“These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or my wife, or on my sons. No, not content with that, they now include my little dog, Fala. Well, of course, I don't resent attacks, and my family doesn't resent attacks, but Fala does resent them.”—President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Campaign Dinner Address, September 23, 1944, Washington, DC, before the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America (a.k.a. the “Fala Address”)
In his quest for “teachable moments,” President Obama can, unfortunately, sound like he’s addressing an unruly class. Last week, warning Congress about “bickering,” he came off like he was telling them to shut up. I think he could have chosen a more playful tone to make his valid points—something like Franklin D. Roosevelt.
FDR conveyed a pirate’s zest for close, hand-to-hand partisan combat. Like Blackbeard, he took no quarter and he gave none.
Nobody recalls the above quote as coming from “The Teamsters speech,” even though Roosevelt devoted far more time to labor (and other) issues than to responding to GOP attacks that he spent millions of taxpayer dollars in wartime to retrieve his favorite canine (shortened, for obvious reasons, from the one the President gave him, Murray the Outlaw of Falahill) from the Aleutian Islands. (The Scottish terrier had become accidentally separated from the Presidential party.)
Yet so magnificently droll was FDR’s delivery that the single paragraph in the lengthy address associated with the Scottie became an essential part of campaign lore over the years. What’s amazing is that these well-remembered lines are perfectly in keeping with the rest of the tone of the speech: not mad, but mocking.
Now, I grant you that it’s nice that Obama hasn’t yet taken to self-pity, the way that NewYork Governor David Paterson is now, crying about race just because his poll numbers can’t climb north further than, say, Miami, or the way that Bill Clinton moaned to pal Taylor Branch over the fallout from the Lewinsky affair (it was the pummeling he took from the Gingrich-led Congress, not the sight of Monica’s thong, that made him vulnerable, according to the recently released The Clinton Tapes).
Still, the next time some idiotic Congressman from South Carolina yells “You lie!”—and especially when the GOP charges that, a mere three-quarters into the first year of his Presidency, before his economic program has had time to gain traction or his foreign-policy adjustments to pay dividends, Obama has brought the nation to catastrophe—the President and the Democratic Party should forget their cries about incivility and give it back to the GOP with some common-sense, unanswerable counterpunching of their own:
* “What’s this talk about me being responsible for losing Afghanistan and Iraq? Both were like houses on fire before I ever got here.”
* “So I’m the one who’s driving the economy into the ditch? Well, who left us with shot brakes? What happened with Lehman last September, or with all those people on the unemployment line after that? All that makes for a lot more than a little ol’ economic fender-bender, if you ask me—more like a 16-car freeway pileup.”
But if he wants to see how a real pro did it, without a plaintive, lecturing, elitist tone, Obama should check out how his illustrious Democrat predecessor dealt in the Fala speech with similar suggestions that his policies had brought the nation to economic and military peril:
* On the GOP’s belated recognition of labor unions, after opposing Democratic bills on this, tooth and nail, for years: “We have all seen many marvelous stunts in the circus but no performing elephant could turn a hand-spring without falling flat on his back.”
In his quest for “teachable moments,” President Obama can, unfortunately, sound like he’s addressing an unruly class. Last week, warning Congress about “bickering,” he came off like he was telling them to shut up. I think he could have chosen a more playful tone to make his valid points—something like Franklin D. Roosevelt.
FDR conveyed a pirate’s zest for close, hand-to-hand partisan combat. Like Blackbeard, he took no quarter and he gave none.
Nobody recalls the above quote as coming from “The Teamsters speech,” even though Roosevelt devoted far more time to labor (and other) issues than to responding to GOP attacks that he spent millions of taxpayer dollars in wartime to retrieve his favorite canine (shortened, for obvious reasons, from the one the President gave him, Murray the Outlaw of Falahill) from the Aleutian Islands. (The Scottish terrier had become accidentally separated from the Presidential party.)
Yet so magnificently droll was FDR’s delivery that the single paragraph in the lengthy address associated with the Scottie became an essential part of campaign lore over the years. What’s amazing is that these well-remembered lines are perfectly in keeping with the rest of the tone of the speech: not mad, but mocking.
Now, I grant you that it’s nice that Obama hasn’t yet taken to self-pity, the way that NewYork Governor David Paterson is now, crying about race just because his poll numbers can’t climb north further than, say, Miami, or the way that Bill Clinton moaned to pal Taylor Branch over the fallout from the Lewinsky affair (it was the pummeling he took from the Gingrich-led Congress, not the sight of Monica’s thong, that made him vulnerable, according to the recently released The Clinton Tapes).
Still, the next time some idiotic Congressman from South Carolina yells “You lie!”—and especially when the GOP charges that, a mere three-quarters into the first year of his Presidency, before his economic program has had time to gain traction or his foreign-policy adjustments to pay dividends, Obama has brought the nation to catastrophe—the President and the Democratic Party should forget their cries about incivility and give it back to the GOP with some common-sense, unanswerable counterpunching of their own:
* “What’s this talk about me being responsible for losing Afghanistan and Iraq? Both were like houses on fire before I ever got here.”
* “So I’m the one who’s driving the economy into the ditch? Well, who left us with shot brakes? What happened with Lehman last September, or with all those people on the unemployment line after that? All that makes for a lot more than a little ol’ economic fender-bender, if you ask me—more like a 16-car freeway pileup.”
