FDR on Disinformation and Foreign Influence

The invasion of Ukraine summons echoes of the invasion of France.

Fireside Chat, May 26, 1940:

There are many among us who in the past closed their eyes to events abroad –because they believed in utter good faith what some of their fellow Americans told them — that what was taking place in Europe was none of our business; that no matter what happened over there, the United States could always pursue its peaceful and unique course in the world.

There are many among us who closed their eyes, from lack of interest or lack of knowledge; honestly and sincerely thinking that the many hundreds of miles of salt water made the American Hemisphere so remote that the people of North and Central and South America could go on living in the midst of their vast resources without reference to, or danger from, other Continents of the world.
…
And, finally, there are a few among us who have deliberately and consciously closed their eyes because they were determined to be opposed to their government, its foreign policy and every other policy, to be partisan, and to believe that anything that the Government did was wholly wrong.

To those who have closed their eyes for any of these many reasons, to those who would not admit the possibility of the approaching storm — to all of them the past two weeks have meant the shattering of many illusions.

…

The Fifth Column that betrays a nation unprepared for treachery. Spies, saboteurs and traitors are the actors in this new strategy. With all of these we must and will deal vigorously.

But there is an added technique for weakening a nation at its very roots, for disrupting the entire pattern of life of a people. And it is important that we understand it. The method is simple. It is, first, discord, a dissemination of discord. A group –not too large — a group that may be sectional or racial or political — is encouraged to exploit (their) its prejudices through false slogans and emotional appeals. The aim of those who deliberately egg on these groups is to create confusion of counsel, public indecision, political paralysis and eventually, a state of panic. Sound national policies come to be viewed with a new and unreasoning skepticism, not through the wholesome (political) debates of honest and free men, but through the clever schemes of foreign agents.

As a result of these new techniques, armament programs may be dangerously delayed. Singleness of national purpose may be undermined. Men can lose confidence in each other, and therefore lose confidence in the efficacy of their own united action. Faith and courage can yield to doubt and fear. The unity of the state (is) can be so sapped that its strength is destroyed.

All this is no idle dream. It has happened time after time, in nation after nation, (during) here in the last two years. Fortunately, American men and women are not easy dupes. Campaigns of group hatred or class struggle have never made much headway among us, and are not making headway now. But new forces are being unleashed, deliberately planned propaganda to divide and weaken us in the face of danger as other nations have been weakened before.

These dividing forces (are) I do not hesitate to call undiluted poison. They must not be allowed to spread in the New World as they have in the Old. Our moral, (and) our mental defenses must be raised up as never before against those who would cast a smoke-screen across our vision.

Happy Franksgiving!

Many posts have discussed the background of Thanksgiving and other holidays.

Claire Barrett at History.net:

On November 26, 1789, President George Washington issued a proclamation naming that Thursday a “Day of Publick Thanksgivin.” In 1883 this date was codified by President Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation that Thanksgiving would be commemorated each year on the last Thursday of November.

It would remain so for 56 years until 1939, when the last Thursday fell on the last day of the month. Coupled with the fact that the United States was still in the throes of the Great Depression, business leaders were concerned that Americans wouldn’t want to start shopping for the holidays until after Thanksgiving. (Unless you’re one of those people who start playing Mariah Carey in November. I’m looking at you.) Worried that the shortened shopping season would hurt retail sales, business leaders, including Lew Hahn, the general manager of the Retail Dry Goods Association, lobbied the president to make the holiday one week earlier. President Franklin D. Roosevelt listened, and in August 1939 he issued a Presidential Proclamation that moved Thanksgiving to the second to last Thursday of November.

This seemingly innocuous act sent the nation into a tizzy. Alf Landon, the former governor of Kansas, ranted to Time, “Another illustration of the confusion which his impulsiveness has caused so frequently during his administration. If the change has any merit at all, more time should have been taken in working it out…instead of springing it upon an unprepared country with the omnipotence of a Hitler.”

Presidential Illness

Jessica Pearce Rotondi at History.com:

Woodrow Wilson nearly died of the 1918 flu pandemic during sensitive negotiations with world leaders at the Paris Peace Talks. With the flu decimating civilians and soldiers in World War I—20 million people eventually died from the disease worldwide—Wilson’s doctor lied, telling the press the President had caught a cold from the rain in Paris.

