In 1928, Democratic governor Al Smith of New York became the first Roman Catholic in American history nominated by a major political party to run for president of the United States. Smith was a progressive Democrat, advocating reformist social policies, economic programs favorable to labor, federal control of the power industry, and the repeal of Prohibition. Smith’s progressive bent was both alike and dissimilar to the legacy of William Jennings Bryan, the Great Commoner. Smith, who lacked a college education and who spoke with the accent of a New York workingman, was representative of common folk, much like Bryan, the archetypal prairie politician. But in an important contrast to Bryan, Smith’s reforms spoke to the immigrant and Catholic citizens of the industrial and urban Northeast, whereas Bryan’s populism was spun from the more traditional, agrarian, Protestant attitudes of the South and the more rural areas of the Midwest and the West. But Bryan’s influence had been fading, and Smith, like other New York governors before and since, had emerged as the principal leader in the party in the aftermath of the disastrous Campaign of 1924.
Smith would face Republican candidate Herbert Hoover, an engineer, humanitarian, and expert administrator for both Democrats (under Wilson) and Republicans (under Harding and Coolidge) alike, and one of the most capable men of his time. Hoover, in some ways, was a marked contrast to Smith: a Quaker from rural Iowa, educated as an engineer at Stanford, a supporter of Prohibition, and a firm adherent to the principles of government frugality; but in other ways, he was like Smith in that he was a thoroughly self-made man who had combined real talent with discipline and integrity to rise to the top of his calling, public service. Hoover and Smith held other things in common as well: Both men were genuinely dedicated to principles of honest service, and both had earned their reputations as solid and trustworthy statesmen. Furthermore, the two men also held in common the angularity, compared to predominant social norms, of their religious beliefs. Although they were important elements in helping to shape, along with so many other groups, an exceedingly heterogeneous American society and culture, both Quakers and Catholics were nonetheless still very rare breeds of cat at the highest level of national politics. Catholics might pull considerable weight in state and local politics in places like New York and Massachusetts, and particularly in the urbanized areas of the Northeast and the Midwest; but presidential politics at the national level was still a game largely enjoyed by Protestants and one that, as the previous campaign in 1924 once again proved, did not welcome Catholics. The same could also be said of Quakers, who were never until now players in the presidential hunt. (Curiously, the only other time a Roman Catholic Democrat would run for president as a major party’s nominee, in that case John F. Kennedy, would be coincidentally against another Republican from a Quaker background, Richard M. Nixon—thirty-two years after the Hoover-Smith contest.) It might well be said that together, these two presidential candidates (and Kennedy and Nixon after them) embodied the meaning of the First Amendment’s protection of religious liberty.
The Republican National Convention in Kansas City was uneventful. With President Coolidge refusing to seek a second term in spite of his popularity and efforts by some of his supporters to initiate a “draft Coolidge” movement, Hoover easily emerged as the clear front-runner long before the convention convened. Hoover had drawn national attention since the convention of 1920 and had already been considered the future of the party. Thus Hoover effortlessly polled 837 delegates on the first ballot to 247 for the rest of the field of eight—Frank Lowden, the former governor of Illinois who had been considered as a candidate in 1920, and Charles Curtis, Senate majority leader from Kansas, leading the also-rans with 74 and 64 votes, respectively. For the vice presidency, the party tapped Curtis with virtually no contest.
The Republicans carried into the campaign a gleaming record of four years of unprecedented prosperity under Coolidge. That said, there were signs of trouble in some sectors of the economy, especially in agriculture, where farmers were experiencing significant economic stress. Looking back, the problems of American farms prefigured things to come; but in 1928, most Americans were swept up in the tide of economic growth and vitality, and this greatly fueled Hoover’s campaign. “Who but Hoover?” was the rallying slogan, and indeed, given the Republicans’ history of dominating the White House since the Civil War and the general mood of the country, it would be hard to imagine Hoover falling short. His campaign was nearly flawless. As Coolidge had before him, Hoover managed to minimize controversial issues, and he projected a statesmanlike image of competence and nonpartisan expertise that made him appear irreproachable. His record of public service, easy for all to see, was far more impressive than either of his two most recent Republican predecessors—or for that matter, any of the candidates nominated by either party in the past two elections, all of whom seemed to pale in comparison to Hoover. Even Wilson, whose image had been somewhat tarnished by disappointment over the war and its aftermath, seemed to some critics at that time to be less capable than Hoover.
