My Amazon Review of Terry Golway's "Frank and Al: FDR, Al Smith, and the Unlikely Alliance that Created the Modern Democratic Party"

Politics Makes for Strange Bedfellows

                      

Politico editor Terry Golway tells us of how and why Al Smith, an uneducated kid from the lower eastside of New York and the to the manner born Franklin Roosevelt forged the modern Democratic Party through the crucible of New York state politics. Golway tells a great yarn as to how Al Smith, a creature of Tammany Hall, became a great social reformer as a state assemblyman after the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of 1911 by leading the way in establishing workplace standards. He worked with state senator Robert Wagner who later would become as a U.S. senator and one of the leading architects of the New Deal.

We meet Franklin Roosevelt as an effete reformer in the state senate with a great animus to Tammany Hall. Roosevelt soon leaves Albany to become the Assistant Secretary of the Navy and becomes the Democratic Party’s nominee for vice president in 1920. However, the very canny Roosevelt maintains his political contacts with New York even while recovering from polio, so much so that he nominates Smith for president at both the 1924 and 1928 Democratic conventions.

As governor of New York throughout the roaring 20’s, Smith expands worker protections, establishes a safety net, encourages park development all the while streamlining government and cutting taxes. He was ably assisted by his aide Belle Moskowitz, probably one of the most under-rated political geniuses of the 20^th century, labor reformer Francis Perkins and by young up and comer Robert Moses. Smith’s record is so strong that he overcomes the bias against his Catholic faith and his “wet” position on prohibition to become the Democratic nominee in 1928. He gets slaughtered by the Coolidge boom and vitriol of anti-Catholic bias. However, underneath the 1928 election returns Smith actually received a majority of the vote in most of America’s largest cities. In essence Smith represents the new urban-ethnic America that would come to dominate American politics for the next 40 years. He is in fact the percusser to John Kennedy’s win in 1960.

However, it is Roosevelt who adds the Democratic south along with western farmers to the coalition that makes it a winning one. Roosevelt was enabled by being Smith’s hand-picked choice to be the Democratic nominee for Governor of New York in 1928. He barely wins in a very Republican year. Just to show the power of the emerging coalition the Democratic lieutenant governor nominee was the Jewish Herbert Lehman and the Republicans nominate Albert Ottinger, who is also Jewish. Two years later as the depression takes hold. Roosevelt wins in a landslide setting him up for a presidential run.

Smith and Roosevelt break in 1932 when both run for president. Smith becomes embittered and attacks the New Deal with its “alphabet of agencies” and later joins the very rightwing Liberty Lobby. It is not pretty.

Despite his apostasy Smith was early (1933) in speaking out against Hitler and was fully supportive of Roosevelt’s prewar defense and foreign policy. Although he endorses the Republican Wendell Willkie in 1940, Smith and Roosevelt reconcile with his strong support of Roosevelt’s foreign policy.

Golway tells a great story and he puts you inside many a smoke and drink filled room. Because Golway has previously written on Tammany Hall I wish he would have gone into the compromises Smith had to make with Boss Murphy in order to do the great things he did. That aside Golway has written a wonderful book on how political change came to America from 1910-1940.

for the full Amazon URL see: https://www.amazon.com/review/R32OUML0S5T64P/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv