November 3, 1936: President Franklin D. Roosevelt Is Re-Elected

November 3, 1936: President Franklin D. Roosevelt defeats his Republican opponent, Governor Alfred M. Landon of Kansas, winning 46 out of 48 States, all but Vermont and Maine. He wins 523 Electoral Votes, Landon just 8. FDR wins 60.8 percent of the popular vote, to Landon's 36.5 percent.

Landon's next-best States? He won almost 48 percent in New Hampshire, almost 46 percent in his native Kansas, almost 45 percent in Delaware. If he had won those States, the Electoral Vote would have been 507-24 Roosevelt.

There were 8 other States where he got at least 40 percent. But even if he had won all of those, it would still have been 406-125 Roosevelt.

FDR increased his 1932 totals in part because black voters, still sticking with Herbert Hoover because he represented "the Party of Lincoln," saw that, while the Great Depression hit them harder than white people, as all economic slowdowns do, the New Deal helped them tremendously. (Though not fully: There was sharp criticism over a refusal to hire black people, including officials, in the various "Alphabet Soup" agencies.) Black voters gave Hoover a majority in 1932, but gave Roosevelt 71 percent of their vote in 1936.

In addition, Roosevelt broke the back of the Socialist movement in America. Norman Thomas, the Presbyterian minister who was the Socialist Party's nominee for President in every election from 1928 to 1948, was asked in 1936 if he thought Roosevelt had "carried out the Socialist platform." He said, "No, unless you mean he carried it out on a stretcher."

With Socialist labor leaders like Sidney Hillman, who ran the left-leaning Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), leading the way, people who had been voting Socialist voted Democratic. Thomas got 2.2 percent of the vote in 1932, but just 0.41 percent in 1936.

He actually finished 4th, behind the 1.9 percent of William Lemke, a former Republican Congressman from North Dakota. His Union Party was supported by such agitators as Father Charles Coughlin, the Detroit-based "radio priest" who turned on FDR for his seeming ingratitude in making the difference for him in 1932 (a delusion, as Coughlin's support made absolutely no difference); Gerald L.K. Smith, a Disciples of Christ minister from Wisconsin, who started out as a leftist populist like Senator Huey Long of Louisiana, whose Presidential ambitions died with his assassination in 1935, but turned far-right, and who was one of the few public figures in America willing to be as publicly anti-Semitic as Coughlin; and Francis Townsend, a California physician known for a pension plan that presaged the Social Security Act that FDR signed in 1935.

In other words, the Union Party couldn't decide whether it wanted to be far-left (like Townsend or Long) or far-right (like Coughlin and Smith), an early example of what would come to be known as "Horseshoe Theory": That each extreme began to resemble the other.

Aside from his home State of North Dakota, where he got 13 percent, Lemke's best performance was 6.6 percent in neighboring Minnesota. Thomas topped out at 1.5 percent in New York.

Seeing the array of would-be candidates for 1936 in 1935, including the still-living Long, who was bold enough to say, "I can take him," FDR said, "Gosh, everyone seems to be against me. Everyone but the people."

Because Maine had previously held its Presidential election a few weeks earlier, and it usually matched the vote in the country overall, there was a saying: "As Maine goes, so goes the nation." In November 1936, that became, "As Maine goes, so goes Vermont." Indeed, those would be the only 2 States that FDR never won. (Times have changed: Neither of those States have voted for the Republican Presidential nominee since 1988.)

A prankster put up a sign on the Badger's Island Bridge, over the Piscataqua River, connecting Portsmouth, New Hampshire with Kittery, Maine. Intended to be seen by people going to Maine, it read, "You are now leaving the United States."

Let the record show that Thomas did not swing a single State from Landon to Roosevelt. Nor did Lemke, with the possible exception of the other northern New England State, New Hampshire, where FDR got 49.7 percent, Landon got 48.0 percent, Lemke got 2.2 percent, and Thomas wasn't even on the ballot.

The Great Depression wasn't nearly as bad as it was in 1932, but by no means was it over. FDR winning was understandable -- but why by that much?

Well, the American people still did not trust the Republican Party. It had been just 4 years since the depth of the Depression. Plus, there were crazy people on the right wing back then, as there are now; and they made the GOP look not like the bunch of moderates their big names claimed to be, and Landon actually was, but like a bunch who couldn't be trusted with power.