In Houston, the Democrats mirrored the Republicans, nominating Governor Smith on the first ballot; and for the third time (running back to the convention of 1916), Smith was nominated by his close friend and protégé Franklin Roosevelt, who, as he had in 1924, again delighted in referring to his candidate as the Wordsworthian “Happy Warrior.” In marked contrast to the seemingly interminable balloting at the deadlocked 1924 convention, at this convention, Smith won 849 delegates to 379 scattered among a field of 13 also-rans (Tennessee’s Cordell Hull leading this group with a meager 71 votes). Joseph T. Robinson of Arkansas was selected on the first ballot to run for the vice presidency without any significant challenge. Smith was a colorful, able, and engaging candidate, but he faced a nearly insurmountable task: decades of Republican dominance in presidential politics; a strong economy that, at least on appearances, seemed to be primed for an even more prosperous future; a skilled and respected opponent in Hoover; and social prejudice against his religious affiliation.
Anti-Catholicism was again on the rise in American society and politics. The United States had already experienced waves of Know-Nothing anti-Catholic sentiment in the nineteenth century, and a new wave was swelling through American political culture in the 1920s. Set into motion by disenchantment with “foreign” influences owing to the rise of immigration and the social aftershocks of the Great War, and fueled by the reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan and other militant nativist groups, anti-Catholic prejudice climaxed as Smith accepted his party’s standard for president. The new edition of anti-Catholicism that strengthened in the early 1920s was mixed with attitudes of racism that had been tinged by social Darwinism, making for an even more virulent strain. The Anglo-Nordic race was viewed as somehow inherently superior, a naturally more successful race that had, as it so happened, embraced Protestantism while “less desirable” ethnic groups clung to Catholicism and Judaism. To counter these attitudes, Robinson, a Southern Protestant and a “dry,” was selected as Smith’s running mate, in part to serve as a counterpoise in the hopes of easing the concerns harbored by the Protestant majority within the national electorate; but as it is a maxim of electoral politics that no one really votes for the vice presidency, Smith’s Catholicism remained a central issue throughout, Robinson’s faith being of no interest. Extremist groups like the Klan warned that a “vote for Al Smith [was] a vote for the Pope,” and, given Smith’s support of the repeal of Prohibition, the old chestnut, dating back to the 1880s, of “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion” (one that actually had then backfired against its purveyors) was this time intentionally repackaged as “Rum, Romanism, and Ruin.” Adding further insult, critics, connecting Smith’s Catholicism to his “wet” attitudes but twisting them to indict the candidate’s personal habits, asked, “Shall America Elect a Cocktail President?” “Al-coholic” Smith, according to his less restrained (and pun-induced) enemies, secretly planned to move the pope to Washington and annul Protestant marriages once in office. Such was the hysteria of the times in the minds of those who combined religious prejudice with xenophobia and racialism.
The South in particular harbored anti-Catholicism (although not every Southerner shared these views), and a great deal of propaganda was circulated claiming that the pope’s designs on dominating American society were so strong that they would turn any Catholic politician (viz., Democratic candidate for president Al Smith) into a puppet of the Vatican. Anti-Semitism also increased. Embarrassingly, public figures such as Henry Ford advocated purging the country of unwelcome foreign influence, a prescription that included a dark suggestion to “put down the Jews.” Predictably, the Klan combined its hatred of African Americans with bigotry against both Jews and Catholics, and the lynching of individuals from all three groups—African Americans, Jews, and Catholics—was not uncommon. Any adherents of non-Protestant religions and any members of ethnic groups other than Americans descended from northern Europeans were vulnerable to the attacks of extremist groups. Many of those who exhibited these bigoted attitudes were indeed on the social fringe, but enough individuals in both the mainstream of society and the political leadership of both parties held similar prejudices, enough to severely impair Smith’s efforts. In the Atlantic Monthly, for instance, an invited open letter questioned the compatibility of Catholic theology and the Canon Law of the Catholic Church with the principles of the U.S. Constitution, and Smith’s alleged subservience to papal leadership was a common refrain. In the Christian Century, a Protestant (nondenominational) journal, Smith’s religion was described as “an alien culture, a Medieval Latin mentality, of an undemocratic hierarchy.”