Wilson’s illness depleted him, and aides became worried it was hindering the president's ability to negotiate. Ultimately, Wilson relinquished his demands on French leader Georges Clemenceau, accepting the demilitarization of the Rhineland and French occupation of it for at least 15 years. The resulting Treaty of Versailles was so harsh on Germany that it contributed to the rise of Adolf Hitler and the outbreak of World War II.

It wouldn’t be the last time a doctor lied about Wilson’s condition: In 1919, he suffered a series of strokes that prompted his cabinet to suggest the vice president take over. First Lady Edith Wilson and the president’s doctor, Cary Grayson, refused.

 Joel Achenbach and Lillian Cunningham at WP:

The public had limited information about Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s physical condition when he ran for president in 1932. The press corps avoided mentioning that Roosevelt used a wheelchair. By the time he ran for a fourth term in 1944, he had heart disease, was constantly tired and had trouble concentrating. Frank Lahey, a surgeon who examined Roosevelt, wrote a memo saying FDR would never survive another four-year term. The memo was not disclosed until 2011.

Harry Truman, FDR’s final running mate, was shocked when he saw Roosevelt for the first time in a year, because, as he told an aide, “physically he’s just going to pieces” — a moment recounted in Michael Beschloss’s book “The Conquerors.” When a friend told Truman to take a close look at the White House because he would soon be living there, Truman answered, “I’m afraid I am, and it scares the hell out of me.”

But the public didn’t know any of this, Beschloss writes. Roosevelt’s opponent, Thomas Dewey, derided “tired old men” in the White House, but Roosevelt sailed to victory that November. He died just months later, in April 1945, leaving Truman to close out World War II. Truman had known nothing of the Manhattan Project and had to make the difficult decision about dropping atomic bombs on Japan.

Robert Dallek at The Atlantic:

But the full extent of Kennedy’s medical ordeals has not been known until now. Earlier this year a small committee of Kennedy-administration friends and associates agreed to open a collection of his papers for the years 1955–63. I was given access to these newly released materials, which included X-rays and prescription records from Janet Travell’s files. Together with recent research and a growing understanding of medical science, the newly available records allow us to construct an authoritative account of JFK’s medical tribulations. And they add telling detail to a story of lifelong suffering, revealing that many of the various treatments doctors gave Kennedy, starting when he was a boy, did far more harm than good. In particular, steroid treatments that he may have received as a young man for his intestinal ailments could have compounded—and perhaps even caused—both the Addison’s disease and the degenerative back trouble that plagued him later in life. Travell’s prescription records also confirm that during his presidency—and in particular during times of stress, such as the Bay of Pigs fiasco, in April of 1961, and the Cuban missile crisis, in October of 1962—Kennedy was taking an extraordinary variety of medications: steroids for his Addison’s disease; painkillers for his back; anti-spasmodics for his colitis; antibiotics for urinary-tract infections; antihistamines for allergies; and, on at least one occasion, an anti-psychotic (though only for two days) for a severe mood change that Jackie Kennedy believed had been brought on by the antihistamines.

 

Very, Very Early Campaign Spots

From PBS:

"The Oldway and the New" is a 1912 campaign film put out by the Democratic National Committee on behalf of candidate Woodrow Wilson. The video portrays Republican challenger William Howard Taft as a tool of special interest and Wilson as a champion of working class citizens. Housed at the Library of Congress, it is the earliest known example of a political party or candidate using the medium of motion picture to communicate with voters.

In 1934, socialist author Upton Sinclair won the Democratic nomination for governor of California. Conservative studio bosses sought to defeat him.  In 1988, Greg Mitchell wrote at American Heritage:

[Louis B.] Mayer and the movie establishment knew that to defeat Sinclair they would have to reach the masses beyond Hollywood with the message that he was a dangerous radical, and they would have to do it in a novel, exciting, and at the same time subtle way. Variety had issued a call: “With theatres available to provide Sinclair opposition, so far as propaganda is concerned, let the picture business assert itself.”

With only weeks remaining until the November election, an MGM director named Felix Feist, Jr., took a camera crew from Hearst Metrotone News (one of the leading newsreel companies of the day) up and down the state, filming interviews with prospective voters. Feist was following direct orders, it was later revealed, from MGM’s “boy wonder” producer Irving Thalberg. The raw film was processed through MGM’s lab, edited down to a few minutes, and added to the Metrotone newsreels, which were sent free of charge to theaters throughout California twice a week.

Louis B. Mayer and the movie establishment knew that to defeat Sinclair they would have to convey the message that he was a dangerous radical, and do it in a novel, exciting, yet subtle way.

Because newsreels had heretofore maintained a nonpartisan stance in election races, these shorts, based on an innocuous inquiring-reporter format, had an enormous effect. Well-dressed couples and prim, elderly ladies invariably endorsed Merriam. Disheveled, wild-eyed citizens with thick accents stood up for Sinclair. One man observed that Sinclair was “the author of the Russian government, and it worked out very well there, and it should do so here.”

Congress and Thanksgiving Day

From the National Archives:

On September 28, 1789, just before leaving for recess, the first Federal Congress passed a resolution asking that the President of the United States recommend to the nation a day of thanksgiving. A few days later, President George Washington issued a proclamation naming Thursday, November 26, 1789 as a "Day of Publick Thanksgivin" - the first time Thanksgiving was celebrated under the new Constitution. Subsequent presidents issued Thanksgiving Proclamations, but the dates and even months of the celebrations varied. It wasn't until President Abraham Lincoln's 1863 Proclamation that Thanksgiving was regularly commemorated each year on the last Thursday of November.

In 1939, however, the last Thursday in November fell on the last day of the month. Concerned that the shortened Christmas shopping season might dampen the economic recovery, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a Presidential Proclamation moving Thanksgiving to the second to last Thursday of November. As a result of the proclamation, 32 states issued similar proclamations while 16 states refused to accept the change and proclaimed Thanksgiving to be the last Thursday in November. For two years two days were celebrated as Thanksgiving - the President and part of the nation celebrated it on the second to last Thursday in November, while the rest of the country celebrated it the following week.

To end the confusion, Congress decided to set a fixed-date for the holiday. On October 6, 1941, the House passed a joint resolution declaring the last Thursday in November to be the legal Thanksgiving Day. The Senate, however, amended the resolution establishing the holiday as the fourth Thursday, which would take into account those years when November has five Thursdays. The House agreed to the amendment, and President Roosevelt signed the resolution on December 26, 1941, thus establishing the fourth Thursday in November as the Federal Thanksgiving Day holiday.

The First Presidential Pollster

At Politico, David Greenberg writes about the first presidential pollster.  In the spring of 1935, FDR worried about a third-party challenge from Louisiana senator Huey Long.

Anxiety about this populist brushfire led Democratic Party chairman James A. Farley to commission a secret poll gauging Long’s prospects. After a dinner with Roosevelt and several top aides, Farley and the pollster reviewed the survey results alongside a “greatly interested” president. The numbers were surprising: In a three-way presidential race, FDR still won, but Long took 11 percent of the vote, faring especially well among the economically distressed. The poll showed that Long’s popularity was far-reaching, confined neither to the South nor to rural areas. He polled strongly in western states (32 percent in Washington) and respectably in midwestern industrial cities (16 percent in Cleveland). Long, Farley concluded, could “have the balance of power in the 1936 election”: A strong showing could peel off enough FDR voters to elect a Republican. Worse still, the poll showed the president to be weaker than at any time since his inauguration.

Farley kept the poll results from the press. He told the Associated Press that he expected “no third-party [bid] of ‘serious proportions.’” Privately, though, he was less assured, and his doubts leaked. The veteran journalist Mark Sullivan reported that FDR was planning to “go so far to the left that there will be no reason for anybody on the extreme left to have a third ticket under Senator Huey Long or anybody else.” The “Soak the Rich” tax hikes on the wealthy and on corporations that Roosevelt signed into law that summer were only the clearest example of a leftward tack designed to steal Long’s thunder.

