FDR killed in 1933 -- Yellow Dog

Another vignette from the world without Franklin. This one is long.

* * * * *

July 1940, the White House

"Mr. President." The Vice-President is formal, as well he might be; the two men have not been on speaking terms for nearly a year now.

"Frank." President Garner's grip is firm, his expression is bland and benign. "Well, son, bring your people in and set a spell. There's room, there's room." Garner sweeps them in with a broad wave. "You are the candidate, son. You're entitled, yes you are."

Yes, you are, thinks the President grimly to himself. You did it. It took seven days and sixteen ballots, but you did it. You Mick bastard, we never imagined that you'd get past the two-thirds rule... especially when we got good old Alben to throw his hat in the ring at one end, and Al Smith at the other. Without the South or New York either... well boy, I thought we had you euchred, I truly did. The more fool me. (1)

"Ah, thank you." Murmured greetings as the Vice-President's inner circle files into the room. Garner's expression does not change, but it's a struggle to restrain his feelings. Ah sweet Jesus, will you look at this crowd. This isn't a political party, it's a menagerie. What in God's name are these people doing in one room together? A scraping of chairs, a shuffling of papers. President Garner takes his seat. Well, let's see. Who do we have here. One by one...

At the very end of the table sits ELEANOR ROOSEVELT. She greets the President with a broad smile, and he returns it. Though they disagree sharply on a great many issues, Garner has always respected her. The widow of the martyred President-elect has been very busy for the last seven years: journalist, speaker, organizer and activist for a variety of liberal causes. In the last few years, though, she's become more and more identified with civil rights. Resigned from the DAR over that concert business, Garner muses, and then got herself declared persona non grata by the Mississippi state legislature, by God. They said it was for inciting civic unrest, but everybody knows it was for pulling the lid off that prison farm scandal... (2)

And now she has thrown in with Frank Murphy. Anointing the boy as dead FDR's heir! And what's she getting for it? Garner's smile is real enough, but behind it is the mind of a man who has spent nearly fifty years in national politics. Something for the colored, is what. Five get you ten, she'll go straight from this meeting to tea with that yellow bastard Randolph and his Red pals from the Porter's Union. Ah, Eleanor, those are no people for a lady to be sitting down with. (3)

Well, Eleanor Roosevelt may be a dreamer, but she's a lady and she's nobody's fool. The man sitting next to her, though, is (in Garner's opinion)a damn fool from his teeth to his toenails. The President's smile grows distinctly edged as he contemplates his former Secretary of Agriculture. HENRY WALLACE had been FDR's appointee, but he hadn't lasted past themidterm elections under Garner. Since then he's had a wild political ride, including two years with former governor Sinclair of California, an unsuccessful Senate bid, and... Ah, who cares.

Henry, you might have been a sensible sort of a man once. But politics takes some fellows funny... it's no good for them, like whiskey isn't good for Indians or opium for Chinese. And that's you, Henry, high on politics like a Chinaman with his smoke. You're here because Murphy needs the farm vote, and maybe the crazy table-rapping guru vote too. I s'pose there are enough of them to swing a district or two.

But if Garner has little interest in Henry Wallace, the slender, bespectacled man sitting next to him is intriguing enough to make up for it. SIDNEY HILLMAN meets the President's gaze calmly. The two are old enemies -- Hillman is the second most powerful man in American labor, and there is no love lost between labor and Garner. But Sidney Hillman is not just a labor leader; he's a Socialist, one of the chiefs of the party. It occurs to the President that this may be the first time a Socialist has been an invited guest in the White House.

Well, I suppose it's just as strange for him. It occurs to the President that Sidney Hillman's trip to this place has been even longer and stranger than his own. A farm boy from West Texas on one side of the table, and a Jew from -- what, Lithuania? -- turned immigrant, laborer, labor organizer, Socialist. I remember someone told me Sidney fought as a boy in the Russian Revolution... the first one, the good one, back when Teddy Roosevelt was still President. Right about the time I was getting ready to run for Congress, that would have been. And now I'm President and he's... a former Socialist who's just changed sides, by the look of it. (4) Dave Dubinsky and that bastard John L. Lewis are saying the Socialists will take fifty electoral votes this November, but I know better... and I guess ol' Sidney does too. The Socialists peaked in '36. This time, they're going straight to nowhere.

