"I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people."
- Franklin Roosevelt, upon accepting the Democratic nomination for President in Chicago, 07/02/32
A New Deal for the American People
Prologue: "I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people."
The nation was in the direst of straights when Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the fifty-year old Governor of New York, took the unprecedented step of flying out to Chicago to accept, in person, the nomination of the Democratic Party for the Presidency. Unemployment stood at a record high of 22.5% [1], credit was frozen across the country, with banks failing left and right. Large swathes of Americans, newly homeless, set up shop in tent villages lovingly named after the target of much of the nation's anger, President Herbert Hoover.
Nevertheless, the Governor tried to keep a level head while accepting his own nomination. Dabbling in the usual rhetorical attacks on his opponent, Roosevelt promised not only relief for unemployed, but a fundamental paradigm shift in the old social compact that had, by all accounts, failed the American people in their greatest time of crisis: [2]
"There are two ways of viewing the Government's duty in matters affecting economic and social life. The first sees to it that a favored few are helped and hopes that some of their prosperity will leak through, sift through, to labor, to the farmer, to the small business man. That theory belongs to the party of Toryism, and I had hoped that most of the Tories left this country in 1776.
But it is not and never will be the theory of the Democratic Party. This is no time for fear, for reaction or for timidity. Here and now I invite those nominal Republicans who find that their conscience cannot be squared with the groping and the failure of their party leaders to join hands with us; here and now, in equal measure, I warn those nominal Democrats who squint at the future with their faces turned toward the past, and who feel no responsibility to the demands of the new time, that they are out of step with their Party.
Yes, the people of this country want a genuine choice this year, not a choice between two names for the same reactionary doctrine. Ours must be a party of liberal thought, of planned action, of enlightened international outlook, and of the greatest good to the greatest number of our citizens."
The American people responded in kind.
The Presidential Election of 1932 would be one for the history books. Governor Roosevelt would ride across the country and would find cheering crowds. President Hoover would do the same and find rotten fruits and vegetables hurled in his general direction. The content of the campaign itself was completely focused on the economy, and to many, it would have seemed that the candidates of the major political parties in the United States were talking about two completely different countries: Roosevelt spoke broadly about the botched handling of the economic crisis by the Hoover administration, calling on the government to invest in public works programs to put Americans back to work, while Hoover denied that there was any fundamental problem with the American economy, continually harping that recovery lied just beyond the corner.
At any rate, the American people sought remedy, rather than rhetoric, and responded by giving Franklin Roosevelt the Presidency in a landslide victory over Hoover. Crushing Hoover with 57.9% of the vote to Hoover's 39.7%, and an even more lopsided electoral college victory of 472-59, Roosevelt moved from the general election toward his own inaugural with a clear confidence, and, at the same time, a deep foreboding about the problems laid at not only his own feet, but facing the country as a whole...
U.S. Presidential Election, 1932
Governor Franklin Roosevelt (D-NY) / House Speaker John Nance Garner (D-TX): 472 (57.4%)
President Herbert Hoover (R-CA) / Vice President Charles Curtis (R-KS): 59 (39.7%)
Incumbent President: Herbert Hoover (R-CA)
President-elect: Franklin Roosevelt (D-NY)
Incumbent Vice President: Charles Curtis (R-KS)
Vice President-elect: John Nance Garner (D-TX)
U.S. House of Representatives Election, 1932
Democratic Party: 313 seats (+97)
Republican Party: 117 seats (-101)
Farmer-Labor Party: 5 seats (+4)
Incumbent Speaker of the House: John Nance Garner (D-TX)
Speaker of the House-elect: Henry Thomas Rainey (D-IL)
Incumbent Minority Leader: Bertrand Snell (R-NY)
Minority Leader-elect: Bertrand Snell (R-NY)
U.S. Senate Election, 1932
Democratic Party: 60 seats (+13)
Republican Party: 35 seats (-13)
Incumbent Senate Majority Leader: Joseph T. Robinson (D-AR)
Senate Majority Leader-elect: Joseph T. Robinson (D-AR)
Incumbent Senate Minority Leader: Charles McNary (R-OR)
Senate Minority Leader-elect: Charles McNary (R-OR)
Footnotes:
[1]
Credit to StevenAttewell for the unemployment numbers I'll be using throughout this timeline (until we get our POD, that is)
[2]
Roosevelt's Nomination Address; Chicago, Illinois, 07/02/32