The man who conducted Farley’s poll, under the anodyne moniker “National Inquirer,” was Emil Edward Hurja, a jowly, somber-looking 43-year-old employee of the Democratic National Committee. An autodidact who taught himself statistics, Hurja rose to national prominence during FDR’s first term, making the cover of Time magazine in March 1936. FDR’s aide Louis Howe dubbed his brilliant prognosticator “Weegee” (a phonetic spelling of Ouija) for his seemingly prophetic powers, while Farley called him “the Wizard of Washington.” Roosevelt’s enemies called him “Farley’s stooge.” This renown was not undeserved: Though little remembered today—only one obscure but indispensable biography exists, by historian Melvin G. Holli—Hurja was, in fact, the first man to poll for an American president.

Attack Ad, 1940

In the 1940 election, Wendell Willkie took to the screen in a 15-minute Republican National Committee film to attack his presidential campaign opponent, Franklin D. Roosevelt. It involved the Founding Fathers. (Prelinger Archives)  -- via National Journal:

The GI Bill Turns Seventy

Seventy years ago today, President  Franklin Roosevelt signed the GI Bill of Rights.  Among other things, this legislation would transform American higher education.  Nearly all the early students of Claremont McKenna College, which started in 1946, were veterans using their benefits.  An infographic:

The D-Day Prayer

The place of religion in American public life is a major theme of our book, and it was in evidence 70 years ago today, when President Franklin Roosevelt offered a radio prayer for the success of the D-Day invasion.  He called it a "struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity."

The text:

My fellow Americans: Last night, when I spoke with you about the fall of Rome, I knew at that moment that troops of the United States and our allies were crossing the Channel in another and greater operation. It has come to pass with success thus far.

And so, in this poignant hour, I ask you to join with me in prayer:

Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.

Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.

They will need Thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard. For the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces. Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again; and we know that by Thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph.

They will be sore tried, by night and by day, without rest-until the victory is won. The darkness will be rent by noise and flame. Men's souls will be shaken with the violences of war.

For these men are lately drawn from the ways of peace. They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate. They fight to let justice arise, and tolerance and good will among all Thy people. They yearn but for the end of battle, for their return to the haven of home. 

Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom.

And for us at home - fathers, mothers, children, wives, sisters, and brothers of brave men overseas - whose thoughts and prayers are ever with them - help us, Almighty God, to rededicate ourselves in renewed faith in Thee in this hour of great sacrifice.

Many people have urged that I call the Nation into a single day of special prayer. But because the road is long and the desire is great, I ask that our people devote themselves in a continuance of prayer. As we rise to each new day, and again when each day is spent, let words of prayer be on our lips, invoking Thy help to our efforts.

Give us strength, too - strength in our daily tasks, to redouble the contributions we make in the physical and the material support of our armed forces.

And let our hearts be stout, to wait out the long travail, to bear sorrows that may come, to impart our courage unto our sons wheresoever they may be.

And, O Lord, give us Faith. Give us Faith in Thee; Faith in our sons; Faith in each other; Faith in our united crusade. Let not the keenness of our spirit ever be dulled. Let not the impacts of temporary events, of temporal matters of but fleeting moment let not these deter us in our unconquerable purpose.

With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogancies. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister Nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.

Thy will be done, Almighty God.

Amen.

FDR in a Wheelchair

Presidents have long tried to control what the public sees of them.  A scholar has found rare film footage of FDR in a wheelchair.  AP reports:

Presidents and Expectations

On this day eighty years ago, Franklin Roosevelt gave his first "fireside chat" on national radio.  FDR contributed to raising expectations about what a president could do.  Alan Greenblatt writes at NPR.org:

That presidents are at the mercy of Congress when it comes to budgets and legislation is an obvious point, and one deeply embedded in the U.S. constitutional system.

But it's a truism that often gets overlooked in the rush to assume that what a president wants, a president can get.

"We are taught that presidents are the center of government, and great presidents can make things happen," says Matthew Eshbaugh-Soha, a political scientist at the University of North Texas. "There's this Rushmore view, and it's a myth."

Obama has made mistakes, and, naturally, many Americans think his policies on issues such as tax rates and health care were wrongheaded to begin with. However, some of his perceived failings may be the result of an inflated expectations game that all modern presidents must play.
...
Given the constraints of divided government and the current polarized landscape, not many presidents would be able to accomplish more than Obama has, says Lara Brown, a political scientist at Pennsylvania's Villanova University.

