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By Root 1876 0

delegation of party notables a month or so after the convention. By smashing precedent and going to Chicago, Roosevelt was demonstrating a spirit of urgency that a dispirited country could embrace. He was also demonstrating remarkable physical courage and stamina. In 1932, air travel was still considered hazardous. Knute Rockne, the nation’s most celebrated football coach, had recently died in a plane crash. Navigation aids were rudimentary, planes were primitively underpowered, and pilots had little to fall back on if they encountered heavy weather. In statistical terms, people flying in 1932 were two hundred times more likely to be killed than passengers forty years later.118

American Airlines had but one flight a day out of Albany, and it went to Cleveland. To accommodate Roosevelt, the airline pulled a Ford 5-AT Tri-Motor plane from the Dallas to Los Angeles run.* As an American spokesman said, “People were afraid to fly. To get a governor on a plane might help spread a little confidence. That’s why we were willing to go to so much trouble.”119

Roosevelt’s party, an unlucky thirteen, included Eleanor, sons Elliott and John, Missy LeHand, Grace Tully, Earl Miller, Gus Gennerich, and Sam Rosenman, plus pilots and crew. “There were storms all around us,” said one of the pilots. “Flying up against the prevailing winds at that low altitude was rough, and that Ford was like a balloon.” The pilots prepared for an emergency landing in Rochester, but the weather broke slightly and they pressed on, refueling in Buffalo and Cleveland. At 4:30 the little plane landed at Chicago’s Municipal Airport, eight hours on the button after its departure from Albany. In the interim, John Garner had been nominated by acclamation for vice president, Farley bringing the Roosevelt delegations into line without a murmur.

Shortly after 6 P.M. Chairman Walsh introduced Roosevelt amidst a thunderous ovation. FDR was wearing a blue suit with a rose in his lapel, his eyes shining, his head thrown back, as the organist broke into another spirited rendering of “Happy Days Are Here Again.” The crowd of 30,000 was on its feet as Roosevelt began. “I regret that I am late, but I have no control over the winds of heaven and could only be thankful for my Navy training. The appearance before a national convention of its nominee for President before being formally notified of his selection is unprecedented, but these are unprecedented times.” The audience roared its approval.

With the nation listening—many in the audience were hearing Roosevelt for the first time—he rolled out the sentences in that confident, cultured voice so familiar to radio audiences in New York: “I have started out on the tasks that lie ahead by breaking the absurd tradition that the candidate should remain in professed ignorance of what has happened until he is formally notified many weeks later. Let it be from now on the task of our party to break foolish traditions and leave it to the Republican leadership, far more skilled in that art, to break promises.”

Roosevelt served notice on the economic conservatives in the party who wanted to stand pat: “I warn those nominal Democrats who squint at the future with their faces turned to the past, and who feel no responsibility to the demands of the new time, that they are out of step with their Party.” (Raucous cheers and applause.) “Ours must be a party of liberal thought, of planned action, of enlightened international outlook, and the greatest good to the greatest number of our citizens.”

He reached out to progressives across the political spectrum: “Here and now I invite those nominal Republicans who find that their conscience cannot be squared with the groping and failure of their party leaders to join hands with us.” FDR promised aggressive government action to tackle the root causes of the Depression and provide effective distress relief. He recited a litany of programs long overdue: securities regulation, public works, tariff reduction, wages and hours legislation, home mortgage guarantees, farm relief, and the repeal of Prohibition.