Wickedness (Last Cri de Coeur Detour—Promise!)

I'm at my favorite place today, the Regenstein Library at the University of Chicago, doing what I like best, wandering the stacks for a research project (I just now got a contact high from the bindery smell). Took a wrong turn at the JK 2359's while searching for this indispensable masterpiece and spied book-stack nirvana: a manila envelope. In this particular neck of the library, that usually means a satchel-full of ancient political pamphlets. My heart raced; and the enveloped, which now sits at my elbow, did not disappoint. I've meant not to dwell any longer the inherent malevolence of conservative campaign rhetoric, for reasons that will become clearer in tomorrow's posts. But I just had to share this.

It's marked "1940 Campaign, Unbound Material," and consists of of pamphlets meant to elect Wendell Willkie, widely considered by history a moderate Republican (and, by conservatives, a quisling liberal Republican), and defeat Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The other day I dated the kind of right-wing smear that targets the lizard brain while pretending to offer rational argument back to RN and 1956. It goes back way further, of course. I have before me what purports, in its interior, to be a dry 72-page pamphlet from the Republican National Committtee filled with column after column of budgetary numbers from Roosevelt's administration.

And whose startling scarlet-colored cover reads, "THE ROOSEVELT RECORD IN RED!" ("'It has taken courage for the Federal Goverment to go into the 'red',***but it has been worth it."'—President Franklin D. Roosevelt, at Covingto, Ky, July 7, 1938.")

Oh, to be a liberal blogger in that halcyon year of 1940, pointing out the obvious fact that the Republicans were insinuating that FDR was a Communist. Oh, to read the outraged cackles of the Depression-era wingnut trolls! "Paranoid Perlstein's smoking the reefer! Obliviously 'red' means deficit spending! For God's sake, we quote Roosevelt himself! Perlstein's the one calling FDR a Commie, not us!"

(Snaps suspenders.) "Heck, our pamphlet's even got a two-page index!!" ("Glass, Carter, on bank holdings of gov't obligations, 45.")

Here's a palm card:

THINK!
"Who nominated Hitler"—Hitler.
"Who nominated Mussolini?"—Mussolini.
"Who nominated Stalin?"—Stalin.
"Who nominated Roosevelt?"—Roosevelt.
"Who nominated Willkie?"—THE PEOPLE.
VOTE FOR WILLKIE

Another palm card neatly played to that year's Republican isolationist sentiment; Willkie was promising no foreign wars, claiming Roosevelt simply pined for one. Top says:

YOU WILL GET A
Roosevelt
And
WWallace
DEAL WITH THE NEW DEAL.

Turn it over 180 degrees, and the bottom, upside down, reads:

YOU WILL GET A
WWallace
And
Roosevelt
DEAL WITH THE NEW DEAL.

Down the side, rightside down and rightside up:

Either Way It Spells DISASTER.

Niftily, that shares the envelope with a pamphlet full of testimonials from the likes of Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver and Lessing J. Rosenwald for "Wendell L. Willkie, Uncompromising foe of dictators and valiant defender of democracy • Lifelong enemy of Intolerance and Bigotry." No isolationist he!

(At least in pamphlets distributed in Jewish neighborhoods.)

Another lalapalooza, though, "Why a Third Term?" was surely reserved for gentiles. It explains why, "Rolling about the country to inspect military and naval establishments, Roosevelt is endeavoring to convince the American people that noother man can direct the defense program."

But why all this sudden concern with armaments? Not, the RNC assures us, because of any gathering war clouds. The section is entitled, "National Defense Smoke Screen," and continues:

But the country has awakened to the realization that his real desire is a complete and totalitarian authority over business, labor, agriculture, and all sources of public information under the guise of national defense."

After all, as this 1940-vintage Swiftboat concludes:

Andrew Jackson, whom Roosevelt has adopted a his patron saint, expressed his opposition to a Third Term with his customary vigor, though he easily could have been reelected for life.... There is, however, one outstanding endorsement of a Third Term for Roosevelt, delivered in 1939, it reads:

"The tradition of the Third Term in the Presidency must be set aside and President Roosevelt reelected."

Earl Browder, candidate of the Communist party for President, made that statement. He is now in a Federal penitentiary, serving a term for use of a false passport.

Do the voters of this democratic nation agree with Washington, Jefferson and Jackson—or with Earl Browder?

Shall we restore democratic government with Wendell Willkie, or lose it with Franklin D. Roosevelt?"

My friends, that's not change we can believe in.