Then there was the media. The major newspaper chains were all Republican-owned, and behind Landon. And in an era when they were the entirety of the media, Landon might have been a great candidate. He was smart, honest, and understood that he served the public, not the other way around. But this was now the era of radio and newsreels. He wasn't well-suited to it. FDR was.

The GOP didn't have anyone else who could beat FDR, either. Most of their big guns who had been elected in the Congressional elections of 1918, '20, '24 and '28 had been beaten in the elections of 1922, '26, '30, '32 and '34.

Finally, credit must be given to FDR: He was the master politician of his era, and his New Deal worked. Not perfectly, of course, but for the people for whom it did work, it was the difference between destitution and a living.

A story FDR liked to tell as he ran for a 2nd term in 1936 was this:

A wealthy man in a fine suit and top hat fell into deep water. He didn't know how to swim, and was on the verge of drowning. Hearing his cries, another man dove into the water, and saved him, as his top hat floated away. The man who had almost drowned regained his breath, and, for a moment, seemed grateful.

Three years later, though, he returned, and denounced his rescuer for not saving his hat, too!

The very rich, and their hired spokesmen, said FDR was trying to "destroy capitalism." Sound familiar? Their successors have said it about every Democratic President since.

Presidential candidates have frequently held rallies close to the election, sometimes in New York, sometimes in their hometowns. FDR, from Hyde Park, in Dutchess County, actually closer to Albany than to Midtown Manhattan, did have a home in Manhattan, so New York, for practical purposes, could be called his hometown. And so he had his close-to-Election Day rally at Madison Square Garden, arguably already, even though it did not use the slogan until well after its 1968 replacement was built, the world's most famous arena. Among other things, he said:

We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace -- business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.

Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me -- and I welcome their hatred.

I should like to have it said of my first Administration that, in it, the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that, in it, these forces met their master!

And so they did.

FDR would be elected to a 3rd term in 1940, and a 4th in 1944, dying in office in 1945. Landon would serve out his term as Governor, return to the oil industry where he had made his money, and never ran for office again. He lived to be 100 years old, dying in 1987. His daughter, Nancy Landon Kassebaum, served Kansas in the U.S. Senate from 1978 to 1997.

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November 3, 1936 was, as all American Election Days are, a Tuesday. Baseball season had ended the month before. Football was in midweek. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And hockey season wouldn't start for another 2 days. So there were no scores on this historic day. But a sports legend was born on this day: Australian tennis star Roy Emerson.

August 3, 1923: The Struggle to Inaugurate Calvin Coolidge

Artist's depiction of the Inauguration. There was no photographer present.

August 3, 1923: A new President of the United States must be sworn in. It becomes the most difficult Inauguration in the office's history. Not because of any external threat, real or imagined. And not because of any resistance to the peaceful transfer of power. But because of simple logistics, and the technology of the time.

Note: I originally had this entry as part of the one for the previous day, the death of Warren Harding. Then I checked to see if I had entries set in all 50 States, and found that I didn't have one for Vermont. So I chose this one, since it's probably the biggest thing ever to happen to Vermont.

At 10:30 PM, Eastern Time, the night before, President Warren G. Harding had died in San Francisco. Now, the Secret Service had to find the Vice President, Calvin Coolidge, former Governor of Massachusetts. Like Harding, he was escaping the Summer heat of Washington, D.C., staying at his family's homestead in Plymouth, Vermont, where he had been born on July 4, 1872. (This makes him, to this day, the only person born on the nation's birthday to become President.)

This was 1923, and less than half of all American homes had telephones. And the Coolidge Homestead did not have a telephone. But it shouldn't have been that hard to send a telegram. Well, they couldn't reach the Coolidge Homestead by telegram, either.

So, Secret Service Agents had to drive up from Boston, and knock on the front door of the Coolidge Homestead in the middle of the night. The unwitting new President's father, John Coolidge, a former Vermont State Senator, a notary public, and a justice of the peace, answered the door. The Agents discovered that this rural home -- 150 miles northwest of Boston, 100 miles northeast of Albany, and 100 miles southeast of Vermont's largest city, Burlington -- didn't even have electricity. The ceremony had to be conducted by candlelight.