But if he wants to see how a real pro did it, without a plaintive, lecturing, elitist tone, Obama should check out how his illustrious Democrat predecessor dealt in the Fala speech with similar suggestions that his policies had brought the nation to economic and military peril:
* On the GOP’s belated recognition of labor unions, after opposing Democratic bills on this, tooth and nail, for years: “We have all seen many marvelous stunts in the circus but no performing elephant could turn a hand-spring without falling flat on his back.”
* On charges that the Republicans were trying to save America from a Democratic-induced Depression: “If I were a Republican leader speaking to a mixed audience, the last word in the whole dictionary that I think I would use is that word ‘depression.’”
* On charges that he’d left the nation unprepared for fighting World War II: “I doubt whether even Goebbels would have tried that one. For even he would never have dared hope that the voters of America had already forgotten that many of the Republican leaders in the Congress and outside the Congress tried to thwart and block nearly every attempt that this Administration made to warn our people and to arm our Nation.”
In Thomas E. Dewey and His Times, Richard Norton Smith contends that the 1944 GOP Presidential nominee delivered a devastating counterpunch to FDR’s Fala address that rallied party faithful concerned by his lack of fire. Smith is a reputable biographer, but count me among the unconvinced.
What Dewey, his handlers, and his amen corner never stopped to think about is that Americans are wild dog-lovers. My family would have pressed for an entire airborne division to retrieve our dear departed pooch if it got lost, not just the mere destroyer that FDR is supposed to have dispatched.
Maybe Dewey’s hard-line supporters cheered, but after 12 long, lonely years out of power, they would, wouldn’t they? In some ways, not much has changed—it’s still a matter of offering what the late great Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once called “boob bait for the bubbas.”
In other words, if only the party faithful cheered, this was a no-win issue for the Republicans. It took another political genius—a corrupt one, admittedly—to co-opt the Democrats’ canny tactic.
The other controversial canine ever to affect a national ticket, I believe, was Checkers. Over the years, Democrats have complained how sanctimonious and lachrymose his master, Richard Nixon, was in delivering that televised address.
But they forget one thing—it worked, saving not just his #2 spot on the ticket with Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 but even his entire career.
The real issue, of course, was the nature of a “secret fund” set up for Nixon by supporters. (In actuality, it was not secret but public and independently audited.) Introducing that cocker spaniel into the conversation was a stroke of genius. Nixon had taken notice of FDR’s success with Fala and one-upped him.
It not only took daring to speak of the dog when nobody had even raised him as an issue, but it kicked up so much dust—and won Nixon so much underserved sympathy from Middle America—that Ike had to retain him on the ticket. (Even though, as Garry Wills pointed out in Nixon Agonistes, Tricky Dick’s suggestion that the other candidates also disclose their finances gave Ike agita, since he’d gotten a nice tax break over his World War II memoirs).
But did Nixon ever love Checkers as much as FDR did Fala? I doubt it. The dog went everywhere with the President and performed all kinds of magic tricks in front of great visitors, including Winston Churchill. And, if you go up to Hyde Park now, you’ll find him buried near his master.
When you look at the marker over the Scottie’s grave, see if his memory—and FDR’s famous words about him—doesn’t make you smile.
In Thomas E. Dewey and His Times, Richard Norton Smith contends that the 1944 GOP Presidential nominee delivered a devastating counterpunch to FDR’s Fala address that rallied party faithful concerned by his lack of fire. Smith is a reputable biographer, but count me among the unconvinced.
What Dewey, his handlers, and his amen corner never stopped to think about is that Americans are wild dog-lovers. My family would have pressed for an entire airborne division to retrieve our dear departed pooch if it got lost, not just the mere destroyer that FDR is supposed to have dispatched.
Maybe Dewey’s hard-line supporters cheered, but after 12 long, lonely years out of power, they would, wouldn’t they? In some ways, not much has changed—it’s still a matter of offering what the late great Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once called “boob bait for the bubbas.”
In other words, if only the party faithful cheered, this was a no-win issue for the Republicans. It took another political genius—a corrupt one, admittedly—to co-opt the Democrats’ canny tactic.
The other controversial canine ever to affect a national ticket, I believe, was Checkers. Over the years, Democrats have complained how sanctimonious and lachrymose his master, Richard Nixon, was in delivering that televised address.
But they forget one thing—it worked, saving not just his #2 spot on the ticket with Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 but even his entire career.
The real issue, of course, was the nature of a “secret fund” set up for Nixon by supporters. (In actuality, it was not secret but public and independently audited.) Introducing that cocker spaniel into the conversation was a stroke of genius. Nixon had taken notice of FDR’s success with Fala and one-upped him.
It not only took daring to speak of the dog when nobody had even raised him as an issue, but it kicked up so much dust—and won Nixon so much underserved sympathy from Middle America—that Ike had to retain him on the ticket. (Even though, as Garry Wills pointed out in Nixon Agonistes, Tricky Dick’s suggestion that the other candidates also disclose their finances gave Ike agita, since he’d gotten a nice tax break over his World War II memoirs).
But did Nixon ever love Checkers as much as FDR did Fala? I doubt it. The dog went everywhere with the President and performed all kinds of magic tricks in front of great visitors, including Winston Churchill. And, if you go up to Hyde Park now, you’ll find him buried near his master.
When you look at the marker over the Scottie’s grave, see if his memory—and FDR’s famous words about him—doesn’t make you smile.
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