Well, there's no shame in switching horses if the one you're on shows lame. And... Sidney is a god-damned Red, true enough, but he's not a bomb-thrower or one of those professors crazy with their own talk. And at least he's not one of those stinking Communists. There ain't much difference, but _sometimes_ a Socialist can be trusted. Sidney's wrong, but he's an honest man. (5)

Which is more than everyone in this room can say. Garner is still smiling blandly, but he finds it hard to control his face when contemplating the next member of the Murphy entourage. RICHARD LECHE is the Secretary of State of the great State of Louisiana -- it says so right on his card -- but what he really is, is the eyes and ears and legs of Huey Long. Crippled and still recovering from his morphine addiction, Long nonetheless remains a potent political force. And Vice-President Murphy will owe him dearly, for swinging first Louisiana and then Mississippi's delegates to him and breaking the Solid South. And you'd better believe he's going to collect that debt, right down to the last thin copper penny. Dear Jesus, will you look at Dick Leche sitting there fat and happy. I can work with crooked and I can work with mean and by God if I couldn't work with stupid I'd have never gone into politics, but I've always found all three together hard to take. (5)

Leche is a sturdy man, a former wrestler in college, not fat but solid. The man sitting next to him is half his size and sickly too -- puny, sallow-skinned and generally unhealthy looking. Yet Garner considers HARRY HOPKINS to be ten times the man Dick Leche is on his best day.

It is good to see you again Harry, and that's a fact. You wandered off in '34... no reason, just that Franklin did something for you that I didn't. And then you just plumb disappeared, and who knew what you were up to? Well, now Garner knows: for the last six months, at least, Hopkins has been lining up support for Frank Murphy. And doing it very well indeed. Yes, if any one man killed Al Smith last week, it was you. And who brought you into this mess anyhow? Ah, of course -- Eleanor. Garner nods to himself.

Well, Frank Murphy has been handed a priceless tool and weapon; Harry Hopkins is intelligent, loyal, honest... and one of the premier executive administrators and political hatchet men of his time. And he doesn't work for money, God knows, or for women or power or the sound of the crowd. He worked for Franklin because he loved the man, and because he needed him the way a good hunting dog needs a man with a gun. And now he's back to see if Frank Murphy can shoot straight and whistle. Well, good luck, Harry. Murphy's got you sitting next to him, so maybe he's smart enough to know what he has.

To be honest, the President has never considered FRANK MURPHY all that smart. Garner picked him to be Vice-President because he needed a northern urban liberal, someone ethnic but not too ethnic, someone who could work with the big city machine politicians without being himself beholden to the machine. Charming, popular, a former judge and Governor-General of the Philippines, then-Mayor Murphy of Detroit had seemed a perfect choice. And best of all, he could hardly aspire to the Presidency in his own right; who could imagine that a Catholic could claim the nomination after the disaster of 1928?

Well, paint my sorry ass black and call me Amos. As if I didn't know that high office will make a man do things he wouldn't and couldn't otherwise. Garner sighs inwardly. And now we're stuck with a nominee who's not only a Catholic, but who's another god-damned England-lover. One who'll be ready to repeat poor Woody Wilson's mistake and get us into another pointless, useless war in Europe.

Of course, Garner could stop him. Yes, he could kill Frank Murphy deader than dead, make it impossible for him to run for dog-catcher in Guam. The file is right there in his desk drawer... but Garner doesn't want to think about that now. He turns to the man sitting at Murphy's right hand.

Not that there's any comfort to be found in contemplating HUGO BLACK. Et tu, Hugo thinks the President bitterly. Garner tries not to take politics personally, but Hugo had been a friend. I put him in my Cabinet, thinking he'd be a good sensible fellow to keep an eye on the labor situation. And what does he do? First he turns into a god-damned labor-loving pinko, keeping the Wagner Act in his breast pocket and blathering on about the rights of the working man. And then he slithers off and joins my Vice-President as _his_ Vice-President... which makes it possible for him to win the damn nomination after all.

