Franklin Roosevelt gave him the nickname that stuck with him all his life in a 1924 nomination speech that essentially put the two of them on a collision course that would end their friendship. FDR had survived the polio that would leave him disabled for life, but many in the party wondered if he had the stamina to run for office again. Roosevelt proved his mettle with a rousing speech when he called his friend and New York Governor Alfred E. Smith the “Happy Warrior,” quoting Wordsworth:
This is the Happy Warrior; this is he That every man in arms should wish to be.
Smith lost the 1924 nomination in one of the most epic conventions in history–over 100 ballots–as it split between Smith and William McAdoo, who had been Woodrow Wilson’s treasury secretary. Finally on the 103rd ballot the convention essentially threw up its hands and chose a compromise candidate, former West Virginia Congressman John W. Davis. Davis is the 20th century presidential candidate no one remembers�with good reason. If there existed anyone duller than “Silent Cal” Coolidge it was John W. Davis. However, the behind-the-scenes big picture was the split in the convention between the between the rural populism of William Jennings Bryan and the rising tide of Eastern, big city progressivism.
Smith went back to New York nursing his wounds. Al Smith represented an anomaly among presidential candidates. You would have to go back to Abraham Lincoln to find one who grew up under as poor and squalid conditions as Al Smith. His father died when he was thirteen, forcing young Al to go to work at the Fulton Fish Market working for $12 a week at a job that today still taxes adults. The conditions were foul, brutal and dangerous.
When people like Karl Rove and other members of the Republican Counterrevolution speak of taking this country back to the days of William McKinley, be sure and remind them of Al Smith. Paint for them a picture of a world where young boys and girls–children just like your own–routinely went to work at exhausting and dangerous jobs because it meant the difference if their families ate or had a roof over their heads. Then have them read the accounts of people like Jacob Riis and others about what passed for life among the inner city poor. “Street Arabs” he called them, roving bands of children who had no family and lived on their wits.
One of the most famous and poignant photographs of the time is titled “Breaker Boys.” Taken by Louis Hine, another famous documentary photographer, it shows a group of young boys, their faces and clothes begrimed with black dust, standing in a group looking through the camera lens and into our consciences. What cuts right to the heart are the eyes of many of them, which no longer resemble the eyes of boys but of feral animals.
Al Smith escaped the fate of most of the Fulton workers when he came to the attention of the Tammany Hall political machine that ran New York City. Later on Smith would joke that he had earned an “FFM” degree for Fulton Fish Market. Intelligent and ambitious, Smith captured the attention of the Tammany boss, “Silent” Charlie Murphy. Smith rose through the ranks to become governor in 1918 and after losing a bid for reelection in 1920 won three-straight terms.
In 1928 he found himself running for president because essentially no one else wanted to. McAdoo, his 1924 foe, declined to run as did others who believed that Herbert Hoover already had the keys to the White House in his pocket. Smith, who had fought the odds all his life, set out to prove them wrong.
If Smith the candidate faced difficult odds, Smith the man faced impossible ones. To begin with, at the dawn of the media age, he looked more like a silent film comedian than a president with an oversize W.C. Fields nose and ever-present cigar and always wearing a derby like Oliver Hardy. He spoke with a pronounced New York accent that over the radio baffled and amused those in other parts of the country. He even used the jaunty song, “The Sidewalks of New York” (which sports fans hear every year at the beginning of the Belmont stakes) as his theme song which rankled rural voters.
For trivia fans, 1928 marks the first multimedia campaign. Smith’s convention speech was the first to be broadcast by a new and up-and-coming medium, television. But radio was king in 1928. Smith recognized the power of the medium, but with his accent he was the wrong man with the right idea.
But appearance did not kill the Smith campaign, three other developments share that honor. First, although he possessed a progressive record as governor and the Democratic platform contained ideas such as collective bargaining, the repeal of injunctions and support for farm relief, Smith decided that the way to the White House was to court big business. In this Al Smith may have been the first 20th century Democrat to adopt triangulation.
He particularly infuriated mainline Democrats, including Roosevelt, by appointing Republican millionaire John J. Raskob as his campaign manager. He also added four more millionaires to top positions on his campaign staff. As Arthur Schlesinger points out in The Crisis of the Old Order, Smith sought to reassure the business community by coming out for a protective tariff. Despite this, he managed to hold on to many of the progressive elements of the party. But the Bryan wing deserted Smith in droves because of this alliance with “moneyed interests” and Smith’s open distaste for prohibition.
Today, many revisionist historians argue that Smith’s campaign with its urban center helped to pave the way for the New Deal and the modern Democratic Party. In an article comparing the Smith and Kerry campaigns, Kevin Baker writes, “it is now clear that Al Smith was actually the wave of the future.” The vote totals for 1928 show that in the nation’s twelve biggest cities, which collectively had long returned a G.O.P. plurality in presidential elections, Smith won a net plurality of 38,000 votes compared with a net of 1,252,000 for Coolidge in the same cities in 1924.
Today, all most Americans remember about Al Smith is that he was the nation’s first Catholic candidate. He also was against Prohibition during a time when temperance associations represented a major political force. What people have forgotten is that 1928 may well have been the most vicious campaign in American history and certainly the worst in the 20th century. Smith’s campaign drew bigots out of all the dark corners of the American character where they dwell, nurturing their hatred and plotting unspeakable tortures for their enemies.
Of all those, none was more notorious than the Ku Klux Klan which made Al Smith their cause in 1928 issuing a “Klarion Kail for a Krusade” against him. In the 1920s the Klan had made a huge revival, so that they could hold rallies even in places like Long Island. They printed thousands of hate pamphlets that predicted the Pope would occupy the White House, openly burned crosses and marched in anti-Smith rallies. The Klan publication, Fellowship Forum, showed a Cabinet meeting with the Pope and a dozen fat priests sitting happily around the table, with Smith, in bellboy livery, serving them liquor. No Klan tale, however, surpassed the story that the Holland Tunnel secretly connected to the Vatican!
