FDR - Jean Edward Smith [298]
By mid-October Willkie’s attacks were sending tremors through Democratic ranks. Ed Flynn, who had succeeded Farley as national chairman, sent dire warnings of the defection of Italian voters in the Bronx and of Germans, who could turn the tide in the Midwest. The Irish vote in Massachusetts was in play, and Senator Walsh, up for reelection, was campaigning on an anti-Roosevelt, isolationist platform.98 A Gallup Poll taken the second week in October showed that if there were no war in Europe, Willkie would defeat Roosevelt 53 to 47 percent.99
Roosevelt surveyed the damage and decided it was time to respond. “I’m fighting mad,” he told Harold Ickes on October 17.100 The following day the White House announced that the president would make five campaign speeches in the final two weeks leading up to the election, ostensibly to correct Republican misstatements.101
FDR opened the campaign at a mass rally in Philadelphia the night of October 23. “I consider it a public duty to answer falsifications with facts,” he told the cheering crowd. “I will not pretend that I find this an unpleasant duty. I am an old campaigner, and I love a good fight.”102 Roosevelt had never been better. His timing was flawless. “He’s all the Barrymores rolled into one,” a reporter exclaimed.103
Roosevelt said the Republicans (he never mentioned Willkie by name) charged that there were secret agreements to take the country to war.
I give to you and to the people of this country this most solemn assurance:
There is no secret treaty, no secret obligation, no secret commitment, no secret understanding in any shape or form, direct or indirect, with any other Government, to involve this nation in any war or for any other purpose.104
Five nights later, after a fourteen-hour day touring New York City’s five boroughs in an open car—the crowds estimated at more than 2 million—Roosevelt gave another bang-up speech at Madison Square Garden. Mussolini had invaded Greece hours before, and the president expressed his sorrow. No “stab-in-the-back” accusation, simply his concern for “the Italian people and the Grecian people, that they should have been involved together in conflict.”
The speech was a slashing attack on the Republican leadership, everyone but Willkie, whom the president again did not mention. FDR was in a rhetorical groove, and the crowd roared its approval—especially after the tag line “Martin, Barton, and Fish” rolled off his tongue in rhythmic cadence. “Great Britain and a lot of other nations would never have received one ounce of help from us—if the decision had been left to Martin, Barton, and Fish.”* Several paragraphs later Roosevelt repeated the refrain, and the audience chanted it with him fortissimo.105
Roosevelt’s assault stunned the Republicans. With two speeches FDR had regained the initiative. Willkie responded with increased invective, and Roosevelt reciprocated. Two days later in Boston he ended the debate with a blockbuster: “I have said before, but I shall say it again and again and again. Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.”106
“That hypocritical son of a bitch,” said Willkie, who was listening to the speech with his brother. “This is going to beat me.”107
On the train to Boston, Roosevelt had put the finishing touches on the speech. In past talks he had always added the words “except in case of attack,” just as the Democratic platform put it. When Sam Rosenman pointed that out, FDR dismissed it. “It’s not necessary. If we’re attacked it’s no longer a foreign war.”108 When all is said and done, Franklin Roosevelt was the most unforgiving of politicians. When the stakes were highest he was at his most ruthless. Farley and Bankhead learned that in Chicago. Willkie learned it when FDR spoke in Boston.
Roosevelt closed the campaign with a speech in Cleveland on November 2. Rosenman, who heard FDR deliver speeches for seventeen years, thought the 1940 Cleveland speech was his finest.
Although it was a campaign speech, it was