Well, I should have seen it coming. After all, FDR had done exactly the same thing: balanced a northern liberal at the top of the ticket with a conservative Southerner at the bottom.

Except that Hugo Black isn't really any sort of conservative. He may be a good Alabama boy and a former Knight Commander of the Klan, but dig just a bit beneath that surface and he's just as crazy as Frank Murphy. And although he doesn't talk much about foreign policy, five'll get ten he'll be just as willing to get us into a war. Damn you, Hugo, you treacherous son of a bitch.

Of course, there are treacherous sons of bitches, and then there are *treacherous sons of bitches* . Next around the table is JOSEPH P. KENNEDY. He and Garner exchange looks of perfect understanding and absolute contempt. There is nothing to be said between them; Garner moves on, letting his lip curl ever so slightly.

To the right of Kennedy sits Illinois Senator ANTON "Pushcart Tony" CERMAK. Senator and President exchange friendly, if slightly guarded smiles; the relationship between them is a complex one. Cermak was present at the assination of President-Elect Roosevelt in 1933. The photograph of him cradling the dying FDR (with the caption, "If only it had been me!") helped propel him to a seat in the Senate.

But you weren't climbing, thinks Garner, so much as you were running away. As Mayor of Chicago, Cermak had clashed with the Capone mob... and Capone had been very much the winner. Mayor Cermak spent two years in fear of his life, and accomplished little before his rather ignominious departure from City Hall. Indeed, there were still those who thought that Zangara had been a Mob hitman, and that the bullet that struck down FDR had been intended for Cermak. (7) Never believed it myself. No shortage of crazies willing to take a shot at a President. For a moment Garner is a lanky teenage boy again,gawking at the Austin papers: "PRESIDENT GARFIELD SHOT IN WASHINGTON!!!"

But still and all, you let Capone run you out of Chicago. That had to get right down in your craw, Tony. So when you thought you had a second chance... Garner is no alienist, but he knows that a man who has shown yellow will sometimes turn himself inside out trying to make it up. And Senator Cermak has emerged as the leader of the small but growing group of interventionists. Most are either Anglophile liberals or southern conservatives, but Cermak is something else: a passionate, if not always articulate, urban machine Democrat who wholeheartedly loathes Germany's Fuhrer. The Senator has already announced that he plans to visit London "and shake Churchill's hand, that's gonna punch that Hitler bastard right in the snout!" And the Prime Minister has offered the good Senator the hospitality of his own home in Chequers...

The press, they keep saying it was Munich that did it. You being a Czech and all, and with family still in the old country. Me, I think there's more than that. Garner sighs internally. Pushcart Tony had been one of his most loyal supporters in the Senate, a good solid conservative Democrat... until this whole Hitler thing had driven him plain loco. You're gonna get us into a war, boy. And all so that you can have another shot at Capone.

And finally, at the end of the table, there's one empty chair. Garner smiles to himself. That's where Al Smith is supposed to be sitting, folks, in case you haven't figured it out. But Mr. Smith has not come to Washington today. The Happy Warrior left the convention in a fury after the final ballot, and has not yet emerged from what looks to be a truly Homeric sulk. Well, you might be better off without him at that, the way he's gone the last few years. Still, while we're all making nice-nice here, let's remember that we couldn't get everyone in under the tent.

Of course, it might not matter. For one thing, the first post-convention Gallup poll shows Murphy eleven points behind in the polls. And for another... there's the file in his desk. Garner could blow the whole business sky high in three minutes, right now.

Well, I suppose I lost my temper for a while there. Put that little creep Edgar Hoover on the trail, asked him to turn out your bed linen. I do wish I hadn't done that. Hoover may indeed be a creepy little fellow, but he's good -- he's very good -- which is why Garner has kept him on. And he'd found that Frank Murphy, sitting as a young judge in Detroit twenty years ago, had accepted payoffs from the Chrysler corporation.

That alone might not sink you, Frank. It was a long time ago, and you seem to have gone straight ever since... though you never gave the money back. But then there's the other thing.

Oh, how Hoover's eyes had glistened at that. "Mr. President, when the Vice-President was Governor-General of the Philippines, we have evidence that he engaged in liasons of a -- highly personal -- and intimate nature -- with Filipino natives."