Still, all presidents are dealt tough cards. Obama has not always played his well, Brown argues, because he tends to promise more than he can deliver and then attempt to lay the blame elsewhere, typically on congressional Republicans.

"I don't imagine history will forgive him for his self-constructed victimhood to the House GOP," she says. "Successful leaders control the political definition of their actions."

"The modern presidency is in fact that notion that the president is in some sense front and center," says Bill Connelly, a political scientist at Washington and Lee University in Virginia.
...
"That expectation, that presidents have the wherewithal to manage the economy, has led the economy to control any number of presidents, Republicans and Democrats," says Connelly, the Washington and Lee political scientist. "The economy goes down, and we blame presidents. It sets presidents up for failure."

State of the Union: Historical Perspective

Tonight, the president delivers the annual State of the Union address. At The American Presidency Project Gerhard Peters writes:

A seemingly well-established misconception found even in some academic literature, is that the State of the Union is an orally delivered message presented to a joint session of Congress. With only a few exceptions, this has been true in the modern era (ca. 1933-present, see Neustadt or Greenstein), but beginning with Jefferson's 1st State of the Union (1801) and lasting until Taft's final message (1912), the State of the Union was a written (and often lengthy) report sent to Congress. Although Federalists Washington and Adams had personally addressed the Congress, Jefferson was concerned that the practice of appearing before the representatives of the people was too similar to the British monarch's ritual of addressing the opening of each new Parliament with a list of policy mandates, rather than "recommendations." This changed in 1913. Wilson believed the presidency was more than a impersonal institution; that instead the presidency is dynamic, alive, and personal (see Tulis). In articulating this philosophy, Wilson delivered an oral message to Congress. Health reasons prevented Wilson from addressing Congress in 1919 and 1920, but Harding's two messages (1921 and 1922) and Coolidge's first (1923) were also oral messages. In the strict constructionist style of 19th Century presidents, Coolidge's remaining State of the Unions (1924-28) and all four of Hoover's (1929-32) were written. Franklin D. Roosevelt established the modern tradition of delivering an oral State of the Union beginning with his first in 1934. Exceptions include Truman's 1st (1946) and last (1953), Eisenhower's last (1961), Carter's last (1981), and Nixon's 4th (1973). In addition, Roosevelt's last (1945) and Eisenhower's 4th (1956) were technically written messages although they addressed the American people via radio summarizing their reports. Any research design should recognize these facts.

PBS compares the state of the union in 1913 -- the year in which Wilson revived the oral version -- and 2013:

The State of the Union: 1913 vs. 2013 infographic by amccartney.

Thanksgiving Day

The Continental Congress issued the first national Thanksgiving proclamation in 1777, to celebrate the patriots' victory in Saratoga. It is notable for its explicitly Christian language. In 1864, Abraham Lincoln started the national practice of observing Thanksgiving in November. From Proclamation 118:

It has pleased Almighty God to prolong our national life another year, defending us with His guardian care against unfriendly designs from abroad and vouchsafing to us in His mercy many and signal victories over the enemy, who is of our own household. It has also pleased our Heavenly Father to favor as well our citizens in their homes as our soldiers in their camps and our sailors on the rivers and seas with unusual health. He has largely augmented our free population by emancipation and by immigration, while He has opened to us new sources of wealth and has crowned the labor of our workingmen in every department of industry with abundant rewards. Moreover, He has been pleased to animate and inspire our minds and hearts with fortitude, courage, and resolution sufficient for the great trial of civil war into which we have been brought by our adherence as a nation to the cause of freedom and humanity, and to afford to us reasonable hopes of an ultimate and happy deliverance from all our dangers and afflictions:

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do hereby appoint and set apart the last Thursday in November next as a day which I desire to be observed by all my fellow-citizens, wherever they may then be, as a day of thanksgiving and praise to Almighty God, the beneficent Creator and Ruler of the Universe. And I do further recommend to my fellow-citizens aforesaid that on that occasion they do reverently humble themselves in the dust and from thence offer up penitent and fervent prayers and supplications to the Great Disposer of Events for a return of the inestimable blessings of peace, union, and harmony throughout the land which it has pleased Him to assign as a dwelling place for ourselves and for our posterity throughout all generations.

