(HOST) Tonight is the night of one of the most venerable Washington events at which politicians and others crack jokes at the expense of their opponents – and themselves. Here’s commentator and executive director of the Vermont Humanities Council Peter Gilbert with the details.
(GILBERT) The Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner is a fundraiser for Catholic charities at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City – and an important stop on the presidential campaign trail. Since the dinner began in 1945, the year after Al Smith’s death, only two Presidents have not spoken at the dinner: Harry Truman and Bill Clinton. In 2000 Texas Governor George W. Bush joked, "This is an impressive crowd. The haves and the have-mores. Some people call you the elite. I call you my base."
But younger Americans might not know who Al Smith was. Four-time New York Governor Al Smith was the Democratic candidate for President in 1928, and the first Roman Catholic and Irish-American to win the presidential nomination of a major party. Herbert Hoover beat him in a landslide – defeated, it was said, by "the three P’s: Prohibition, Prejudice, and Prosperity." With Prohibition not yet repealed, Smith was called a drunkard because of the Irish stereotypes of the day. Some people feared that a Catholic President would answer to the Pope and not the Constitution. And finally, the economy was booming, the stock market crash was 11 months in the future, and the strong economy benefited the incumbent, Republican, party.
Al Smith grew up in a tenement in Brooklyn; he was a newsboy and fishmonger. He never even attended high school; he dropped out of school at 14, after his father died. He identified himself with the working class, immigrants – a man of the people. He was a progressive who worked as Governor to make to make government more efficient and effective in meeting social needs.
When he lost the presidency, he felt ignored by his successor as New York’s governor, Franklin Roosevelt. And when they both sought their party’s nomination for President in 1932 and FDR won, Smith broke bitterly with Roosevelt, became an opponent of the New Deal, and even supported President Roosevelt’s Republican challengers in 1936 and 1940.
Last year, with only a couple short weeks before the hard-fought presidential election, Senators McCain and Obama both spoke at the Al Smith Dinner. They were both surprisingly funny – and generous to their opponent. It’s worth watching them on the web. Senator McCain, downplaying Joe the Plumber’s reputed financial difficulties, announced "…that Joe the Plumber recently signed a very lucrative contract with a wealthy couple to handle all the work on all seven of their houses."
Senator Obama remarked, "It is often said that I share the politics of Alfred E. Smith and the ears of Alfred E. Newman." Then he noted that, given his age, he had not had the pleasure of knowing Al Smith, but that, "From everything Senator McCain has told me, he was a great man."
Tonight’s keynote speaker is Admiral Michael G. Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He has a hard act to follow!