Election Results: President-Reject

“I congratulate you heartily on your victory and extend to you my sincere good wishes for your health and happiness, and for the success of your administration.

Alfred Smith.”

Doom came to the President-reject in a cavernous Manhattan armory. He went to it, with a plentiful supply of cigars, from his wife’s birthday party, a strange party over which had hung the atmosphere of a tremendous uncertainty.

He sat down among some 700 other anticipants, most of them Tammany politicians but with a sprinkling of the general public. A girl, just “a” girl, had the chair next him. He had never seen her before, did not know her name (Edna Ryder) but he talked with her from time to time. He looked thoughtful, years older than when he voted in the morning. He heard the encouraging early bulletins and the later, foreboding ones, without comment.

“The man who gives it must be ready to take it,” he had said.

About 11:30 he said, “There isn’t any doubt about it now. Hoover is elected.”

He went back to the Biltmore to see Mrs. Smith. She had been crying, but smiled when she saw him. Others there could not stop crying. “Now, now, don’t do that,” he said. He was smiling, with a white daisy in his buttonhole.

He went over to the General Motors Building to telegraph Mr. Hoover and say goodnight to Mr. Raskob. John William Davis was there, smiling. “We’re used to it,” said Mr. Davis. “Maybe 25 years from now—”

Empty Measure. If it is bitter to lose the Presidency, how much more bitter it must have been to lose one’s right to run for the Presidency. His supposed ability to carry mighty New York had been the President-reject’s right-to-run. Many a Democrat had regarded the Smith candidacy of 1928 as a test of what might be in 1932. Among more than 4,000,000 votes, the Hoover margin of 100,000 over Smith in New York was not numerically enormous. But psychologically it loomed as the terminus of the brief, embattled Smith leadership in the national Democracy. It silenced any reproaches that might have been uttered against the party-faithless South. The victories in Massachusetts and Rhode Island only intensified the disappointment in New York. If those people had voted for him, and if arch-Republican Connecticut had come within 40,000 of chiming in, why had his own people forsaken him? The four times they had sent him to Albany, his plurality in New York City had always been about half a million. That would probably have been enough this time, at least to give him a start towards Washington.

Evidently a man could be a hero at home so long as he did not leave home. There was, of course, talk that Tammany Hall had “laid down” on the man that tried to outgrow it. But no such talk came from the man. He knew that people think differently about their Governor and their President; that New York City’s new registration was huge; that politics is not an exact science.

Down in Oliver Street, where Alfred E. Smith came from, they took the opportunity to vote for a home boy, 610 to 66. It may also have comforted him to know that he had received more actual votes than any man who had ever previously run for President. If his total popular vote should exceed 18,000,000, it would be double John W. Davis’ vote in 1924. And most of this he could rightfully attribute to himself rather than to the power of his party or the shrewdness of campaign managers.

Reasons. It could fairly be said that Governor Smith shared honors with the radio in getting out the largest Presidential vote on record. He was the chief attraction if not the leading issue. Why was he voted so far down by all the people? Republican protests to the contrary notwithstanding, the most frequent and forcible Democratic explanations were:

Religion—”A Roman Catholic cannot be President of the United States.” Proof of this statement is impossible, but many was the Republican who said: “If Smith had been a Protestant, he would have won.” Democrats insisted to the end that the religious issue did not originate in their own party during the McAdoo-Smith fight for nomination in 1924, or, if it did originate then, that it was fanned to flame again by auxiliary agencies of the G. O. P.

“Misrepresentations”—George N. Peek, the farmers’-friend to whom was entrusted some $500,000 and the task of Democratizing the discontented agricultural vote of the Midwest and Northwest, and whose failure to do so was mercifully merged with the Brown Derby’s national failure, insisted to the end that the farm vote was held for Hoover by “misrepresentations,” “fraud.”

Tammany. All Democrats admitted that their man’s connection with Tammany Hall weakened him nationally.

Snobbery. Democrats insisted that, stronger than any distinction as to honesty or ability, the electorate made a social distinction between the nominees; that the President-reject was “whispered” about for his lack of polish, for his spitting on floors, rough voice, vulgar accent. Democrats were only infuriated when Republicans, admitting this charge, said: “And why not?”

Hypocrisy. “If every one had voted the way they drink—” That was another undemonstrable probability. But the most embarrassing things Democrats said to Republicans had reference to the G. O. P.’s “domination” by the Anti-Saloon League, past and future (see p. 23).

Future. No lover of anticlimax, no man to misread the public mind twice, Alfred Emanuel Smith announced he was through with politics, for good. Friends offered mansions for him to rest in. Until January 1 he has his gubernatorial mansion at Albany. Said a colyumist, referring with admiration to the Smith campaign: “I’d rather be Smith than President.”

John J. Raskob, cheerful, used to vicissitudes, perhaps something of an opportunist, said: “… we … shall take our place in the ranks of the majority of American citizens whose desire is the future welfare of our country.” He was not to return to General Motors. Perhaps, said rumor, he would head a bigger & better motors combine, with du Ponts in it. Perhaps he would retire to his bayside estate among his children, farms, sailboats.