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The John Batchelor Show

OCTOBER 31, 1936, LITERARY DIGEST, 2 MILLION POSTCARDS: ALF LANDON 57%, 370 ELECTORAL VOTES: 6/8: Roosevelt Sweeps Nation: FDR’s 1936 Landslide and the Triumph of the Liberal Ideal by David Pietrusza (Author)

The John Batchelor Show

John Batchelor

Society & Culture, Arts, News, Books

4.52.8K Ratings

🗓️ 9 September 2024

⏱️ 9 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

OCTOBER 31, 1936, LITERARY DIGEST, 2 MILLION POSTCARDS: ALF LANDON 57%, 370 ELECTORAL VOTES: 6/8: Roosevelt Sweeps Nation: FDR’s 1936 Landslide and the Triumph of the Liberal Ideal by David Pietrusza (Author)

https://www.amazon.com/Roosevelt-Sweeps-Nation-Landslide-Triumph/dp/1635767776

Award-winning historian David Pietrusza boldly steers clear of the pat narrative regarding Franklin Roosevelt’s unprecedented 1936 re-election landslide, weaving an enormously more intricate, ever more surprising tale of a polarized nation; of America’s most complex, calculating, and politically successful president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, at the very top of his Machiavellian game; and the unlocking of the puzzle of how our society, our politics, and our parties fitfully reinvented themselves.


With in-depth examinations of rabble-rousing Democratic US Senator Huey Long and his assassination before he was able to challenge FDR in ’36; powerful, but widely hated, newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst, who blasted FDR’s “Raw Deal”; wildly popular, radical radio commentator Father Coughlin; the steamrolled passage of Social Security and backlash against it; the era’s racism and anti-Semitism; American Socialism and Communism; and a Supreme Court seemingly bent on dismantling the New Deal altogether, Roosevelt Sweeps Nation is a vivid portrait of a dynamic Depression-Era America.
1943 AND PRESIDENT OF BOLIVIA

Transcript

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0:00.0

I'm John Batch with David Petruia, Roosevelt Sweeps Nation, and we go to the nominees for the Republican Party in 1936

0:12.0

in 1936 to face the president running for re-election.

0:16.2

President weighed down by all these opponents and we need a Republican opponent because

0:21.0

that will be the major party and the first Republican opponent, because that will be the major party.

0:23.2

And the first Republican opponent in the president's mind is, I want to run against Hoover.

0:28.0

Does the Republican Party want to run Hoover, David?

0:31.6

Well, you might not want to re-litigate 1929 and 1932 again. So while there's a little

0:39.5

bit of nostalgia for him and he gives a whiz bang talk at the Republican National Convention.

0:47.0

No, the answer is absolutely not. We don't want to go there again.

0:52.0

And Hoover reluctantly backs away.

0:56.0

I say reluctantly because he's making better speeches now.

0:59.0

You note that he's not stuck the way he was in 28, very hard, very difficult and what you say slow-paced

1:07.8

presentation.

1:08.8

He's making much inferior remarks, but we need to go to the other choice, at least early in the year, William

1:15.3

Bora, known as the Lion of Idaho, another character that you can't make up David.

1:20.5

So much of this strikes me all these decades later as as characters out of

1:25.3

a novel not out of history. What do we need to know about Bora and did Roosevelt want

1:29.7

to run against Bora?

1:32.1

Bora was a old line progressive, but the very definition of a Maverick.

1:39.9

He rarely supported a Republican candidate for president.

1:45.5

And often when he didn't, he just sit sit it out in terms of peak.

1:50.7

He was also, aside from being the lion of Idaho, he was the stallion of Boise and got around, shall we say.

...

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