TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/portrait/roosevel/roosevel.004

Text File | 1992-08-29 | 5.3 KB | 118 lines

                                                                                November 9, 1936

Masterpiece



     Early election morning, while most voters were still asleep,
election officials at Watertown, Wis., rubbed their sleepy eyes.
Into the polls waddled 215-lb. Arthur E. ("Turkey") Gehrke to
cast his vote for "the winner" so that next day he could with an
easy conscience go to bed as usual for the winter. But there was
neither sleep nor astonishment in the eyes of election officials
at Hyde Park, N.Y. at 11 a.m. when they handed out ballot No. 312
et seq. to Franklin D. Roosevelt & family. In succession the
President, his mother, his wife, his daughter, his son-in-law
disappeared into the voting machines and quickly did their duty.
Franklin Jr., 21 in August, slipped hastily around the corner to
Hyde Park High School to take a literacy test. No one had been
able to find his Groton School diploma, but it did not matter. He
passed the test with flying colors.

     That day Father Franklin passed a far harder examination and
won the undoubted right to call himself the ablest master of U.S.
politics in a century. He got the highest mark awarded in the
Electoral College in 116 years, a popular acclaim utterly
dwarfing even the mob idolatry enjoyed by Andrew Jackson, whose
fox-&-hound watch chain Franklin Roosevelt now wears. (Of the
first 31,275,348 major party ballots tabulated by Associated
Press, 19,334,959 or 61.83% were for Roosevelt. This proved that
the most accurate of all pre-election straw polls was the survey
conducted by FORTUNE. In its October issue, FORTUNE indicated
that Roosevelt would have 61.73% of the popular vote.)

     Instead of going to Democratic National Headquarters in
Manhattan's Biltmore Hotel, where four years ago he received the
congratulations of Al Smith and mobs of supporters, Franklin
Roosevelt spent election evening with family and friends at Hyde
Park. In the smoking room were installed teletype machines which
chattered out bulletins of the election. In the library a long
table was laden with sandwiches, pie, doughnuts, coffee, pitchers
of new cider pressed that day. In the dining room the table was
covered with charts and tables showing the trend of the voting.
From room to room wandered intimates of the Roosevelt family: his
former law partner, Basil O'Connor; his preacher publicist,
Stanley High; his Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr.; his
frequent campaign companions, Judge & Mrs. Samuel I. Rosenman;
his yachting friend, Vincent Astor; his uncle, Frederic A.
Delano; his bright young Brain Trust lawyer, Tom Corcoran, with a
broad Irish smile, who made the evening so gay with his accordion
that Basso Marvin McIntyre burst into song. Among them circulated
Mrs. Roosevelt in a white satin evening gown and Mother Sarah
Delano Roosevelt, thoroughly enjoying the sweet cider.

     In midevening, Hyde Park Democrats paraded onto the lawn
before the house and Franklin Roosevelt went out on the terrace
to greet them. He had carried his district by 336 votes to
Landon's 307, but again lost the village as a whole by nearly 200
votes. "From the returns now it looks as though this sweep has
carried every single section of the country," laughed the
President.

     "How about 1940?" shouted voices in the crowd.

     He got a throatful of smoke from the flares of red fire that
were burning on the driveway and excused himself. Back to the
dining room he went with his sons Franklin Jr. and John, to enjoy
the job of tabulating his masterpiece.

     He was winning Pennsylvania, the first Democratic President
to do so since James Buchanan 80 years ago.

     Vote by vote he was actually pulling ahead of Alf Landon in
Kansas.

     In Illinois he was not only sweeping Democratic Chicago but
downstate as well.

     All the "doubtful" States -- West Virginia, Indiana,
Michigan, Ohio, Wyoming, South Dakota, New Jersey, Iowa were his
by handsome majorities.

     Most of "safely Republican" New England was safely in his
column.

     In New York where Governor Herbert Lehman was drafted to run
to strengthen the Roosevelt ticket, Roosevelt was winning 3-to-2
and dragging Lehman to victory.

     Almost everywhere the Roosevelt landslide was carrying
Democratic Congressmen and Governors to victory.

     And down in the jubilant Democratic headquarters in
Manhattan Franklin Roosevelt's political right arm, Jim Farley,
was having the greatest triumph of his career, not over the
Republicans but over his own staff. In a poll on Roosevelt's
electoral vote he had bet on 523, 20 votes more than the next
biggest optimist, and so doing had won $200.

     At 2 a.m. Franklin Roosevelt went to bed a contented man.

     A few minutes later arrived one of hundreds of
congratulatory telegrams which had deluged Hyde Park that night:

     THE NATION HAS SPOKEN. EVERY AMERICAN WILL ACCEPT THE
VERDICT AND WORK FOR THE COMMON CAUSE OF THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY.
THAT IS THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY. YOU HAVE MY SINCERE
CONGRATULATIONS.

     -- ALF M. LANDON.

     Marvin McIntyre wrote and dispatched an answer:

     I AM GRATEFUL TO YOU FOR YOUR GENEROUS TELEGRAM AND I AM
CONFIDENT THAT ALL OF US AMERICANS WILL NOW PULL TOGETHER FOR THE
COMMON GOOD. I SEND YOU EVERY GOOD WISH.

     -- FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT.