Master of His Fate by James Tobin (books to read for teens .TXT) 📕

losing the electoral votes of his home state would be a catastrophic blow to Al’s pride. He needed every advantage he could find, including the strongest possible Democrat for governor to share the ballot with him.

So Smith got FDR on the phone down in Warm Springs. What about it? The party needed him. Would he run?

Absolutely not, FDR said—doctors’ orders.

But Al wasn’t giving up. He called in Ed Flynn, the young Democratic boss of the Bronx, who was friendly with FDR. You talk to him, Smith told Flynn.

Then he set off on a long campaign tour by train, heading west toward towns where a Catholic product of big-city politics had never before presented himself as a nominee for the presidency.

In Warm Springs, FDR had settled in at his new cottage. Eleanor was in New York, knee-deep in the Smith campaign, but Missy was with him, as was Irvin McDuffie, an Atlanta barber FDR had hired to take over as his valet, the “body man” who helped with the everyday tasks of dressing, bathing, and moving by wheelchair in private.

FDR had been thinking about where to station himself at public occasions when he would be chatting with a lot of people. He couldn’t very well sit in a chair while talking with someone who was standing. Staying seated while everyone else was standing called attention to his handicap. Standing with canes or crutches was even more conspicuous, and with both his hands occupied, he wouldn’t be able to shake hands. He could stand by himself while leaning against a lectern, but that was for giving a speech, not chatting at a reception.

Maybe he could stand with his back against a wall. Could he stay standing without a cane and shake hands over and over? He practiced it, but he kept losing his balance.

Then one of his Warm Springs neighbors, Leighton MacPherson, went up to Roosevelt’s screen door one day and called out to see if he was home. He heard FDR call back, inviting him to come inside. MacPherson went into the main room and there was Roosevelt, standing with his braces on, his back to a wall and extending his arms to right and left, like a trapeze walker on a wire.

“Look at me, Leighton,” he said. “I’m standing alone.”

Obeying Al Smith’s orders, Ed Flynn, calling from the Bronx, got FDR on the phone, long-distance.

No dice, Eddie, Roosevelt said. He could not and would not run for governor.

On Sunday mornings in rural Virginia, preachers were instructing their congregations to stand and split up into two groups. Those for righteousness and Herbert Hoover should stand on one side of the room, those for Satan and Al Smith on the other. Tennessee had voted Democratic in thirteen of the last fourteen presidential elections. But in the fall of 1928, throngs of female Tennessee Democrats were attending meetings of pro-Hoover women’s clubs. The rising sentiment against Smith drew on fear of immigrants, fear of gangland crime, and fear that as president, Smith would bring about the repeal of Prohibition.

The greatest fear drew on ancient beliefs among some Protestant Americans that the Roman Catholic Church was greedy, corrupt, and sinister. In Methodist and Baptist pulpits throughout the South, ministers were echoing the Ku Klux Klan’s warning that if Smith took over the White House, the pope would rule the United States from behind the scenes. In the rural Southwest, enemies of Smith distributed copies of a photograph showing him celebrating the opening of the famous Holland Tunnel, which linked Manhattan to New Jersey. But the caption on the photo said Smith was preparing to extend the tunnel under the Atlantic Ocean to the world headquarters of the Catholic Church in Rome. A western journalist said Democrats in his state who opposed Smith “do not hesitate to say they are against him because he is a Roman Catholic,” he said. “You can find men and women, and they are by no means few, who seem to believe that Smith’s election would result in civil war.”

In the Klan stronghold of Oklahoma, Smith raged against a “spirit of hatred” abroad in the land. John J. Raskob, the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee, insisted that every Catholic American would defend the U.S. Constitution to the death. But their protests did little good among those who believed Smith was the apostle of everything wrong with the country. At the end of September, as his campaign train retreated toward New York, he looked out the window at night and saw giant crosses that Klansmen had set afire.

On Saturday, September 29, 1928, Governor Smith’s train rolled into Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In just two days, New York’s Democrats would open their convention in Rochester, and one day later, they would have to nominate someone for governor.

Smith called FDR again. He conceded that he might lose New York’s electoral votes to Hoover. To keep alive any hope of winning the White House, he needed the strongest possible nominee for governor to share the top of New York’s ticket.

They went back and forth. Again FDR told Al he wished he could run, but his legs simply weren’t ready.

Finally Al said, “Well, you’re the doctor,” and hung up.

A follow-up telegram from Warm Springs confirmed FDR’s “no,” and Louis Howe made sure reporters got copies. “My doctors are very definite in stating that the continued improvement in my condition is dependent on my avoidance of cold climate,” FDR wrote, “and on taking exercises here at Warm Springs during the cold Winter months. It probably means getting rid of leg braces during the next two Winters and that would be impossible if I had to remain in Albany. As I am only 46 years of age, I feel that I owe it to my family and myself to give the present constant improvement a chance to continue. I must therefore with great regret confirm my decision not to accept the nomination and I know you will understand.”

Smith went into a huddle with