FDR - Jean Edward Smith [299]
His delivery in this speech was better than in any other speech I have ever heard him make. It is difficult to analyze the oratory of a speaker to see what it is that makes his delivery of speeches effective and moving. Over the years I watched Roosevelt with ever-growing wonderment and admiration as he made speeches of all kinds with exactly the right effect. There were the homey fireside chats, the stirring campaign speeches of attack, the argumentative and persuasive addresses to the Congress, the extemporaneous informal remarks on the rear platform of a train, at a Thanksgiving dinner in Warm Springs, to a group of newspaper editors calling on him at the White House. Each speech seemed perfectly attuned to the audience and to the occasion.
Though FDR had a team of speechwriters, including Rosenman and the playwright Robert Sherwood, he did the final drafts himself, always in longhand. One of Roosevelt’s great advantages, said Rosenman, was that he knew the speech thoroughly from beginning to end. “He had worked so hard and continuously on it that he knew it almost by heart. He knew the development of the theme, he knew always what was coming next, and the result was that his delivery progressed in solid logical fashion from one point to another, making it easy to follow and understand him. He could look away from the manuscript so much that many people did not even know he was reading.”109
The most moving passages of the Cleveland speech painted FDR’s vision of what lay ahead:
I see an America where factory workers are not discarded after they reach their prime, where there is no endless chain of poverty from generation to generation, where impoverished farmers and farm hands do not become homeless wanderers, where monopoly does not make youth a beggar for a job.
I see an America whose rivers and valleys and lakes—hills and streams and plains—the mountains over our land and nature’s wealth deep under the earth—are protected as the rightful heritage of all the people.
I see an America where small business really has a chance to flourish and grow.
I see an America of great cultural and educational opportunity for all its people.
I see an America where the income from the land shall be implemented and protected by a Government determined to guarantee to those who hoe it a fair share in the national income.
An America where the wheels of trade and private industry continue to turn to make the goods for America.
I see an America with peace in the ranks of labor.
An America where the workers are really free. Where the dignity and security of the working man and woman are guaranteed by their own strength and fortified by the safeguards of law.
An America where those who have reached the evening of life shall live out their years in peace and security. Where pensions and insurance for these aged shall be given as a matter of right to those who through a long life of labor have served their families and their nation as well.
I see an America devoted to our freedom—unified by tolerance and by religious faith—a people consecrated to peace, a people confident in strength because their body and their spirit are secure and unafraid.110
On November 5, 1940, 50 million Americans went to the polls, the largest number ever. The final Gallup polls showed Roosevelt leading by a slim 52 to 48 percent. More worrisome was the state-by-state breakout. In addition to rock-ribbed Republican strongholds, Willkie held slim leads in Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, New York, and Pennsylvania—industrial states with large electoral vote totals the Democrats could ill afford to lose.111 FDR anticipated a cliffhanger. His entry in the traditional preelection poll taken by the White House press pool showed him with 315 electoral votes to Willkie’s