My Amazon Review of David Pietrusza's "1920: The Year of Six Presidents"

 

A Rocky Road to Normalcy

 

1920 was quite a year. The 18^th Amendment (prohibition) was enforced, the 19^th Amendment was ratified (Women’s Suffrage), the Palmer raids against radicals continued, the Ku Klux Klan was revived, Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested for murder, and the North discovered there was a large African American population living in its major cities as a result of the wartime demand for labor. Into this hothouse comes the 1920 presidential election.

 

Author David Pietrusza highlights the role of six presidents who played key roles in that year’s election. First there is Theodore Roosevelt who in late 1918 after Republican congressional victories became the odds-on favorite for the nomination. Unfortunately, he dies in early 1919 and his chosen successor General Leonard Wood fails to win the Republican nomination. Then there is President Woodrow Wilson who was ready to run for an unprecedented third term but was incapacitated by a stroke that enabled his wife Edith to become the de facto president. We see young and charismatic Franklin Roosevelt advancing to become the Democratic nominee for Vice President. Before that he was talked about running for Vice President under Herbert Hoover on the Democratic ticket.

 

Of course, Hoover would ultimately acknowledge that he was a Republican. Hoover was extraordinarily popular in his role to feed famine struck Europe and even Keynes noted that Hoover was one of the few people who came out of the Versailles Conference with an enhanced reputation.

 

On the Republican side we see the very amiable and very flawed Warren Harding win the nomination under the aegis of his corrupt campaign manager Harry Dougherty. Harding’s affairs and illegitimate children would have made Bill Clinton blush. In a multi-ballot affair, the Republican leadership settles on Harding in the famous Room 404 of the Blackstone Hotel which forever after would be called the smoke-filled room. When a delegate from Oregon nominates Massachusetts governor Calvin Coolidge for Vice President a genuine stampede on the floor of the convention leads to his nomination. Coolidge is known for breaking the Boston police strike in 1919.

 

The Democratic Convention is also a multi-ballot affair that leads to the nomination of Ohio governor James Cox, a favorite of the big city bosses. Unlike the Republican Convention the Democratic bosses left no tracks. Ironically both Harding and Cox are newspaper publishers from the same state. Nevertheless, the decision of the voter in November was clear. Both Harding and the Republicans in congress won a blowout victory. One of Harding’s first acts is to pardon Socialist candidate Eugene Debs who was serving in prison, an act that Wilson refused to do.

 

Where Pietrusza is acute is his character sketches of the book’s major protagonists. Wilson is a stubborn old man, Harding is in way over his head, Hoover, though brilliant is cold and austere and Coolidge, though quiet is a dedicated public servant. This book is a great read for political junkies. I learned that the Republicans put a mild anti-lynching plank written by the NAACP and that the seeds for Roosevelt’s 1932 run were planted in 1920 where he collected the names of leading Democrats throughout the country during his vice-presidential campaign.

For the full Amazon URL see: A Rocky Road to Normalcy (amazon.com)

My Amazon Review of Jon Meacham's "The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels"

Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Liberty

As I write this review Jon Meacham’s  “The Soul of America” is Number One on the New York Times Bestseller List and deservedly so. This book should be required reading for every Republican member of Congress who is afraid to stand up to Donald Trump. After reading “The Soul of America” they will realize that standing up to him would put them on the side of the greats of American history. Further radical leftists who seem to hate everything about America should read “Soul…” because they will learn that America is a work in progress towards a more perfect union. They will learn that when the chips were down such dead white guys as Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and yes Ronald Reagan did a pretty good job in moving our country forward. Hopefully they will also realize that the multi-cultural America of today brought us Donald Trump.

Meacham tells great stories as to when and how America was going off track, the better angels of our nature took command. For example when slavery divided our land, Lincoln unified it. When a few year later the KKK was running wild, Grant crushed them. I wish Meacham would have done a “might have been” had James Garfield survived his assassination and reinstituted reconstruction. Segregation might have died in its crib in the 1880s instead of waiting until 1954.

Meacham gives credit to both Harding and Coolidge in their defusing the 1920s revival of the KKK. This bit of history is not generally taught. Where Meacham is most acute is his discussion of Huey Long’s challenge to Roosevelt in the 1930s. Here was a politician who understood media and would say practically anything to get attention. Sound familiar. Similarly when much of the country was terrorized by the very media savvy Joe McCarthy in the 1950s, Republican Senator Margaret Chase Smith stood up to him and his henchman, Roy Cohn. Although Eisenhower did not act quickly his wait him out strategy worked as McCarthy burned himself out. The link to today is Roy Cohn who mentored Trump in the dark arts in the 1970s and early 1980s.

Meacham also intertwines the stories of Lyndon Johnson and Martin Luther King in their bringing on the civil rights revolution of the 1960s. He also rightly notes that much of the progress achieved by our leaders were brought about by very active citizen movements giving backbone to our better angels.

I have few criticisms of the book. He rightly notes how Truman’s victory over the segregationist Strom Thurmond in 1948 led to the desegregating of the military. However, had the Republican Tom Dewey won, it probably would have happened anyway. Dewey as governor of New York led the fight for path breaking civil rights legislation. Also although he gives some credit to Lyndon Johnson in his role in passing the 1957 civil rights act, much of the credit should go to Attorney General Herbert Brownell who authored the initial bill that was watered down by Johnson. The lesson here is that there are more than a few better angels among us and they can come from very unexpected places.

So let us hope there are angels in place to lead us away from a president who lies when he is moving his lips and divides us by appealing to our most base instincts. It’s time to get to work as we are called to defend liberty.

The complete Amazon URL appears at: https://www.amazon.com/review/R1QF2ABV7S5MMU/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv