This Week in History

September 17 — 23, 1944.

Franklin Roosevelt Opens His 1944 Presidential Campaign with Devastating Humor

Even in the midst of major Allied victories in Europe and the Pacific Theater, the assault against President Roosevelt's policies continued unabated. With the opening of the 1944 presidential campaign, and Roosevelt's decision that he must run again in order to ensure a lasting peace and a program of postwar economic development, the whispering campaigns and direct attacks from Republican candidate Thomas E. Dewey were sharply escalated.

Dewey, who was the current Governor of New York, had made his name as a district attorney who prosecuted Legs Diamond and Lucky Luciano. He started his campaign for the presidency early, and was soon hip-deep in appealing to racial and religious prejudices. In addition, he took on the role of Red-baiter, claiming that the Communists were seizing control of the New Deal, the better to take over the government. According to Dewey, a Communist was anyone "who supported the fourth term so our form of government may be more easily changed."

Roosevelt commented to one of his speechwriters that Dewey "plays the part of the heroic racket-buster in one of those gangster movies. He talks to the people as if they were the jury and I were the villain on trial for his life." In the sheer virulence of their attacks, Dewey's backers exposed not only their actual ideology, but also the extent to which they were willing to lie. The Republican campaign attempted to re-write what was then recent American history, a fifteen-year history which almost everyone of voting age knew something about.

Roosevelt let them dig themselves in deeper and deeper until he had a good opportunity to answer them. It came in the form of a long-planned September 23 speech to a Teamsters Union banquet in Washington, D.C., which was also carried on nationwide radio. There was a very large radio audience for the speech, as rumors had been circulating about the poor state of the president's health, eagerly fanned by the Dewey campaign.

The weapon Roosevelt chose to wield against his opponent was humor. He was greeted with a six-minute ovation even before the radio broadcast began, but as the speech progressed, the applause was almost drowned out by the audience's laughter.

Roosevelt opened with: "Well, here we are together again - after four years - and what years they have been! You know, I am actually four years older, which is a fact that seems to annoy some people. In fact, in the mathematical field there are millions of Americans who are more than eleven years older than when we started in to clear up the mess that was dumped in our laps in 1933.

"We all know that certain people who make it a practice to depreciate the accomplishments of labor - who even attack labor as unpatriotic - they keep this up usually for three years and six months in a row. But then, for some strange reason they change their tune - every four years - just before election day. When votes are at stake, they suddenly discover that they really love labor and that they are anxious to protect labor from its old friends...."

"I need not recount to you the centuries of history which have been crowded into these four years since I saw you last.

"There were some - in the Congress and out - who raised their voices against our preparations for defense - before and after 1939 - objected to them, raised their voices against them as hysterical war mongering, who cried out against our help to the Allies as provocative and dangerous. [Dewey had straddled the fence on aid to the Allies in 1940-41.] We remember the voices. They would like to have us forget them now. But in 1940 and 1941 - my, it seems a long time ago - they were loud voices. Happily they were a minority and - fortunately for ourselves, and for the world - they could not stop America.

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