FDR - Jean Edward Smith [244]
† In early September Roosevelt and Landon met at a midwest governors’ conference in Des Moines. “Governor, however this comes out, we’ll see more of each other,” said FDR. “Either you come to see me [in the White House] or I’ll come to see you.” “I certainly shall,” Landon replied. “And Governor, don’t work too hard,” Roosevelt joked.
“Harmony dripped so steadily from every rafter,” Senator Arthur Capper, a Kansas Republican, noted, “that I fully expected one of the candidates to withdraw.” Quoted in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Politics of Upheaval 610 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960).
* Two days after the election, Cardinal Pacelli very publicly visited Hyde Park for lunch with the president. Pacelli’s party included Joseph P. Kennedy, Frank C. Walker, and the then auxiliary bishop of Boston, Francis J. Spellman, who was the cardinal’s interlocutor in the United States. “I was very anxious to meet the President of the United States,” Pacelli told newsmen afterward. “I am very happy to have had the opportunity of seeing him and congratulating him. I enjoyed my visit very much.” The New York Times, November 6, 1936.
* Literary Digest, which had correctly called the 1932 election, predicted that Landon would carry 32 states with 370 electoral votes against 16 states with 161 electoral votes for Roosevelt. By contrast, the Gallup and Roper organizations forecast that FDR would win in a landslide. Unlike Gallup and Roper, Literary Digest polled only persons whose names appeared in telephone books and automobile registration lists, which in 1936 skewed the sample toward more affluent voters. Peverill Squire, “Why the 1936 Literary Digest Poll Failed,” 52 Public Opinion 125–133 (1988).
* Because of the chance of early snow, Maine historically voted early. In 1936 the state went to the polls on September 14 and gave Landon 55.6 percent of the vote to Roosevelt’s 41.6 percent.
† In 1964 Lyndon Johnson defeated Barry Goldwater 61.05 percent to 38.47 percent, but Goldwater’s percentage was slightly higher than that of Landon, who won only 36.54 percent. Congressional Quarterly, Guide to U.S. Elections 290, 297 (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1975).
* FDR was superstitious about making changes, and he had a personal distaste for firing people. The only two cabinet changes since 1933 were because of the deaths of the incumbents: Morgenthau replaced William Woodin at Treasury, and Woodring replaced George Dern at the War Department.
† George Sutherland was appointed to the Court by Harding in 1922; Pierce Butler by Harding in 1923. Coolidge appointed Harlan F. Stone in 1925. Hoover appointed Chief Justice Hughes (1930), Owen Roberts (1930), and Benjamin Cardozo (1932).
* The so-called Hot Oil act, section 9c of the National Industrial Recovery Act, was overturned by the Court (8–1) in Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan, 293 U.S. 388 (1935). In Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 553 (1935), and Louisville Joint Stock Land Bank v. Radford, 295 U.S. 595 (1935), unanimous Courts struck down the entire NIRA and the Frazier-Lemke Farm Mortgage Act. The Railroad Retirement Act was declared unconstitutional (5–4) in Railroad Retirement Board v. Alton Railroad Co., 295 U.S. 330 (1935). In United States v. Butler, 297 U.S. 1 (1936) the Court (6–3) overturned the Agricultural Adjustment Act, and in Carter v. Carter Coal Co., 298 U.S. 238 (1936) a sharply divided Court (5–4) declared the Guffey Bituminous Coal Act unconstitutional.
* Early New Deal legislation relied on the commerce clause of the Constitution (Article I, section 8), which authorized Congress to regulate interstate and foreign commerce. As originally interpreted by the Marshall Court in the landmark case of Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheaton (22 U.S.) 1 (1824), that would have sufficed. But in 1895 the Court, speaking through Chief Justice Melville Fuller, narrowed the scope of the commerce clause to exclude mining, manufacturing, and agriculture. Such activities, said Fuller,