At 2:47 AM Eastern Time -- meaning that, less than 100 years ago, there was a time when the nation didn't have a working President for over 4 hours -- Calvin Coolidge was administered the Oath of Office by his father. 

When John was asked by a reporter a few days later how he knew he could swear his son in, he said, "I didn't know that I couldn't." The legal basis for him being the person to swear the President in is a bit vague: He wasn't actually a judge, and every other person who has ever sworn a President in has been, at the very least, a judge.

Most have been the Chief Justice of the United States. This includes Salmon Chase, swearing in Andrew Johnson after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865; Harlan Stone, swearing in Harry Truman after the death of Franklin Roosevelt in 1945; and Warren Burger, swearing in Gerald Ford after the resignation of Richard Nixon in 1974. The others:

* April 30, 1789, George Washington, Federal Hall, New York: Robert Livingston, Chancellor of New York. In other words, the State's Chief Justice. There wasn't yet a Chief Justice of the country, because there wasn't yet a Supreme Court, because the Justices of that Court hadn't yet been appointed by the President, because there wasn't yet a President.

* April 6, 1841, John Tyler, Indian Queen Hotel, Washington: William Cranch, Chief Judge of the U.S. Circuit Court of the District of Columbia.

* July 10, 1850, Millard Fillmore, House of Representatives Chamber, U.S. Capitol, Washington: Cranch again.

* September 20, 1881, Chester Arthur, his apartment, New York: John R. Brady, a Justice of the Supreme Court of the State of New York.

* September 14, 1901, Theodore Roosevelt, Ansley Wilcox House, Buffalo, New York: John R. Hazel, Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York.

* November 22, 1963, Lyndon Johnson, aboard Air Force One, Love Field, Dallas: Sarah T. Hughes, Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. She remains the only woman to administer the Oath of Office to an incoming President.

Thus sworn in by his father, President Calvin Coolidge went back to bed, helping to feed the legend that he slept too much while he was President. The next morning, Coolidge was driven to Rutland, Vermont, where he took a train to Boston, and then another to Washington, where, just to be on the safe side, he was sworn in again, by a federal Judge, Adolph A. Hoehling Jr.

Calvin Coolidge ran for a term of his own in 1924, and, untainted by the Teapot Dome scandal that had engulfed Harding, won easily. On March 4, 1925, at the Capitol, he got a proper Inauguration, sworn in by the Chief Justice, himself a former President, William Howard Taft.

John Coolidge died in 1926. Calvin Coolidge did not run for a 2nd full term in 1928, and left office on March 4, 1929, with the Inauguration of Herbert Hoover. He died on January 5, 1933. His Presidency had so little drama, and Coolidge himself had so little personality, that, when the writer Dorothy Parker was informed that he had died, she said, "How can you tell?"

The Forbes Library in Northampton, in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts, where he lived while he was Mayor, has been converted into the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Library. However, Coolidge Corner, outside Boston in Brookline, Massachusetts, is not named for him. Instead, it's named for the now-defunct Coolidge & Brother general store. Only one high school in America has been named for Coolidge, in the Takoma Park section of the Northwest quadrant of Washington, D.C.

Statue, Plymouth, Vermont

He was played by Ian Wolfe in The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell in 1955, Ed Flanders in Backstairs at the White House in 1979, and Bruce McGill in Cristiada in 2012. (UPDATE: In 2023, he was played by Mark Landon Smith in Killers of the Flower Moon.)

Hoover ended up being the last surviving member of Coolidge's Cabinet, and also of Harding's, living until 1964.

Coolidge remains the last President born in Vermont. But none has ever represented the State in politics. Levi P. Morton, Vice President under Benjamin Harrison, was born in Vermont, but represented New York. The highest-ranking Vermont born politician is Patrick J. Leahy, who served as President Pro Tempore of the Senate from 2012 to 2015, and again from 2021 to 2023.

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August 3, 1923 was a Friday. It was the off-season for the NFL and the NHL, and the NBA hadn't been founded yet. And, out of respect to Harding, all games scheduled for August 3 were postponed. So there were no games on this historic day. The games would be again on August 10, the day of Harding's Washington funeral.

Actress Jean Hagen and fashion designer Anne Klein were born on this day.