flooded the aisles, standards aloft, chanting for Roosevelt. Giant FDR banners unfurled from the rafters, and the organist broke into “Anchors Aweigh,” Roosevelt’s theme song. “Sounds like a funeral march to me,” said Ed Flynn, who was in Howe’s suite listening to the demonstration. “Why don’t we get something peppy for them to play, like ‘Happy Days Are Here Again’?” Howe agreed and sent word to the stadium.92