In the lifetimes of my parents and others from their generation, there may have been no more consequential election than the election of 1932, which happens to be the subject of Kenneth Walsh's latest article in U.S. News & World Report.
My father was born in December 1929 — less than two months after the stock market crashed. My mother was born in August 1931. They were both children during the Depression, but their parents knew what a struggle it was to make ends meet, and the ongoing fight for survival left its mark on them, as it did nearly everyone who lived through that period.My mother was a little more than 1 year old when Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated President Herbert Hoover in the 1932 election — obviously, she had no memory of it. And my father turned 3 between the election and FDR's inauguration — while he's never spoken about it, I'm sure he has no recollection of it, either.
But I heard them speak of how shocking it was when, as teenagers in 1945, they heard that the only president they had ever known (through radio and newsreels) died. (That makes me wonder how the people of Great Britain will react when Queen Elizabeth, who is the only monarch any Briton under the age of 60 has ever known, dies.)
When I was minoring in history as a graduate student, I took a class on presidential elections. Each student was assigned a semester project — to write a term paper on a losing campaign for the presidency. But we had to write about a campaign that was about 60 years or more in the past — we couldn't just write about the most recent loser (which, at that time, would have been Michael Dukakis).
My professor wanted us to do research using primary and secondary sources, and we had to discuss our findings in class — after providing copies of our papers for our classmates to read ahead of time. It certainly made for some lively class discussions.
Anyway, I wrote about Hoover's ultimately unsuccessful campaign for re-election. And, as a journalism major, I enjoyed looking through old newspapers and seeing how they reported the news of the day in 1932.
The news, as you would expect, was not pleasant.
One-third of Americans were out of work that year. When Roosevelt came to the Democratic convention to accept the nomination in person — which was an historic act itself — he promised a "new deal" to America's working men. It was a promise he implemented when he took office in March of 1933.
Wherever Roosevelt went in the campaign of 1932, he drew large, boisterous crowds. Hoover, meanwhile, was widely blamed for the nation's woes and drew much smaller, less enthusiastic crowds.
My research suggested that everyone, even Hoover's supporters, believed (correctly, as it turned out) there would be massive change in the November election.
Hoover was born in Iowa, but his residence, as an adult, was in California. One of the books I used as a source for my research paper noted that, as Hoover concluded his campaign and returned to California to cast his vote, a telegram was waiting for him. It advised, "Vote for Roosevelt, and make it unanimous."
The 1932 election was, as Walsh indicates, a realigning election. Roosevelt's victory broke a 12-year Republican grip on the White House and began the Democrats' 20-year hold on it. Democrats also extended their majority in the House and captured control of the Senate.
"FDR would go on to win three more terms and lead America to victory in World War II," Walsh writes. "In the process, he became one of the nation's most beloved presidents and built a vast and powerful governing coalition."
That coalition, Walsh observes, of "working-class whites, union members, immigrants, African Americans, Southern whites, Catholics, Jewish voters, and city dwellers ... dominated American politics for more than a generation — another key part of FDR's legacy."
A PERSONAL NOTE: There should be two more articles in Walsh's series, which has followed a (mostly) chronological path for the last four or five weeks. If that continues through the next two Wednesdays, it can be assumed the last two articles will deal with elections that have been held since 1932.
I think one of those elections would have to be the election of 1968, which was clearly a realigning election in favor of the Republicans following the passage of the civil rights and voting rights acts.
The other consequential election? I'm going to guess it was 1984, when Geraldine Ferraro became the first woman to be nominated for a spot on a national ticket. She didn't help the Democrats, who lost 49 states to Ronald Reagan, but she made history.
But Walsh may not consider that consequential enough — in which case it would be conceivable that he will write about the 1980 election, when Reagan defeated President Jimmy Carter.
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