Smith was at a loss as to how to respond to all of this. At one point, upon being asked how he would apply papal decrees to public policy, a perplexed Smith admitted that he had never even read a papal encyclical or bull, even though he was an observant Catholic. Initially, Smith deliberately ignored the issue of his religious affiliation, but eventually he found himself forced to circulate a response in an effort to mollify the concerns of the public at large. “I recognize,” Smith averred, “no power in the institutions of my Church to interfere with the operations of the Constitution of the United States or the enforcement of the law of the land.” While the statement, which also stressed the inviolability of freedom of conscience, separation of church and state, and secular public education, was well received in the mainstream press and among most leaders in the Protestant clergy, the anti-Catholic propaganda engine continued its relentless attack on Smith’s faith. Smith tried again, this time broadcasting his position to a national audience from a radio station in Oklahoma City, wherein he shared the campaign endorsements of prominent Protestant supporters of goodwill, emphasizing the close connection between religious bigotry and groups like the Ku Klux Klan and reminding listeners that religious intolerance was anathema to the principles of the American founding, especially as epitomized in the writings of Thomas Jefferson. Even with many of the country’s more notable Protestant leaders defending Smith, prejudices against him nonetheless continued.
Making matters still worse, these prejudices were further amplified by Smith’s erstwhile association with Tammany Hall, an affiliation that no longer held his allegiance but nonetheless a past connection that he could not shake. Typical of New York political culture, Smith owed his initial political success to the support of Tammany, and now the chickens were coming home to roost. The corrupt image of the urban political machine was, understandably, an easy target for critics of big-city politics, and many voters saw Smith as the product of the political boss and the iniquitous culture of graft. These machine connections hurt Smith’s case, perhaps as much as his religion. By contrast, Hoover was genuinely independent of the machine system; having made his mark through skillful performance and enduring achievement, he owed absolutely nothing to any power brokers or patrons. Hoover thus projected a safer, cleaner, more reassuring image of political autonomy and administrative competence that appealed to the heartland; Smith seemed at once far too atypical in his beliefs and far too typical in his associations. Piling on more negative imagery, Smith and his wife were unkindly represented as too unsophisticated for the White House, often depicted by their more strident critics as coarse, even vulgar, and a potential embarrassment to the American public, especially when dealing with sophisticated foreign dignitaries who would be more accustomed to and comfortable with the refinements of diplomacy. Finally, among the many scare tactics employed by the Republicans were claims that the election of a social progressive such as Smith would result in other minority groups—especially African Americans (who as voters were still loyal to the GOP)—gaining unfairly at the expense of the white majority. Thus both the religion card and the race card were cynically dealt and, combined with unkind rumors about Smith’s character and manners, effectively damaged the Democrats’ strongest candidate, at least in terms of proven ability, since Wilson.
For his part, Hoover avoided mudslinging and openly expressed his feelings that Smith’s religious views were irrelevant, running a no-nonsense campaign stressing his own outstanding record, the sane policies that he favored, the achievements of his predecessor President Coolidge, and the prosperity historically secured by Republican administrations. Hoover not only did not need to resort to vulgar tactics and ad hominem attacks, but it really was not his practice. Hoover’s professionalism and sense of personal dignity prevented him from stooping to the nastiness displayed by a good many of his supporters. The advantages for Hoover of a strong economy, at least on the surface of things, cannot be overstated. While Smith was distracted by the controversies regarding his religion, past connections to Tammany Hall, the implications that his election might have for racial and ethnic issues, his personal habits and alleged weaknesses, his upbringing, and his stand on Prohibition, Hoover was able to emulate Coolidge by keeping cool, hovering above the fray, staying close to Washington, and quietly relying on the proven Republican record. “A Chicken in Every Pot” became the defining Republican slogan, as the voters would be asked, “Is your bread buttered?” and then prompted to “remember hard times when we had a Democratic president. You can’t eat promises. Play safe! Vote a straight Republican ticket!” Smith could not dismantle the claims of his opponents, and Hoover benefited from the good times, high spirits, and general optimism of the Roaring Twenties, especially in the urban centers where the real electoral clout was to be found.
