The Presidency of Alfred E. Smith

It was a coincidence that last night was the 2012 Alfred E. Smith Memorial Dinner, because for the last few days I've been reading about him and wondering 1. How he could have been elected, and 2. How his presidency would have handled things. He was a Catholic, the first serious Catholic candidate for President, so it would be very interesting.

I'd imagine that there is some sort of earlier Stock Market Crash that triggers the Depression, making Hoover a poor choice for president. Boom, President Smith.

I'm sure this would have a huge impact on WWII.

What say you all?

My quick thoughts...

I don't think he liked FDR much (I believe they were rivals), so it could mean no FDR as President in WW2. Others will give more accurate answers about his domestic programs, but I expect New Deal Lite. Would an earlier Great Depression be smaller (bubble smaller, so less "pop"?); I still expect a bad economy in 1936, so I bet Democrats win. Al Smith being a Catholic probably means no 3rd term (wasn't it just a decade [or earlier] before people worried a subway tunnel was a Catholic plot to connect NYC with the Vatican*?) so no idea who runs in 1936 (or if Al wins in 1932- was he inspirational? FDR won despite a bad economy).

* I would totally vote for a Catholic plot to build a tunnel that awesome! Steampunk trains somehow traveling thousands of miles, under the ocean, when the Pope could have just telegraphed the President...

** JFKlibrary.org says it was Al Smith who was accused of wanting to build the tunnel, from the White House to the Vatican. The man has my vote!

Almost forgot...

Someone will quietly wonder how Al could win. Maybe a "McAdoo" type VP, who can "dog-whistle" (i.e., use code words, instead of Jim Crow, say "state's rights") the South into voting for a Catholic (Al is probably for repealing Prohibition); my personal plan is have the 1927 floods be worse/government response more Katrina-like, have a KKK candidate if it throws the South for Al, and also a Progressive, Protestant candidate in the Midwest to siphon votes from the Republicans.

These are very interesting ideas.

If he would be for repealing Prohibition, I almost am sure he'd win the South, New England, California, etc. If some extremists ran and pulled Ross Perots, he might win not in a landslide, but they'd give him the election unintentionally.

And that tunnel idea is awesome. They had telephones, too.

Al Smith was a very interesting man. My great Grandfather om my mom's side of the family considered him a family friend . He was from what I have heard a warm hearted man and I still have a letter that he wrote to my Grandfather during the great war. It is clear that he did not see things in the same way as FDR and that lead to a falling out that got worse as time passed.

The KKK will not vote for a Catholic in the '20s, and it was hard enough to drag the Deep Southern wing along. The northern and western KKKs tended to see Catholics as far more dangerous than blacks.

Do you want President Smith period or President Smith in 1928? The former is doable albeit barely. The latter is essentially impossible, though I suppose that is the fun of the challenge. In my view if you want President Al Smith, the key is Franklin Roosevelt's early death. Say FDR dies of polio before 1928. Come 1932 the New York delegation votes for Smith and he is begrudgingly renominated. 1932 is an election where the majority hates both candidates. Voters decide they hate Herbert Hoover a little more than Smith and Smith wins the rematch. I think he would a one term President under the circumstances.

I'd love to see this continue, if only to combat the reductive belief people have that Al Smith was a conservative Democrat full-stop. Al Smith became a conservative after 1928, probably as a reaction to getting curb-stomped in '28 and his vendetta with FDR and making a lot of Wall Street friends, but he was a progressive governor of New York and probably would have been a progressive as president.

Chances are, he would suffer the same anti-incumbent wave that swept across the industrial world after '29, and be unsuccessful.

However, it's important that people understand that historical figures aren't set in stone. These were real people, who changed, grew, suffered reversals, and had the same human tendency to inconsistency that we all share.

Wolfpaw said:

The KKK will not vote for a Catholic in the '20s, and it was hard enough to drag the Deep Southern wing along. The northern and western KKKs tended to see Catholics as far more dangerous than blacks.

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I thought he meant have a KKK member run in the south to take votes away from the Republican candidate Ross Perot style.

Glass Onion said:

Do you want President Smith period or President Smith in 1928? The former is doable albeit barely. The latter is essentially impossible, though I suppose that is the fun of the challenge. In my view if you want President Al Smith, the key is Franklin Roosevelt's early death. Say FDR dies of polio before 1928. Come 1932 the New York delegation votes for Smith and he is begrudgingly renominated. 1932 is an election where the majority hates both candidates. Voters decide they hate Herbert Hoover a little more than Smith and Smith wins the rematch. I think he would a one term President under the circumstances.

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Either, though especially 1928.

This makes sense. With no FDR, Smith wins. What effect would it have on WWII, though? Would his Catholicism enable to befriend Mussolini in the '30s or anything like that? Maybe the US stays more neutral, at least for a while?

Napoleon53 said:

I thought he meant have a KKK member run in the south to take votes away from the Republican candidate Ross Perot style.



Either, though especially 1928.

This makes sense. With no FDR, Smith wins. What effect would it have on WWII, though? Would his Catholicism enable to befriend Mussolini in the '30s or anything like that? Maybe the US stays more neutral, at least for a while?

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Difficult to say. It depends upon whether or not he is reelected and I do not think he would be for various reasons. From there we have to guess who his successor would be and how he would deal with looming foreign crises between 37 and 41. Butterflies may preclude WWII as we know it from happening so it might be premature to speculate about what Smith's impact on it would be.