In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this 20th day of October, A.D. 1864, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty-ninth.

Lincoln's successors  followed the practice of proclaiming the last Thursday of November to be Thanksgiving Day.  In 1939 (as in 2012), however, November had five Thursdays.  To lengthen the Christmas shopping season and boost the still-struggling economy, FDR proclaimed Thanksgiving to be the second-to-last Thursday, November 23 instead of November 30.  The move was controversial as many organizations (including calendar manufacturers) had already planned on the later date. The FDR Library picks up the story:

As opposition grew, some states took matters into their own hands and defied the Presidential Proclamation. Some governors declared November 30th as Thanksgiving. And so, depending upon where one lived, Thanksgiving was celebrated on the 23rd and the 30th. This was worse than changing the date in the first place because families that lived in states such as New York did not have the same day off as family members in states such as Connecticut! Family and friends were unable to celebrate the holiday together. 

Franklin Roosevelt observed Thanksgiving on the second to last Thursday of November for two more years, but the amount of public outrage prompted Congress to pass a law on December 26, 1941, ensuring that all Americans would celebrate a unified Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November every year.

Here is President Obama's 2012 Thanksgiving message:

 

Presidents Discuss Revenge

George Washington, Farewell Address, September 19, 1796:

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual, and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation on the ruins of public liberty.

Abraham Lincoln, letter, October 5, 1863:

Thought is forced from old channels into confusion. Deception breeds and thrives. Confidence dies, and universal suspicion reigns. Each man feels an impulse to kill his neighbor, lest he be killed by him. Revenge and retaliation follow. And all this, as before said, may be among honest men only. But this is not all. Every foul bird comes abroad, and every dirty reptile rises up. These add crime to confusion. Strong measures deemed indispensable, but harsh at best, such men make worse by maladministration. Murders for old grudges, and murders for self, proceed under any cloak that will best serve for the occasion. 

Abraham Lincoln, response to serenade, November 10, 1864:

Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we will have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good. Let us, therefore, study the incidents of this as philosophy to learn wisdom from, and none of them as wrongs to be revenged.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, Address at a Testimonial Dinner for James A. Farley. Washington, D.C.
February 15, 1937

In all my years of association with Jim Farley I have never once heard him utter one mean syllable about any human being. I have never heard him suggest revenge or reprisal-except once- and that was after a particularly vicious and mean attack that was made on him personally. Jim went to this extent and said to me; "Governor"—he has always called me Governor—he said, "Governor:, that fellow's mother ought to spank him."

Dirty Politics, 1940

FDR recorded some of his White House conversations.  In August 1940, he spoke to aide Lowell Mellet about his campaign against Republican Wendell Willkie.  He raised the possibility of launching a whispering campaign about Willkie's illicit affair.  Democrats never executed the plan, in part because Willkie ran a generally clean campaign and in part because FDR had his own vulnerabilities on that subject.

FDR : Uh, Lowell, on this … ah … thing. I don’t know if you remember, we were talking about the story… and so forth and so on. There was a fellow once upon a time who was named Daugherty, and he helped to run Harding’s campaign against the Democrats. He was slick as hell. He went down through an agent to a Methodist minister in Marion, the town where Harding’s mother and grandmother came from. This friend of Daugherty’s got hold of the Methodist minister and told him the story about Harding’s mother having a Negro mother. In other words, Daugherty planted it on the Methodist minister, who was a Democrat, and showed him certain papers … that proved the case. The Methodist minister, who was a Democrat, got all upset and he started the story all over the place. The press took it up, and it was the most terrific boomerang against us .
Now I agree with you that there is… so far as the Old Man [presumably F.D.R. himself] goes, we can’t use it…. [Here the tape becomes momentarily—and maddeningly—unintelligible.]
[We can] spread it as a word-of-mouth thing, or by some people way, way down the line . We can’t have any of our principal speakers refer to it, but the people down the line can get it out [he rapped on his desk]. I mean the Congress speakers, and state speakers, and so forth. They can use the raw material…. Now, now , if they want to play dirty politics in the end, we’ve got our own people…. Now, you’d be amazed at how this story about the gal is spreading around the country….

MELLETT : It’s Out….