"Shouldn't that be Filipin_a_?" Garner had asked.

"Mr. President, we have evidence suggesting -- suggesting, I say -- that not only young women were involved... but young native boys as well." And Hoover had slowly, slowly rubbed his hands together.

My dear lord, he was practically licking his lips, Garner thinks tiredly. And it's not certain. Well, it's certain that he was running around... but good lord, in the Philippines, who wouldn't be? But it's not certain that he _wasn't_ jumping on boys back then either. And just the suggestion would be enough to finish him.

Garner looks one last time around the room. A Jew and an anti-Semite; a civil rights crusader and a former commander of the Klan; interventionists and isolationists, crooks and honest men, the wise and the foolish, the best and the worst.

No. A mad assembly they may be, but they're his people, good and bad. Garner has been a Democrat since the days of good old Grover Cleveland, and he is not going to change his ways now.

I am just an old yellow dog, he thinks, a tired old yellow dog Democrat. And even though I think Frank Murphy may drag the party down to disaster if he loses, and the whole *country* into war if he wins, I can't betray my party. I'll shut Hoover down -- I know a thing or two about _him_ that'll make sure he keeps quiet -- and I'll smile and shake Murphy's hand and wish him the best. Hell, I'll even go out and campaign for him... though it's bitter, bitter.

"Well, folks." Garner puts his hands flat on the desk, and forces a smile. "Who's going first?"

Doug M.

(1) In this TL, the Democrats have not yet abandoned the rule requiring 2/3 of a convention to nominate a Presidential candidate. OTL they gave it up in 1936, under pressure from FDR and other liberal reformers.

(2) Without the burden of being First Lady, Eleanor is even more activist than in OTL. And without the need to trim her political sails, she's become much more publicly involved with civil rights.

(3) Philip Randolph, the black labor organizer, has formed the Porter's Union much as in OTL, but both it and he are a bit more radical. Late in 1939, this TL's _Saturday Evening Post_ has created a brief kerfluffle by suggesting that every third railroad porter is a Communist. In fact, it's only about one in seven... still an alarming statistic to the millions of middle-class Americans who hand their bags to porters every year.

(4) Sidney Hillman was one of the major behind-the-scenes powers in the party OTL; he controlled nearly as many labor votes as John L. Lewis, and was much more rational and willing to deal. OTL Hillman left the Socialists to become a Democrat in 1936, in large part because of FDR. In this TL he's stuck with the much stronger Socialist Party a while longer... but the inherent strength of the US two-party system is reasserting itself, and Hillman is intelligent enough to realize this.

David Dubinsky followed a path closely parallel to Hillman's, but in this TL the two have split; Dubinsky is still a Socialist leader, while Hillman is jumping to the Democrats.

(5) Garner is old and conservative, but not stupid; after eight years of having to deal with both, he now recognizes some difference between Socialists and Communists. An old-fashioned Texas capitalist, he's never going to enjoy dealing with the likes of Hillman... but he's bright enough to understand necessity, and Texan enough to respect a brave and clever opponent.

(6) OTL Leche was one of Long's courtiers. After Long's death he would go on to become the first (though not, alas, the last) governor of Louisiana to be indicted, convicted, and sentenced to jail for corruption. http://www.sec.state.la.us/64.htm

(7) OTL Zangara fired at least three shots, narrowly missing FDR and hitting Cermak, who died about three weeks later. Given that at least one major Chicago mobster had sworn to see Cermak dead, it was assumed in some quarters that Zangara was working for the Mob. However, no evidence of this was ever found, and Zangara himself fiercely denied it. Certainly Zangara fit the classic "loner/loser/loony" profile of the solitary presidential assassin.

Cermak was widely reported to have said to Roosevelt, "I am glad it was me instead of you!" On one hand, this seems very pat; OTOH, Cermak may not have known he was dying when he said it. Certainly his family believed it, to the point of having it engraved on his tomb -- http://www.graveyards.com/bohemian/cermak.html and scroll down.

Obviously the career of this TL's Cermak is speculative, but IMO plausible -- he'd run for the Senate twice before, frex.

