FDR - Jean Edward Smith [144]
* The New York Times called FDR’s speech “a model of its kind. It is seldom that a political speech attains this kind of eloquence. It was not fitted to provoke frenzied applause, but could not be heard or read without prompting to serious thought and sincere emotion.” The New York Times, June 28, 1928.
† The remaining 251 votes were divided among twelve candidates, Congressman Cordell Hull of Tennessee leading the pack with 71. Congressional Quarterly’s Guide to U.S. Elections 157 (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1975).
* Raskob immediately sent FDR a check for $250,000, which Roosevelt returned with his thanks. It was sufficient to know that Raskob was willing to underwrite him, he said. From 1928 to 1932, Raskob was one of the principal benefactors of Warm Springs, donating more than $100,000. Frank Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt: The Ordeal 255 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1954).
* After observing Rosenman for three days, FDR asked him to prepare a draft for a speech he was to give the next evening. It was a speechwriting relationship that would endure for the next seventeen years. “I get to know people quickly,” said Roosevelt. “Sometimes that is better than a long and careful investigation.”
Rosenman remembers that the campaign
was a difficult one. After the first two days by train, Roosevelt decided that he would continue the rest of the trip by automobile. This would enable him to make speeches at scores of crossroads and villages all through the state.… Two large buses accompanied the automobiles. One was used by the newsmen who were covering Roosevelt. In the other bus were the stenographers, mimeograph machine operators and their equipment. The speeches had to be typed and mimeographed as the bus was speeding along.
After a speech had been delivered in one city, I sat up and prepared a draft of the speech for the next night. It had to be ready for the candidate to look at the next morning during his breakfast when we would go over it together.
After breakfast the cavalcade of cars and buses would start the journey to the next city. I would get into the bus where the typewriters were, and, with Roosevelt’s corrections and suggestions, would work on the draft. Every once in a while the procession stopped at the center of some small village, where Roosevelt would make a short talk to the crowd. I would get into his car at one of these stops, and, after we started up again, we would discuss some of the changes to the draft. Sometimes he stopped his car at roadside and did some writing on the draft, or sent for one of the stenographers and dictated some new material.…
It was not easy for a crippled man to carry on this kind of campaign. He could not climb stairs, and often we had to carry him up some backstairs to a hall and down again. He always went through this harrowing experience smiling. He never got ruffled. Having been set down, he would adjust his coat, smile, and proceed calmly to the platform for his speech.
Samuel I. Rosenman, Working with Roosevelt 21–22, 31 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1952).
* It is easy to overestimate the magnitude of Smith’s defeat. Though he did dismally in rural America, his candidacy solidified the urban, immigrant vote for the Democratic party. For the first time since the Civil War the Democrats carried Massachusetts and Rhode Island and won a plurality in the nation’s twelve largest cities. All told, Smith polled more than 15 million votes, virtually as many as Calvin Coolidge’s winning total in 1924 and almost twice as many as any previous Democratic candidate. In that sense, it can be argued that Smith’s candidacy established the basis of the Roosevelt coalition and paved the way for FDR’s victory in 1932.