The Accusation by Edward Berenson

Author:Edward Berenson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Epub3
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Chapter 5

THE ELECTION OF 1928

That the Massena blood libel took place in 1928 was no accident. It occurred at the beginning of one of the ugliest and most intense electoral campaigns in United States history. That campaign pitted the old-stock Protestant Herbert Hoover, who represented the Republican Party, against the Irish Catholic Al Smith, who represented the Democrats. Although Hoover himself didn’t attack Smith’s Catholicism, his surrogates and other Republicans claimed that the Democratic candidate’s religion made him a danger to the country. The campaign was scurrilous but mercifully short—back then, presidential races didn’t begin in earnest until Labor Day. It was anything but sweet.

One irony of this prejudice-laced, hostile campaign is that both candidates were decent men with impressive personal and political résumés. Both had worked their way up from relatively humble beginnings, remained untainted by corruption, and used their skills and positions to do things for ordinary people. But each appeared to stand for an opposing version of the United States. The Republican candidate seemed to embody the culture and values of rural, Protestant America, while the Democratic candidate epitomized an urban America crowded with immigrants and a large number of Catholics and Jews.

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