(8) The Chrysler payments actually happened, though OTL they didn't come out until the 1970s (!). The bits about Murphy's private life are semi-speculative but based in what facts we do know. There are some reasons to think he might have been either gay or bisexual (though, unfortunately, his major biography glosses this issue over). If he was, he was smart enough to keep it well concealed, so the truth of this will probably never be known.
 
Why do I have a feeling this TL would feature Nazi German/Imperial Japanese survival?

On the bright side it might not have a World War II.The downside, of course, is that it's replaced with a Russian-German war.
 

HueyLong

Banned
One thing- Garner made something like one speech for FDR. He won't do anything more for Murphy.

Do you have a source for the Murphy thing? And he was an FDR appointee.
 
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Why do I have a feeling this TL would feature Nazi German/Imperial Japanese survival?

Perhaps. The Nazis still have to beat the Soviets, and get the Bomb early enough to protect themselves against both Tube Alloys and any nuclear project the US gets around to developing. And I can't see the Japanese overruning the European colonies in SE Asia without really poisoning relations with the US - too close to the Phillipines, so we still might see conflict in the Pacific.

Bruce
 
One thing- Garner made something like one speech for FDR. He won't do anything more for Murphy.

Garner may not have been much of a speechmaker, but he did quite a lot for FDR. He won him the nomination, campaigned tirelessly for him in 1932, and then was his strong right hand in the Senate all through his first term. They differed on a lot of issues -- most of them, really -- but Garner was indeed a yellow dog Democrat, and a superb legislative technician as well.

He broke with FDR over the court pack, and they diverged sharply after that -- by the last year of the second term, they were barely on speaking terms. But that came later.


Do you have a source for the Murphy thing? And he was an FDR appointee.

The Chrysler payments are in the Fine biography -- in fact, IMS it was Fine's research that led to them being uncovered.

The question of Murphy's sexuality is a fraught one: he was a lifelong bachelor, and there are straws in the wind that could be interpreted several ways.

He was actually a triple FDR appointee: Governor-General of the Philippines in 1933, Attorney General in 1938 and then Supreme Court Justice in 1940.


Doug M.
 
Perhaps. The Nazis still have to beat the Soviets, and get the Bomb early enough to protect themselves against both Tube Alloys and any nuclear project the US gets around to developing. And I can't see the Japanese overruning the European colonies in SE Asia without really poisoning relations with the US - too close to the Phillipines, so we still might see conflict in the Pacific.

Bruce

America, in this TL, will gladly sell the oil to fuel Japan's war machine. What's the push for war? Mind, if America is so isolationist, Chiang probably caved at some point.

My last post probably seemed a bit iffy; but it seems to me that with a more isolationist US, there's less hope of American support for Britain. So... Chamberlain's fears about having America win any war between Britain and Germany will be a lot stronger, IMO.
 
America, in this TL, will gladly sell the oil to fuel Japan's war machine. What's the push for War?.


Yellow People attacking White People. OTL, Japan's occupation of French Indochina was the precipitating factor for the oil embargo. Japanese in SE Asia and Indonesia surround the Phillipines, and threaten White People in Australia. I reeally can't see most Americans reacting well to this. Of course, one can say that if Chiang has knuckled under, the Japanese won't attack British or Dutch colonies - but why are we assuming good sense on the part of the Japanese? Didn't say it was going to automatically lead to war, but Japanese-US relations will get a lot worse.

Bruce
 
A general note: as of the summer of 1940, events around the world -- including the first nine months of WWII -- have gone much as iOTL. After all, US involvement in international affairs was pretty modest up to this point. All Garner has done is be a bit more isolationist than FDR... and since FDR was forced to be fairly isolationist, there's not so much difference.

Mind, that's all about to change. A no-FDR 1939 may not be too different from OTL, but a no-FDR 1940... well, the divergences are going to accelerate rapidly.


Doug M.
 
Reich-5, in GURPS Infinite Earths game background, diverges with the Roosevelt assassination.
 
Who's the 1940 Republican nominee?

You've got a pretty free hand among Taft, Vandenburg, and Dewey. (And, of course, there's a number of dark horses besides Willkie.)
 
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