FDR : Awful nice gal, writes for the magazine and so forth and so on, a book reviewer. But nevertheless, there is the fact . And one very good way of bringing it out is by calling attention to the parallel in conversation…. Jimmy Walker, once upon a time, was living openly with this gal all over New York, including the house across the street from me…. She was an extremely attractive little tart…. Jimmy and his wife had separated—for all intents and purposes they had separated. And it came to my trial—before me was Jimmy Walker, nineteen hundred and thirty-two, and Jimmy goes and hires his former wife, for ten thousand dollars, to come up to Albany on a Saturday—Jimmy was a good Catholic and he hadn’t been to church in five whole years—and he paid his wife ten thousand dollars to go up there, to Albany, on a Friday afternoon, after my trial had finished for the week—we were to go on on Monday. Jimmy had never spent a Sunday in Albany in his life, but Mrs. Walker comes up to Albany, lives with him ostensibly in the same suite in the hotel, and on Sunday the two of them go to Mass at the Albany Cathedral together. Price? Ten thousand dollars ….
Now, now Mrs. Willkie may not have been hired , but in effect she’s been hired to return to Wendell and smile and make this campaign with him. Now, whether there was a money price behind it, I don’t know , but it’s the same idea….

FDR's overt campaign was rough enough.  Here is what he said in Brooklyn on November 1, 1940:

Something evil is happening in this country when a full page advertisement against this Administration, paid for by Republican supporters, appears—where, of all places?— in the Daily Worker, the newspaper of the Communist Party.

Something evil is happening in this country when vast quantities of Republican campaign literature are distributed by organizations that make no secret of their admiration for the dictatorship form of government.

Those forces hate democracy and Christianity as two phases of the same civilization. They oppose democracy because it is Christian. They oppose Christianity because it preaches democracy.

D-Day

Yesterday was the 68th anniversary of the D-Day invasion.  Warren Kozak writes at The Wall Street Journal:

Franklin Roosevelt is not remembered for his religious dogma. Yet 68 years ago on the night of June 6, as tens of thousands of American and Allied forces were flung into a caldron of fire in Western Europe, the president and commander in chief sought to calm an anxious nation as he spoke to his people. It was a presidential address that stands out as a testament to how much our nation has changed since that evening in the late spring of 1944.

Beginning around midnight the night before, elements of the 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions had landed behind enemy lines in France. They were followed seven hours later by massive landings on beaches in Normandy code-named Sword, Juneau, Gold, Omaha and Utah.

Americans began hearing special reports in the middle of the night and they continued to follow events closely throughout the day. At lunch counters and in offices and factories, people clustered around their radios. So it was both natural and necessary that the president say something.

Yet instead of giving a news account—something Americans had already heard from network radio news and read in their evening papers—Franklin Roosevelt chose a different course. He led the nation in prayer.

In 1984,

President Reagan observed the 40th anniversary of D-Day:

 

The Constitution, the Court, and Politics

Sahil Kapur of Talking Points Memo comments on the health care case:

Michael Barone notes that the debate over health care has helped bring the Constitution back into political discourse.  He recalls that Rep. Phil Hare of Illinois dismissed concerns about the bill's constitutionality -- and found himself out of a job.

Many constitutional issues never come before the Supreme Court, which only rules on lawsuits. The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel issues rulings based on the Constitution, which are generally regarded as binding precedents by administrations of different parties, even though cases never go to Court.

Presidents of different parties regularly issue signing statements, saying that they will not carry out provisions of laws they sign that they regard as unconstitutional. Barack Obama decried signing statements when he was campaigning, but as president he has issued them himself.
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Clearly the two parties are divided on the constitutionality of the Obamacare mandate. Polls have shown large majorities of voters think the provision is unconstitutional, though one can wonder whether many have given the matter much thought.

But they’re certainly giving it more thought after this week and will likely give it more when the decision comes down.

Voters can reasonably ask candidates for Congress their views on this and other constitutional issues and call on them to vote against measures they consider beyond Congress’s constitutional powers.

If the Court overturns Obamacare, Obama may be tempted to attack the Court. He should beware. In 1937, Franklin Roosevelt, a few months after a landslide reelection, proposed to pack the Supreme Court with new appointees.