But so-called mainstream Republicans and mainline churches joined in the hatefest. More tellingly, no major Republican leader denounced the Klan and Hoover himself was silent about their bigotry and the tone of the campaign. It is telling that in a campaign where their lead was so large the Democrats had virtually conceded the campaign before it began, the Republicans showed the same lack of character they did with Joe McCarthy and that continues to this day with the Era of Bad Feelings.
Baker likens their tactics to those of Karl Rove, as Hoover’s minions funneled funds to anti-Smith bigots. Even Willliam Allen White, the esteemed editor of the Emporia Gazette, would charge,
The whole Puritan civilization which has built a sturdy, orderly nation is threatened by Smith.
Those Republican Counterrevolutionaries who today whine about those who decry the involvement of religion in politics forget about those Protestant ministers who preached anti-Smith sermons. It may be safe to say that in 1928 religion entered politics to a degree it has not until the Bush Administration.
Remember these were the days of a fundamentalist revival–the same one that brought us the Scopes trial–that has eerie parallels with the current situation. Sounding like Jerry Falwell, fundamentalist radio preacher John Roach Straton stated,
The election of Smith [would be] a boost for card playing, cocktail drinking, divorce, dancing, Clarence Darrow, nude art, prize fighting, and even greyhound racing.
When they weren’t attacking his religion they were attacking his dislike for Prohibition. The mildest of these tactics was to nickname him “Alcohol” Smith. More vicious rumor mongers accused him of being an alcoholic, of even being drunk at political functions, as well as financing illegal saloons and houses of prostitution.
The stage was thus set for one of the most memorable–and certainly most courageous–speeches ever made by an American presidential candidate, what is now known as the “Oklahoma City Speech.” Smith had tried to run a positive campaign, befitting his nickname, but finally in Oklahoma City he fought back.
Unfortunately, Al Smith was also one of the great extemporaneous speakers of his time, famous for writing his remarks on the backs of envelopes, so the most complete text of the speech exists that I could find is in Robert Slayton’s excellent biography of Smith– Empire Statesman: The Rise and Redemption of Al Smith. If someone can produce a complete copy, please feel free to post it as a comment and I will move it up as a post.
When he arrived in Oklahoma City, the Klan greeted Smith’s train with a huge burning cross. That evening fiery KKK crosses burned around the stadium and a hostile crowd jeered him as he spoke. The next evening, thousands filled the same stadium to hear an anti-Smith speech entitled, “Al Smith and the Forces of Hell.” Thirty-five radio stations transmitted the speech. Among those listening were some of Smith’s relatives. Slayton quotes them as saying the atmosphere sounded so volatile “they expected a bullet, expected to hear a gun go off.”
Smith gave as good as he got, his barely-under-control anger heightening the impact of his words. Tonight, he said, he would “drag out into the open what has been whispered to you.” He went on to utter the quote to that to this day is still associated with him:
The best way to kill anything un-American is to drag it out into the open, because anything un-American cannot live in the sunlight.
He went on to condemn the attempt:
To inject bigotry, hatred, intolerance and un-American sectarian division into a campaign�Nothing could be so out of line with the spirit of America. Nothing could be so foreign to the teachings of Jefferson. Nothing could be so contradictory of our whole history.
Let the people of this country decide this election upon the great and real issues of the campaign, and upon nothing else.
And then with the full fury of a man angered by hypocrisy and bigotry he lit into the Klan. Perhaps the only similar speeches in our history are Robert Welch’s famous “have you no shame” retort to Joe McCarthy and Ed Murrow’s closing words in his documentary on McCarthy.
How [can] any man or group gathered together in what they call the K.K.K., that profess to be rock-solid American, forget the principles that Jefferson stood for, the equality of man.
There is no greater mockery in the world today than the burning of the Cross by these people who are spreading this propaganda . . . while the Christ that they are supposed to adore, love and venerate . . . taught the holy, sacred writ of brotherly love.
In closing Smith minced no words in stating the principle at stake:
I have the right to say that any citizen of this country that believes I can promote its welfare, that I am capable of steering the ship of state safely through the next four years, and votes against me because of my religion, he is not a real, pure, genuine American.
The verdict on Al Smith’s campaign is a mixed one. Certainly, Al Smith represents a key transitional figure in the Democratic Party, for he helped to enlarge its reach from Bryan’s largely rural and Midwestern base to the East and the inner cities. In a way, Smith stands with one foot in the 19th century and the other in the 20th.
In some ways that transitional nature explains Arthur Schlesinger’s analysis, “His campaign was too liberal for the business community, but it was too mild for the more ardent reformers.” (Schlesinger, 1957, p. 128.) From a contemporary perspective it provides an instructive lesson in a campaign run on triangulation and is reminiscent of many recent Democratic campaigns that try to find some mythical middle ground.
Yet in Oklahoma City, Al Smith forgot the middle ground, articulating Liberal America�s core belief in a level playing field. As Slayton notes,
Al Smith, more than any national politician of his day, bucked the conflicts of his time and defended the idea of an inclusionary society.
It makes you wonder how history might have been different had Smith made the level playing field the theme of his entire campaign. Instead, Franklin Roosevelt would become 20th century America’s most forceful advocate for Liberal America�s core belief. Al Smith would end up supporting Alf Landon and Wendell Willkie, breaking with his old friend.
NOTE: This is the third in a series on Democratic presidential candidates. The purpose of this series is quite simple, to knit the threads of the past into the fabric of a political party so that they form a vision of what that party once represented and must recover if it hopes to govern.
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