FDR - Jean Edward Smith [167]
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