Gallup polls showed majorities opposed the move, and in the next election, proponents of FDR’s New Deal lost their congressional majorities. Lesson: Most American voters worry about the Constitution.

Gingrich, TR, and FDR

Newt Gingrich's admiration for Theodore Roosevelt (who did not like the name "Teddy") and Franklin Roosevelt has been the subject of recent commentary.  Passages from works not available on the open Internet confirm this admiration.  

From his 1984 book Window of Opportunity (pp. 21-22):

If the bright future pictured through our window of opportunity is to become a reality, our grandchildren must develop a continuing self-education system which combines the image of compassion for which Franklin D. Roosevelt is known with the emphasis on productivity that we associate with his older cousin Teddy. In many ways, Teddy Roosevelt might prefer our grandchildren's America to ours -- an America comfortable with the assumption that people must try new things all their lives because any particular occupation may become obsolete in a single decade.

Thus, while requiring a strenuous commitment from every citizen which Teddy Roosevelt would have approved, our grandchildren may create structures and incentives for organized learning and adaptation that FDR would have applauded.

From Nicholas Lemann's May 1985 Atlantic article, "Conservative Opportunity Society": 

He said, "We're post-New Deal conservatives, not anti-New Deal conservatives. Most of the old order worked. But the fringes of the old order failed."

A Deliberative Party Convention?

Our chapter on political parties discusses the role of national conventions.  In recent decades, they have served mostly to showcase a candidate who has already clinched the presidential nomination during primaries and caucuses.  This time, there is an outside chance that no one will get a majority of delegates before the GOP convention.  At The Weekly Standard, William Kristol says that such an outcome would be a good thing.

In 1787, the constitutional convention that met and deliberated in Philadelphia saved the Union and produced the Constitution of the United States—described by William Gladstone as “the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.” In 1860, the second convention of the Republican party met in Chicago and nominated, on the third ballot, after considerable deliberation, our greatest president, Abraham Lincoln. In 1932, the Democrats convened in Chicago and nominated on the fourth ballot—after a few days in which the balloting was suspended for deliberation—Franklin D. Roosevelt.

 Thus, once every three-quarters of a century or so, the delegates to an American political convention deliberate, and their deliberations produce a notable and impressive outcome. It could happen again in 2012. It could fall to the Republican delegates convening in Tampa, after they have cast their committed first ballot vote and failed to produce a majority for any candidate, to act as a real deliberative convention. It could fall to them to use their judgment to select the best possible nominee for their party and the best possible president for their country.

It would be exciting. It would be nerve-wracking. It would be unpredictable. It hasn’t happened in quite a while. But it could happen. And it could be a good thing for the Republican party.

Obama and TR

Presidents often invoke their predecessors, as President Obama will do today. AP reports:

President Barack Obama is scheduled to visit unfriendly political territory Tuesday and deliver what the White House bills as a major speech on the economy, addressing a small eastern Kansas town in a state that seems certain to again vote solidly Republican in next year's presidential election.

But Obama's trip to 4,400-resident Osawatomie, located about 50 miles south of Kansas City, gives the Democratic president a chance to invoke political symbolism and try to link his views with those of a past American icon, political scientists said. The White House notes the town was the site of a 1910 speech by former President Theodore Roosevelt, promoting a "New Nationalism" and a government active in society and the economy on behalf of the disadvantaged.

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Bob Beatty, a Washburn University political scientist, said Roosevelt's speech in 1910 represents a "gold mine" for a Democrat trying to get his core voters excited again.

"It makes perfect sense politically in terms of his re-election strategy, especially when you read Teddy Roosevelt's speech," Beatty said. "He wants to stand where Teddy Roosevelt stood. The Democrats, from where they stand in 2012, couldn't write a better speech."

In his 1910 speech, Roosevelt decried the influence of large corporations in politics and called for "a more substantial equality of opportunity." He quoted former President Abraham Lincoln, saying, "Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."

Our text has a boxed feature titled "Pledges and Promises." A passage from the Roosevelt speech is relevant:

A broken promise is bad enough in private life. It is worse in the field of politics. No man is worth his salt in public life who makes on the stump a pledge which he does not keep after election; and, if he makes such a pledge and does not keep it, hunt him out of public life.