Roosevelt (50 page)

“I agree with all you say,” Roosevelt replied. And during September, while the people and the politicos waited for the old campaigner to open up, Roosevelt doggedly kept his nonpartisan pose. He spoke to the nation on conservation, to a world power conference on “human engineering,” to the Conference on the Mobilization for Human Needs, to a national convention of philatelists, to the tercentenary celebration of Harvard, where he was booed by the undergraduates and where he brought smiles even to the faces of stiff-necked Republican alumni by saying: “At that time [one hundred years ago] many of the alumni of Harvard were sorely troubled by the state of the Nation. Andrew Jackson was President. On the 250
^th
anniversary of the founding of Harvard College, alumni again were sorely troubled. Grover Cleveland was President.” A pause. “Now, on the 300
^th
anniversary, I am President.”

But still the President took no notice of the campaign, of the Republicans and their charges. “Say, Steve,” a reporter asked Early jocularly, “is this going to be a nonpolitical campaign?”

Farley could take no such lofty stand. As the rallier of party forces, he was fair game for Republican thrusts. Day after day he was charged with using relief jobs and public funds to bribe millions of voters, with operating a colossal spoils machine, with neglecting the post office. The Republicans hoped their shots would glance off Farley and demolish Roosevelt; more likely, their drumfire against the Postmaster General simply helped Roosevelt in his tactic of staying above the battle.

Farley’s worst troubles came from Democrats rather than Republicans. Roosevelt’s bipartisanship of 1934 had left Democrats disorganized and disgruntled in half a dozen states. The Wisconsin Democracy had warned Farley against any further administration flirting with the Progressives, and they had put up another candidate to fight Philip La Follette for the governorship. The EPIC groups, still in control of the Democratic party organization in California, had toyed with third party ideas but were now grudgingly supporting Roosevelt. Farmer-Laborites in Minnesota had
been openly critical of the New Deal but were now lining up behind Roosevelt, to the discomfiture of the Democratic factions. And it was to Farley, the party leader, that the angry Democrats turned to demand help from the national administration.

The kind of problem Farley faced was typified by the situation in Idaho. Mutual friends of Senator Borah and Roosevelt had tried to induce Farley to withdraw administration support from Borah’s Democratic foe in exchange for the Idaho senator’s support for Roosevelt against Landon. The proposed deal was backed also by a Democratic faction in Idaho opposed to the Democratic nominee, and Borah was willing to play along with the idea. But Farley reported to the go-betweens that the Democratic candidate was in the fight to stay. Borah never took a stand between Roosevelt and Landon.

Another pro-Roosevelt but non-Democratic senator was Norris of Nebraska—and Norris was a man Roosevelt especially esteemed. Late in 1935 the President had urged Norris to run for re-election in 1936, but the old white-haired Nebraskan allowed the party primaries to go by without filing. He cut off his ties with organization Republicans by denouncing the 1936 platform, and he continued to attack organization Democrats, including Farley, for their spoils activities. But he came out for the President; “Roosevelt is the Democratic platform,” the Senator announced. Nominated on petitions as an independent by thousands of his followers late in the summer of 1936, Norris confronted the regular nominees of the two parties. The Democratic nominee, Terry M. Carpenter, appealed for support to his national party leaders, but in vain. To make matters worse for Carpenter, key Democratic leaders in the state came out for Norris against their own party nominee. Carpenter could merely hope that Roosevelt would remain silent.

In planning his mid-October campaign, the President handled state situations such as these with his usual versatility. He kept entirely clear of California, Wisconsin, and Idaho, and thus avoided hostile factions in those states. He planned to go to Minnesota, but before he arrived the local Democrats had been induced to withdraw their state ticket in favor of the Farmer-Laborites, so that the President’s main task in this state was to soothe the injured feelings of the ticketless Democratic leaders. As for Nebraska—here he intended to be as direct and outspoken as elsewhere he had been evasive.

