Monthly Archives: December 2014

Decision ’56

04 Thursday Dec 2014

Posted by in Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President)

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Here is an interesting little piece that fell into my hands yesterday. It is a pullout from the New York Herald Tribune printed for the 1956 presidential election. The pullout is neutral but I would imagine the Herald Tribune itself was for Eisenhower. It was Ike’s favorite newspaper.

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The maps break down each election quite handsomely. Now that we have that thing called the internet we pull up information at the snap of our fingers. It is easy to forget today how difficult it once was to find news and information. Even twenty years ago this was true.

The states are color coded green and orange. Today we say red state/blue state as shorthand for so many things. I wouldn’t belabor the point, but it is worth noting that these designations only entered our vocabulary in recent years.

Note how Theodore Roosevelt’s 1904 victory broke down along regional lines. Also, by 1912 Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arizona have achieved statehood. The forty-eight contiguous states were now all part of the Union. Geography has so much to teach.

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It is amazing how quickly the party realignment took place. Look at the difference between Herbert Hoover’s 1928 victory and Franklin Roosevelt’s in 1932.

“As goes Maine so goes Vermont.” That’s what Alf Landon said after he lost the 1936 landslide to FDR. Your humble writer is old enough to remember Alf Landon. Really.

You can see how in 1940 Roosevelt lost the strongly isolationist Midwest.

Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt appeared on the national ticket eight time between 1900 and 1944.

They lose a little something in the snapshots I took with my phone camera, but the maps are brilliantly stunning in their simplicity. C.S. Hammond & Co. produced them. Some of the company’s papers are now in the Library of Congress. Again, these were printed on newsprint almost sixty years ago.

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On the back they even gave you a chart to keep track of the election results.

 

 

 

Rediscovering Geoffrey Ward

02 Tuesday Dec 2014

Posted by in Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace (NPS), Writing

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Springwood: the birthplace and home of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Hyde Park, New York

Springwood: the birthplace and lifelong home of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Hyde Park, New York

Now that a few months have gone by since its premier, visitors to the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace have come to the house with a chance to absorb Ken Burns’s The Roosevelts: An Intimate History. Many folks, including yours truly, found it exhausting to take in two hours nightly for almost a week when it first showed. This past Saturday a couple visited who were in town for the long Thanksgiving Weekend. They had done Hyde Park on Friday and were now getting a dose of Theodore. That is becoming less unusual.

One of my favorite aspects of the Roosevelt documentary is that Geoffrey Ward received a considerable amount of facetime. I have always maintained that Ward plays the role of Larry David to Ken Burns’s Jerry Seinfeld. That is, Ward and Burns work together much in the way David and Seinfeld did. The public knows Seinfeld and Burns because they are the brand names. Behind the scenes though, Ward and David are very much equals to their more famous colleagues. Much of what you see on screen is theirs, even if the public doesn’t realize that.

I noted with pleasure yesterday that two of Ward’s long out-of-print titles are now back. My Kindle tells me that I am now 8% finished with Before the Trumpet: Young Franklin Roosevelt, 1882-1905 after having downloaded it last night from my local library. That’s good because after that there is A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt, 1905-1928 waiting in the wings. These were just re-published in September, presumably to coincide with the PBS documentary’s release.

The “1928” brings FDR up to the election where he takes the New York governor’s mansion. I cannot help but wonder if Ward intended to write additional volumes that would bring the story up to 1945. If so, here is hoping he picks up the project. In the meantime, these two works will hopefully get the attention they deserve.