Glass Onion said:

Difficult to say. It depends upon whether or not he is reelected and I do not think he would be for various reasons. From there we have to guess who his successor would be and how he would deal with looming foreign crises between 37 and 41. Butterflies may preclude WWII as we know it from happening so it might be premature to speculate about what Smith's impact on it would be.

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Right, I hadn't considered that. The Invasion of Poland might have gone down without a hitch. With an earlier Depression, Hitler or a stand-in might have risen faster, drastically altering the '30s-'40s.

If FDR doesn't ever become President, I say this means a drastic change to Democrat politics as we know them. If WWII doesn't happen, or at least involve the US, the economy might not recover thanks to war jobs. No baby boom. The '50s wind up a lot like the '40s. Republicans are probably elected again and again in retaliation for Smith not "fixing" the economy.

So much potential.

If Smith wins in 1928, Hoover wins in a FDR-style landslide in 1932, no doubt about that.

Turquoise Blue said:

If Smith wins in 1928, Hoover wins in a FDR-style landslide in 1932, no doubt about that.

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Interesting, Blue! So a moderate Republican might be President during WWII, if it happens. That would be really different.

Napoleon53 said:

Interesting, Blue! So a moderate Republican might be President during WWII, if it happens. That would be really different.

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The PoD is before Hitler even came to power. I think we can safely assume that would be butterflied away.

My Username is Inigo Montoya said:

The PoD is before Hitler even came to power. I think we can safely assume that would be butterflied away.

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Sorry, sorry, I just get overeager.

So, I guess this is an outline:

Earlier Great Depression. Around 1927, maybe?

August 9, 1920: Franklin Delano Roosevelt falls into the icy waters of the Bay of Fundy while on a boat ride. Wind knocked out of him by the cold, he sinks down quickly. Finally, he begins his struggle upward, lungs filling with water. He loses consciousness. Rescuers and friends pull his body out of the water. FDR is dead.

1928: Al Smith and his Southern Dixiecrat running mate, Joseph Taylor Robinson (Arkansas) square off against Republican Herbert Hoover (California) and his running mate Charles Curtis. Many people blame the Republicans for their economic woes, and the South votes almost completely Smith-Robinson. Smith takes California and his home state of New York and other key battleground states. In the final tally, Smith loses just by a few votes in the general election but wins the electoral college. Alfred E. Smith is now President of the United States.

Napoleon53 said:

I thought he meant have a KKK member run in the south to take votes away from the Republican candidate Ross Perot style.

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Why bother? Smith got all of the Solid South states (except Florida). If anything, there should have been some third-party populist from Appalachia to suck those votes from Hoover.

FDR didn't run in 28, also Hoover was largely responsible for the crash of 29 which started the Depression, FDR made it the Great Depression in the USA while most other countries got out quickly.

Hoover won the Republican nomination because Calvin Coolidge choose not to run for reelection. Coolidge had served out the remainder of Harding's term and been elected one time himself. He said if he stayed another term it would be longer than any other man, and that was more than any man should bear. Coolidge however didn't like Hoover and considered him rather foolish. He had once stated that man had never given him anything but bad advice. Coolidge held his lip during the election though and didn't let his thoughts known widely.

If Coolidge instead had refused to endorse Hoover because of his personal opinion of the man, there probably would have been a division in the Republican party.

A split Republican party in 28 would flip the following states: AZ, CT, IL, KY, MD, MN, MO, NV, NY, NC, ND, TN, TX, UT, VA and WI to Smith in addition to what he won in the OTL. That would produce him a victory with 303 EV compared to Hoover's 228 EV making him the next President of the United States.

I believe Smith who is unlikely to do Hoover's same regulations avoids starting the Great Depression and is reelected in 1932. I think then that he would choose not to run in 1936 much for the same reasons Coolidge did, allowing FDR to run.

JRScott said:

FDR didn't run in 28, also Hoover was largely responsible for the crash of 29 which started the Depression, FDR made it the Great Depression in the USA while most other countries got out quickly.

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I'm going to stop there. Hoover wasn't responsible for it. Coolidge was. The Depression started barely seven months after Hoover got in office, so how could he screw it up enough? The answer was that the ticking bomb was started by Coolidge, and passed on to Hoover. In a Smith victory, the Depression would have started, after all, the Roaring Twenties was one ginormous bubble.

Turquoise Blue said:

I'm going to stop there. Hoover wasn't responsible for it. Coolidge was. The Depression started barely seven months after Hoover got in office, so how could he screw it up enough? The answer was that the ticking bomb was started by Coolidge, and passed on to Hoover. In a Smith victory, the Depression would have started, after all, the Roaring Twenties was one ginormous bubble.

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He immediately began overregulation policies which directly led to the collapse of the stock market.

The Great Depression was only the Great Depression in the USA, all other countries recovered within 3-5 years, it lasted 10 years in the USA due to FDR and the New Deal.

Hoover was also in charge of the Commerce Department during the Coolidge administration, mostly to pacify his wing of the party, much of what caused the collapse of 29 was Hoover's doings not Coolidge.

It's kinda like Barack Obama claiming everything is George Bush's fault despite that when Obama was a Senator who voted for the spending, debt and war funding. Bush just rubber stamped it because they'd only pass bills in the 11th hour and without them essential services would shut down.

I know FDR didn't run in '28 (although I don't claim that the 1920's are my era I know most about; heck, the era I know most about is 1750-1918), but that boating accident was the most convenient way to kill him off.

I was researching and found that Smith did indeed carry the South OTL, which was quite surprising, as the South still doesn't seem to look at Catholic candidates the same way. It''s even more shocking with the influence of the KKK back then.