FDR - Jean Edward Smith [113]
Roosevelt needed no convincing. “Hoover is certainly a wonder,” he allowed. “I wish we could make him President of the United States. There could not be a better one.”55 Franklin, who thus far had patterned his career on TR’s, was well aware that the vice presidency had been Cousin Theodore’s stepping-stone to the White House. “You can go to it as far as I’m concerned,” he told Wehle. “Good luck.”56
The following day Wehle called on Democratic kingmaker Colonel Edward House at his New York apartment. House was on the outs with Wilson but still wielded considerable influence in the party. “It’s a wonderful idea,” he told Wehle. “A Hoover-Roosevelt ticket is probably the only chance the Democrats have in November.”57
Was Hoover a Democrat? Wehle called on the food administrator at his office on lower Broadway and found him noncommittal. So too did House. Like Dwight Eisenhower after World War II, Hoover was being courted by both parties and kept his own counsel. On March 6 Franklin and Eleanor dined with the would-be nominee but could not smoke him out. “Mr. Hoover talked a great deal,” Eleanor wrote Sara. “He has an extraordinary knowledge and grasp of present-day problems.” Evidently he did not reveal his allegiance.58 At the end of March 1920, Hoover broke his long silence and proclaimed himself a progressive Republican: he had been registered as a Republican in California since 1898, and he had supported TR in 1912.59 There would be no Hoover-Roosevelt ticket.
But FDR had been bitten by the vice presidential bug. Alben Barkley, Harry Truman’s vice president in 1949, was fond of telling of the woman who had two sons: one became a sailor and went to sea; the other became vice president of the United States. “Neither has been heard from since.”60 “Cactus Jack” Garner of Uvalde, Texas, FDR’s crusty vice president, later told newsmen the job “wasn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.”*61 For Roosevelt, it was a ticket to be punched, a way station on the road to the White House, and Wehle was correct: the nomination would bring Franklin into contact with Democrats across the country.
A successful vice presidential aspirant plays his cards close to his chest, waiting for lightning to strike. The choice of a running mate is traditionally the prerogative of the presidential nominee, and one scarcely runs for the post. But Hoover or no Hoover, FDR’s credentials would have placed him on any nominee’s short list: young, attractive, high-profile wartime service in Washington, liberal but not populist, probably wet but acceptable to the drys on Prohibition,† and above all a Roosevelt from New York, by far the most populous state in the Union, with forty-five electoral votes, roughly one fifth of the number required for election.
When the Democratic convention met in San Francisco on June 28, FDR had positioned himself for the nomination. The support of the New York delegation was critical, and Franklin had taken every precaution. He traveled cross-country on the Knickerbocker Express with his fellow delegates, entertained them lavishly on the battleship New York, anchored off Treasure Island, and volunteered to second the nomination of Al Smith, a favorite-son candidate whom Charles Murphy was using as a stalking horse until the decisive moment to shift the Empire State’s ninety votes behind the winner. Franklin’s entourage included his Dutchess County allies John Mack and Tom Lynch; his old Harvard roommate, former congressman Lathrop Brown; his law partner Grenville Emmett; and his personal secretary from the Navy Department—all of whom began to work the hotel corridors and lobbies on FDR’s behalf.
Franklin took advantage of every opportunity. When a huge floodlit portrait of Wilson was unveiled during opening ceremonies, the convention erupted with a sentimental display of affection.