While seeking his party's 1960 presidential nomination, John Kennedy used to warm up Democratic Party gatherings with an anecdote about the 1924 Democratic National Convention in New York, where the delegates — bitterly divided over race and religion — took 103 ballots and 17 days before finally compromising on a nominee, respected West Virginia lawyer John W. Davis, who would win just 29 percent of the national vote that November.
According to JFK, sometime before the 95th ballot and after the mounting costs of room and board in the Big Apple had emptied many Democrats' wallets, the chairman of the Massachusetts delegates called a caucus where he announced, "We are faced with a choice — either we move to a more modest hotel or to a more liberal candidate."
In 1924, for the first time, a Catholic, New York Gov. Alfred E. Smith, was a serious candidate to become the presidential nominee of a major American political party. Smith, the son of Irish immigrants, had compiled a progressive public record and was the favorite of Northern Catholic and Jewish voters and the huddled masses of the cities.
He was a "wet" who favored the repeal of the constitutional amendment that prohibited the sale of alcoholic beverages in the United States and whose candidacy provoked the unbridled opposition of the anti-drink "drys," Protestants from the South and West, as well as others resisting the loss of power to so many recently arrived "new" Americans. Their standard-bearer, Southern-born Protestant William Gibbs McAdoo had family connections. He was the son-in-law of the last two-term Democratic president, Woodrow Wilson, and had been secretary of the treasury.
McAdoo is rightly remembered for defining the empty rhetoric of Republican president Warren Harding as "an army of pompous phrases moving across the landscape in search of an idea."
Anti-immigrant fever gripped the nation. A new federal law limited immigration to 2 percent of the ethnic composition of the country in the 1890 census and no Japanese — which was before all those foreigners speaking different languages and practicing different faiths invaded from Eastern and Southern Europe.
The Ku Klux Klan, with a national membership in the millions and a nativist creed, was so prominent at the 1924 convention that newspapers called the party event a "Klanbake." On July 4, in the middle of the convention, the Klan, most wearing sheets and hoods, held a cross-burning celebration for 20,000 across the river in New Jersey, where they threw baseballs at an image of Al Smith.
On a resolution to specifically condemn them by name, the Democrats — by the closest vote in convention history, 543 and three-twentieths votes to 542 and seven-twentieths votes, unheroically refused to condemn the anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish, anti-black organization.
This tawdry chapter in party history did mark the last hurrah for the Klan-backed McAdoo and the national debut of the man who would lead the Democrats to majority status in the nation.
On crutches and crippled from the polio, which had struck him three years earlier at the age of 39, Franklin Roosevelt electrified the Madison Square Garden crowd with his speech nominating Al Smith. It ended with these lines from William Wordsworth:
"This is the Happy Warrior, this is he
Whom every man in arms should wish to be."
Four years later, Al Smith would be the Democratic nominee and would lose the presidency and most of the up-to-then solidly Democratic (and anti-Catholic) Southern and border states to Republican Herbert Hoover.
With today's Democrats bickering about race — including the egotistical Bill Clinton's indefensible charge that the Obama campaign had played "the race card" against him — and religion — with the terminally narcissistic Rev. Jeremiah Wright demonstrating that patronizing abrasiveness and intolerance are not the exclusive property of the majority race — the party could be poised in a year when the Republican "brand" has been almost mortally damaged and devalued to do the impossible and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. It just might be 1924 all over again.
To find out more about Mark Shields and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.
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COPYRIGHT 2008 MARK SHIELDS
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4 Comments | Post Comment
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Thank you Mark Shields. I love history, and I am afraid the history we are making all over again will not serve us well. I don't think it is wise to run a woman or a black for the Presidency. Mrs. Clinton has been practicing for the part for a long time. I don't think either of the Clintons thought much about how they would be perceived, and if they had they would have left Al Gore in a better place from which to start. I don't think they did much for the office, for the people, or for themselves. Yet, people love Mrs. Clinton, and I wonder why. A black man has a much harder row to hoe to reach the presidency. And it is strange that we look at a man without political history or political baggage, and for that very reason, consider him a viable candidate. In fact, Mr. Obama is an intelligent and educated individual, and for that reason alone is qualified. But, and who could guess it; some people in America are prejudiced against Blacks, if not out right rascists. I count myself in this number, and still I am willing to give him a chance. Why? It is simple. He is intelligent, but as of yet, uncorrupted, and the greatest financial support in this land goes to those who have proven they are corrupt in advance. It is not necessary that a person accept bribes. If they can be made rich before being elected they will think always as a rich person, and of their class before the working class. I accept that by now, being educated, and being an attorney, that Mr. Obama is corrupt. I am all the more certain that Mrs. Clinton is more corrupt by miles, and will not do one single thing to limit the power or wealth of the rich. Without making the rich pay for some of what they now enjoy for free, there will be no fixing of America. You mentioned the Gas tax on television. It is in some respects the perfect example. We all should pay for our roads and infrastucture, but some benefit more than others. I might pay for roads through a gas tax, but if the only place I go is to work or the store is it not fair that they should pay too? Business People use up communities and infrastructure, and when they are done they seek yonder a more condusive tax base, and willing population, leaving to other people and other generation the problems they have midwifed. I think the Democrats are fools to put forth the candidates they have, and yet when did they have a choice? They are not a party made up of clones feeding of a single table, and feeling with the same heart. The democrates are the party of division and always have been. They are the party of everybody else, and always have been. There is no essential unity to them, and no natural point of agreement. One could look at the election of Mr. Obama as the greatest joke ever played on long dead founding fathers, and I hope it is pulled off. Whether he is elected or not, we should all look at Mr. Obama and realize that this is what many Black people could be if given a chance, the right environment, the right education, and a moderate amount of hope. So. naturally, I think of Mrs Clinton as a spoiler. And long before this election, too. Together the Clintons had a chance to do something, and did nothing. As far as I can see they have had their chance.
Comment: #1
Posted by: James A, Sweeney
Sat May 3, 2008 6:15 AM
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The tragedy is that 84 years later McAdoo could just as well be speaking of the last eight years and George Dubya's emulation of "an army of pompous phrases moving across the landscape in search of an idea."
History seems doomed to repeat itself
Comment: #2
Posted by: Blaine Barrett
Mon May 5, 2008 9:12 PM
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Dear Mr. Shields:
Repeatedly reporters refer to "Catholic voters" in this campaign as if they formed some sort of voting bloc or group. As a Catholic I cannot find why Catholics would support one candidate or the other because of their faith. It would be different if there were some hot-button issue out there that was drawing Catholics more to one than the other. Maybe I'm obtuse, but I don't see it. As a fellow Catholic can you please, please tell us if you actually see a "Catholic vote" this time and, if so, what is drawing them? Or, conversely, if the phrase is meaningless in the context of this campaign.
Comment: #3
Posted by: Mario D. Mazzarella
Thu May 8, 2008 2:24 PM
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Re: Blaine Barrett
Sir; or Siret,
It is not history that is doomed, but people who are doomed to suffer every repetition of history, and every attempt to change the future. Until people figure out what they are dealing with our whole situation as a species will be Dangerous. Hang in there. Sweeney.
Comment: #4
Posted by: James A, Sweeney
Fri May 9, 2008 8:45 PM
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