Quote of the Day (Alfred E. Smith)

“Upon the steps of this Capitol, where twenty-five years ago I first came into the service of the State, I receive my party's summons to lead it in the nation. Within this building, I learned the principles, the purposes and the functions of government and to know that the greatest privilege that can come to any man is to give himself to a nation which has reared him and raised him from obscurity to be a contender for the highest office in the gift of its people.”—New York Governor Alfred E. Smith, speech accepting the Democratic Party nomination for President, at the State Capitol, Albany, N.Y., August 22, 1928

(In popular memory, Al Smith is remembered nowadays as the first Catholic ever to win a major party nomination for President; as a failed candidate swamped by Herbert Hoover in an electoral landslide; and as the New York governor superseded by his friend-turned-rival, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Nothing sums that up better than a scene in the otherwise very fine cable TV biopic of FDR’s struggle with polio, Warm Springs, showing Smith—puffing away on a cigar, every inch a pol in a smoke-filled room—dismissing any future threat from FDR with the suggestion that by the next election, he’d probably be dead anyway.

But “The Happy Warrior” deserves far better, as one of the most innovative politicians in American history—indeed, as the one who pointed the way toward the New Deal, starting with his work in the New York State Assembly ensuring workplace safety following the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911, then during his own terms as governor.

The best short account I know of Smith is contained in a long chapter in Robert A. Caro’s epic biography of Smith’s parks commissioner, Robert Moses, The Power Broker.

But if you’d like a visceral idea of his charm—of why people warmed to him—then I’d recommend that you watch the “Up From City Streets” episode in the TV documentary The Irish in America: The Long Journey Home. Though in certain ways that four-part series could only do the most superficial justice to a complex history, this episode concentrates in fascinating detail on Smith, recreating his career with the help of rarely seen newsreels—including one of the politician singing what became his 1928 campaign theme, “The Sidewalks of New York.”

Next month, I’ll have more to say—MUCH more—on one particular aspect of Smith’s failed campaign: his courageous confrontation in Oklahoma with the vitriolic anti-Catholic smears launched against him. Despite the differences between his time and ours, it parallels, in unmistakable ways, the current rancid Internet campaign against Barack Obama as a “Marxist Moslem.” Think about that last phrase for a half hour and, at that end of that time, please tell me if you’ve ever heard of another such person. I’ll bet you haven’t. That’s because it’s a contradiction in terms.

But for now, I’m going to confine myself to one particular aspect of Smith’s campaign: radio. Smith’s 1929 autobiography, Up to Now, takes note of the impact of radio on his Presidential campaign—and, indeed, this was the first convention acceptance speech ever broadcast in this still relatively new medium, as well as the first TV news event, though THAT technology was so new that the candidate probably didn’t even understand how to discuss it.

Let’s see how Smith viewed the wireless telegraph and its effect on politics: “Radio replaces the antiquated method of attempting to circularize the electorate by the mailing of speeches of acceptance and of debates. A large part of these documents was always wasted. Nothing makes such an impression on a person as the spoken word. Oratory and the power of speech will always be effective.”

Spoken like a Tammany Hall tactician. Certainly correct in its way, but still…Limiting.

For Smith and FDR, radio was like paint—but while the former viewed it in a utilitarian light, the latter used it like an artist. Smith knew the value of radio, but with traces of his Lower East Side background as proudly displayed as his brown derby, the candidate only knew what radio could do. Roosevelt understood how to use it. Smith was like a house painter who knew a nice color would make a building more attractive to buyers; Roosevelt was a Michelangelo who could inspire awe by dipping into the full spectrum of tone colors in his voice.

There were undoubtedly times in the 1930s when Smith deeply resented how this mastery enabled the man who nominated him for President in 1924 beat him to the Oval Office in 1932. But by the beginning of the 1940s, as Hitler mobilized Germany for war with mesmerizing radio oratory, the bitter former candidate might have understood that FDR’s mastery of the same medium enabled him to rally the free world against the Nazi terror. The two former New York governors had reconciled by the time of Smith’s death in 1944. Smith's 1928 convention speech not only pointed toward a new means of communication in politics, but a new understanding of the role of government--one that, after 20 years of experimentation with unregulated markets, we are learning all over again.)