Roosevelt opened his formal campaign with a speech at the end of September to the New York Democratic convention in Syracuse. He used the occasion to answer charges of Coughlin, Hearst, and others that the Communists were supporting the New Deal. The President had been urged to answer these charges by denouncing
Soviet violations of treaty agreements, but he believed that a flat statement would be enough. “I have not sought, I do not seek, I repudiate the support of any advocate of Communism or of any other alien ‘ism’ which would by fair means or foul change our American democracy,” he asserted. The New Deal, he said, had saved the country from the threat of communism posed by the social and economic wreckage of 1932. Liberalism was the protection of the farsighted conservative. “Reform if you would preserve.”

With biting sarcasm Roosevelt struck out at the “me-too” speeches of the Republicans. “Let me warn you and let me warn the Nation against the smooth evasion which says,”—and here Roosevelt arched his eyebrows and raised his voice to a near falsetto—“Of course we believe all these things; we believe in social security; we believe in work for the unemployed; we believe in saving homes. Cross our hearts and hope to die, we believe in all these things; but we do not like the way the present Administration is doing them. Just turn them over to us. We will do all of them—we will do more of them—we will do them better; and, most important of all, the doing of them will not cost anybody anything.”

As Roosevelt’s campaign train rolled slowly through the Midwest during October, the patterns of his attack became clear. Over and over again, in rear-platform talks and formal speeches, he stressed three simple themes: the contrast between conditions in March 1933 and conditions in October 1936; the role of the New Deal in getting the country out of depression; and the interdependence of the American people—of workers and businessmen, of farmers and consumers, of state governments and the national government. With homely examples he drove these points home.

Although the President said on one occasion, “We are here to proclaim the New Deal, not to defend it,” to a surprising degree he devoted his talks to a point-by-point answer to Republican charges. Again and again he answered Landon’s charges of waste and wild spending with the simple question, “If someone came to you and said, ‘If you will borrow $800 and by borrowing that $800 increase your annual income by $2,200,’ would you borrow it or not?” When some Republican orator accused him of bringing out a new farm program every year, like new automobile models, he accepted the simile and said the nation had passed beyond Model-T farming. “While his speeches did not resound with Webster’s sonorous roll, or shimmer with the polished hardness of Woodrow Wilson’s rhetoric,” Charles and Mary Beard wrote not long afterward, “his prose, although sometimes dull and repetitious, often glowed with poetic warmth and was enlivened by the flight of speeding words.”

It was notable, though, that Roosevelt talked little about the
future during his Western swing. He was making the New Deal record, not the New Deal promises, the issue. He implied that the New Deal would be enlarged if he stayed in office. But it was no more than an implication; and his speeches were studded with conciliatory remarks for businessmen, doctors, beet sugar growers, and others. Foreign policy he almost completely ignored.

When he wished to take a forthright position the President did so with a flourish. Such was his endorsement of Norris. Speaking in Omaha, the President said that outside of his own state of New York he had consistently refrained from taking part in state elections. But to this rule “I have made—and so long as he lives I always will make—one magnificently justified exception. George Norris’ candidacy transcends State and party lines.” Roosevelt appealed directly to the cheering crowd to help Norris win re-election.

Always Roosevelt was the gay campaigner, easy in his way with crowds, quick on the trigger, homey, laughing, waving, obviously enjoying himself. In Emporia, Kansas, he looked through the crowd for Editor White, who was supporting Landon. “I wish he were here,” the President said genially. “He is a very good friend of mine for three and a half out of every four years.”

There was a rustle in the crowd and White appeared. “Shoot not this old gray head,” he cried out in mock alarm as he went up to the rear platform of the train.

“Hello, Bill, glad to see you,” Roosevelt said. Then turning to the crowd: “Now that I see him, I shall not say anything about the other six months.” The crowd laughed and applauded as the two men shook hands, and the train pulled out.

By late October battle lines had stiffened between the two main parties. The Union party, denied a place on the ballot in a dozen states, riven by cleavages among the strange assortment of men who founded it, was visibly faltering. Coughlin had antagonized people by stripping off his black coat and Roman collar at the Union party convention and calling Roosevelt a betrayer and liar. Townsend in October was urging supporters to vote for Landon in states where they could not vote for the Union candidate, William Lemke. Greeted by deep, ominous booing and cold, dead silence in some cities, the Republican candidate was grimly plugging away at his anti-New Deal line. But his hopes ran high on the crest of support from the great majority of newspapers and of denunciations of the New Deal by Democrats Smith and Davis. Moreover, the
Literary Digest,
whose polls had been accurate in past elections, showed Landon holding a decisive edge over his opponent.

Roosevelt late in October set out on a ten-day tour of the urban Northeast. In an almost literal sense the tour was not a campaign
trip but a triumphal procession. The President himself said that the trip brought out the “most amazing tidal wave of humanity” he had ever seen. There was something terrible about the crowds that lined the streets, Roosevelt remarked to Ickes—he could hear men and women crying out, “He saved my home,” “He gave me a job.” Roosevelt made the entire New England swing in an open car, and even hard-bitten reporters were incredulous over the wild enthusiasm of the crowds. For mile after mile people lined the roads, not only in the cities but in the outskirts as well. Boston Common was overrun by a seething mass of 150,000 people. In Connecticut cities the candidate’s entourage—including Eleanor Roosevelt—could hardly get through the crowded streets. In New York City the Roosevelt car traveled more than thirty miles without passing a block whose sidewalks were not jammed.

As he waved and talked to such crowds Roosevelt seemed to catch their militancy. His speeches took on a sharper edge, struck a more positive note. In New York City he promised national legislation for better housing. In Wilkes-Barre he attacked scathingly the “propaganda-spreading employers” who were putting anti-social security law slips into pay envelopes. In Brooklyn he stated the task still to be done—to destroy “the glaring inequalities of opportunity and security which, in the recent past, have set group against group and region against region.”

Before a wildly fervent, chanting crowd in Madison Square Garden, Roosevelt on the last day of October brought his campaign to a passionate climax.

“… We have not come this far without a struggle and I assure you that we cannot go further without a struggle.

“For twelve years our Nation was afflicted with hear-nothing, see-nothing, do-nothing Government. The Nation looked to that Government but that Government looked away. Nine mocking years with the golden calf and three long years of the scourge! Nine crazy years at the ticker and three long years in the breadlines! Nine mad years of mirage and three long years of despair! And, my friends, powerful influences strive today to restore that kind of government with its doctrine that that Government is best which is most indifferent to mankind.”

Explosive cheers were punctuating the President’s sentences. He was deftly modifying the transitions in his prepared text as he caught the rhythm of the crowd. “For nearly four years now you have had an Administration which instead of twirling its thumbs has rolled up its sleeves. And I can assure you that we will keep our sleeves rolled up.

“We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace—business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless barking, class antagonism,
sectionalism, war profiteering.
They
had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. And we know now that Government by organized
money
is just as dangerous as Government by organized
mob
.”

Roosevelt’s voice had been in turn stern with indignation, sonorous with moral fervor, solemn, and even cheery. Now his tone hardened. “Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their
hate
for
me—and I welcome their hatred.
”

A raucous, almost animal-like roar burst from the crowd, died away, and then rose again in wave after wave. Roosevelt began again, gently.

“I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their
match.
” The words came faster, rang with increasing militancy. “I should like to have it said—” Cheers, cowbells, horns, clackers drowned out the words.

“Wait a moment!” Roosevelt commanded. The old performer would not have his lines spoiled. The din subsided.

“I should like to have it said of my second Administration that
in it these forces met their master.
” The roar from the crowd was like that at a prize fight—a massive sound through which the promptings of individuals could be faintly heard.