FDR - Jean Edward Smith [85]
On June 14, 1916, four days after Hughes was nominated, the nation celebrated Flag Day with preparedness parades throughout the country. Wilson led the Washington procession himself, a flag carried decorously over his shoulder. Civilian employees from each government department marched, and FDR headed the Navy’s contingent. “The Navy Department made an excellent showing,” he wrote Eleanor. “When I passed the President’s reviewing stand I was sent for to join them and spent the next four hours there.”80 Press coverage the next day featured photographs of Wilson standing foursquare for preparedness, a Democratic Roosevelt beaming at his side.81
FDR campaigned for the ticket in New England and the middle Atlantic states. He defended the administration’s preparedness record and shielded Daniels from Republican attack, suggesting that criticism of the mobilization effort was counterproductive and unpatriotic. “How would you expect the public to be convinced that a dangerous fire was in progress if they saw members of the volunteer fire department stop their headlong rush toward the conflagration and indulge in a slanging match as to who was responsible for the rotten hose or lack of water at a fire a week ago?”82 The fire hose analogy was one of the homey metaphors FDR sometimes called up to explain the necessity for cooperation in times of crisis. In early 1940 he employed it again to support his proposal for Lend-Lease to Great Britain: “Suppose my neighbor’s home catches fire, and I have a length of garden hose four or five hundred feet away. If he can take my garden hose and connect it up with his hydrant, I may help him to put out his fire.”83
Hughes waged a lackluster campaign—TR called him “Wilson with whiskers”—but he remained the overwhelming favorite.84 New York bookmakers quoted the final odds at 5 to 3. On election night, FDR attended a large dinner given by Henry Morgenthau, Sr., for party bigwigs at New York’s Biltmore Hotel. Morgenthau chaired the Democratic finance committee, and the politicians present that evening hoped against hope the bookies had it wrong. Gloom settled in quickly. Early returns from the East showed a landslide for Hughes. Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont, all of which Wilson had carried in 1912, had swung Republican. North of the Mason-Dixon Line, only New Hampshire remained in doubt. At midnight Franklin left the Biltmore to catch the last train to Washington, certain that Wilson had lost. Newsboys were already hawking Wednesday’s New York Times proclaiming Hughes elected in banner headlines. At press time, the Republicans had carried or were leading in eighteen states with 247 electoral votes to Wilson’s 135. Two hundred sixty-six votes were needed to win, and Hughes was only 19 shy.
Results from the West were slow coming in. But when FDR reached his office the next morning, Hughes’s lead had narrowed. In addition to the Solid South, Wilson appeared to be adding one after another of the states beyond the Mississippi. The Democrats campaign slogan, “He kept us out of war,” had fallen on receptive ears in America’s heartland. By noon the race had become too close to call. Franklin scribbled a quick note to Eleanor at Hyde Park: “Dearest Babs, [This] is the most extraordinary day of my life. Wilson may be elected after all. It looks hopeful at noon.”85 Uncertainty continued through Thursday. “Returns