Thus on Election Day, the Republicans enjoyed yet another electoral triumph in a sequence of recent landslide victories. How much of this was attributed to religious bigotry is unclear. The GOP did hold a strong suit of cards going into the campaign, and the odds are that Smith would have lost even if he had not been Catholic. Would he have fought a closer race? Again, that is a question that eludes any readily available answer. In any event, the results of the race were evident—the Republicans held their dominance with ease. While losing in a landslide, Smith’s numbers were not as meager as either those of Davis in 1924 or Cox in 1920. Hoover impressively won over 21,400,000 votes, or 58 percent of the popular total, far exceeding even Coolidge’s considerable victory over Davis in 1924. Smith fared better than Davis in the total popular vote, winning just over 15,000,000, which almost doubled Davis’s total and actually was close to what Coolidge needed to win in the previous general election. But it amounted to only 40 percent of the popular vote—a larger share than what Davis or Cox had drawn, it is true, but still 18 percentage points behind Hoover. Socialist candidate Norman Thomas won just over 267,000 votes for the balance of the remainder, evidence that the heyday of this minor party was behind it.
In the Electoral College, Hoover carried a record 40 states to Smith’s 8 for a total of 444 electoral votes to Smith’s 87. Not only did Hoover hold the traditional GOP strongholds for the time, but he also cracked into the South, winning Virginia, Florida, Tennessee, Texas, North Carolina, and the border state of Kentucky. It was the first time since the controversial election of 1876 that Florida went to a Republican, the first time since 1872 that Virginia and North Carolina voted for a Republican, and the first time ever that a Republican took Texas. Even though Hoover had decimated the Democrats, there was one small glimmer of hope, for the Democrats won Massachusetts and Rhode Island, traditional Republican bastions, for the first time since the Republican Party fielded a national candidate in 1856. The last time the Democrats took Rhode Island was 1852, when it went with Franklin Pierce; and the only time prior to 1928 that the Democrats won Massachusetts was in 1836: the Van Buren election. Smith also showed well in his home state of New York, where he lost by only two percentage points (Davis and Cox had been utterly humiliated there in the previous two elections). Smith’s defeat was indeed thorough, but the fact that he managed to snag two hitherto impenetrable Republican bastions and vastly improve the party’s position in New York, even in the face of what was otherwise a complete landslide, served as a vague portent of things to come.
Hoover became the thirty-first president, and the country appeared to be moving optimistically forward into ever-expanding affluence at home and assured peace abroad. With another electoral landslide behind them, the Republicans as a party were at the height of their power, prepared to meet the promise of the oncoming decade and confident that the voters had made the intelligent choice in answer to a question posed by one of their more ironic campaign boilerplates: “Prosperity didn’t just happen. Hoover and happiness or Smith and soup houses? Which shall it be?” But just under the surface, menacing forces were already stirring, both at home and abroad, that would soon show a dramatically different future for the American people—one that would bear unprecedented suffering for the human race, and one that would produce the preeminent politician of the twentieth century.
Finan, Christopher M. Alfred E. Smith: The Happy Warrior. New York: Hill & Wang, 2002.
Fuchs, Lawrence. “Election of 1928.” In Arthur M. Schlesinger and Fred L. Israel, eds. History of American Presidential Politics, 1789–1968. Vol. 3. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971.
Graff, Henry. “1928,” In Arthur M. Schlesinger, Fred L. Israel, and David J. Frent, eds. Running for President: The Candidates and Their Images. Vol. 2. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994.
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Lichtman, Allan. Prejudice and Old Politics: The Presidential Election of 1928. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1970.