The 1936 Presidential Election

The state of Main had so long been a bellwether of national politics that there was and old saying; "As goes Maine, so goes the nation."

The Presidential election held on November 3, 1936, was the most lopsided in American history, if you judge by the Electoral College. Alf Landon took two states, Maine and Vermont, prompting Democratic chairman James Farley to quip, "As goes Maine, so goes Vermont."

This was not a foregone conclusion, and the conventional wisdom of the time was that the race would be close. The nation was still in the throes of the Great Depression, and there was a question as to how long the public would continue to blame the Republicans for it.

In the recent State of the Union address, John McCain was seen "sneering" as President Obama reminded everyone that the deficit was something he inherited. In the New York Times this past Sunday, Frank Rich noted:

Perhaps McCain was sneering at Obama because of the Beltway’s newest unquestioned cliché: one year after a new president takes office he is required to stop blaming his predecessor for the calamities left behind. Who dreamed up that canard — Alito? F.D.R. never followed it. In an October 1936 speech, nearly four years after Hoover, Roosevelt was still railing against the “hear-nothing, see-nothing, do-nothing government” he had inherited. He reminded unemployed and destitute radio listeners that there had been “nine crazy years at the ticker” and “nine mad years of mirage” followed by three long years of bread lines and despair. F.D.R. soon won re-election in the greatest landslide the country had seen.

FDR was famously good at using modern technological media to further his agenda. His "fireside chats" brought him into everyone's home, reassuring them that things were going to be all right. This put Landon in the position of having to criticize the New Deal, and to accuse FDR of veering toward dictatorship. One wonder what might have happened if the news media felt no compunction about playing up Roosevelt's physical disability, or extra-marital sexual ability.

This election also marked the first time African-Americans came out to vote in large numbers for any Democrat. Lincoln freed the slaves, gave blacks the (as-yet not well-protected) right to vote, while the Democratic Party ruled the Jim Crow south. However, thanks in large part to Eleanor Roosevelt's insistence, African-Americans felt the benefit of these new federal programs.

Sources:
Frank Rich, The State of the Union is Comatose, The New York Times, 1/31/2010
Wikipedia
Kennesaw State University

Governor Alfred M. Landon

May 18, 1936

The Republican convention in Cleveland that June reflected the divide within the party: The most rousing speech came from ex-president Herbert Hoover, who told the delegates that Roosevelt's second term would result in the "violence and outrage by which European despotisms have crushed all liberalism and all freedom." 

The Hoover speech, reported the Times the next day, produced "wild and uncontrollable bursts of frenzy" in the partisan audience.

But the Republican nominee, Governor Alfred M. Landon of Kansas, did not share Hoover's apocalyptic vision or his ability to whip up the crowd. Alf Landon, a forty-eight year-old oilman who had built his reputation on fiscal austerity, was the only Republican governor to win election in the West in 1932, and he repeated the feat two years later. 

He planned to attack the Roosevelt administration for overspending. But Landon was a bland candidate in every respect: a man of medium height with gray eyes behind rimless glasses. Although he was privately charming, his speech was flat and drawling and he had no gift for oratory. 

Father Coughlin, who should know, once described Landon as "a most honest man but the most colorless candidate in the history of the United States." 

- "Furious Improvisation: How the WPA and a Cast of Thousands Made High Art out of Desperate Times" p. 129-130

It should be noted that, in an attempt not to appear like a demigod, Landon accepted the nomination of his party in absentia on 11 June. Does this mean he was not even in Cleveland, at all, for the convention?