Trump Stands Out Among Line Of American Political Miscreants
The American historical landscape is littered with tyrants, scalawags and demagogues making trump only the latest to sully the national stage.
Each demagogue had the qualities described by the great Greek philosopher Aristotle 2,300 years ago, “A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.”
Three of the more notable American demagogues include William H. Murray, James M. Curley, Elison D. Smith, Mirian and James E. Ferguson and W. Lee O’Daniel. Like trump, they were steeped in bigotry, dishonesty and immorality, they were each hugely popular and they all came wrapped in the thin veils of patriotism and religion.
Murray, Curley, Smith, the Fergusons and O’Daniel are hardly familiar names now but in their day, they held sway over millions of followers. In trump, there is more than a bit of Murray, Curley Smith, Ferguson and O’Daniel.
William Murray
William H. Murray, the ninth governor of Oklahoma, also ran unsuccessfully for president in 1932 on a ticket of “Bread, Butter, Bacon and Beans.” He was anti-Semitic and anti-black and was known as “Alfalfa” Murray for promoting alfalfa as a farmers’ crop.
Like trump, Murray believed he was never wrong.
In the 1968 biography, “Alfalfa Bill Murray,” author Keith L. Bryant Jr., wrote that Murray “always presented his views as the ‘correct’ ones and traced his defeats to the treachery or thievery of others, never to his own inadequacies.”
Bryant wrote that “Many of the 1,731 pages of his memoirs contain historical inaccuracies, religious digressions, fancied occurrences, prescriptions for home remedies, phrenological nonsense and bizarre ideas about diet.”
Tired of trump’s tales? Murray claimed he was born in Toadsuck, Texas. Actually, there is no town of Toadsuck as Murray made it up in a moment or two of inebriation. Murray was really born in Collinsville, Texas, also the location of the Toadsuck Saloon. The saloon was so named because they said customers would drink so much that they would swell up like a toad.
It was during a huge homecoming in Collinsville that was planned to celebrate Murray’s run for president. The town pulled out all the stops and even built a monument for Murray that said “Born in Collinsville.” Murray, however, arrived drunk and when he sobered up, he told the crowd “No, I wasn’t born in Collinsville. I was born in Toadsuck.”
Murray was widely known throughout Oklahoma for his racist, anti-Semitic and conspiratorial views. He supported the passage of the first Jim Crow laws in Oklahoma and he advocated the deportation of Jewish people to Madagascar.
Murray supported the Dixiecrat bid for president by the white supremacist, segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond, D-S.C. In 1948, Murray was chairman of the Dixiecrat State convention in Oklahoma. The Dixiecrats, led by Thurmond, had splintered off the Democratic Party in opposition of the party’s policy to extend civil rights, as championed by President Harry S. Truman.
For his efforts, Murray was honored in 1951 and inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame. Two counties, a community college and a lake also are named after the avowed racist who also was the first speaker of the Oklahoma House of Representatives.
“This country became great through Christian principles and the white man’s brains,” said Murray who “blamed the New Dealers, the Negroes and the Jews for all his defeats and the decline of his beloved rural America,” according to the Bryant biography.
Murray was governor from 1931 to 1935 but campaigned for president in 1932, claiming with true trumpian rhetoric that the Democratic nominee Franklin D. Roosevelt’s brain had suffered because he had syphilis and not polio. Murray also claimed that Roosevelt was Jewish and that Bernach Baruch, a financier and close advisor to Roosevelt, created the New Deal. The New Deal, Murray claimed, was actually written by Israel Moses Sieff, an English businessman and Zionist.
Murray’s rhetorical skills showed while campaigning in Oklahoma and he stood in a wagon bed outside to make his speech. The only wagon available was the town’s “honey wagon,” a large barrel on wheels used to carry the contents of outdoor privies to the nearest creek for dumping. It was fly-specked, stained and it smelled. Murray climbed up and he quickly quipped, “This is the first time I’ve made a Democratic speech from a Republican platform.”
His strange actions as governor also drew attention and ridicule. For example, Murray chained visitors’ chairs to radiators so that no one could slide closer to him and attempt an assassination. In an interview with the famed war correspondent turned American journalist Ernie Pyle, Murray said he spoke Choctaw with his pigs.
He used a racial slur to describe African Americans in his 1931 inaugural address. He also wrote several books, including “The Negro’s Place in the Call of Race.” The book “discussed the subject from Bible account (sic) of the ‘First Segregation’ by Noah, on account of the ‘Curse’ when he sent them to Equatorial Africa (…), the effect on intelligence and brain weight” and racist arguments about criminality, with occasional asides about Communists and Jews.
Murray opposed American entry into World War II on the grounds that war was being advocated by “Jews and Communists.” In 1941, he became an active member and leader of the America First organization, which had anti-Semitic and fascist overtones. He joined Charles A. Lindbergh, Gen. Robert wood and other isolationists who favored total neutrality.
In the 1968 biography, Bryant Jr., noted that in the 1940s, Murray began to correspond with members of extremist groups and by the 1950s was lending is name to anti-Semitic and anti-black organizations. Sound familiar?
“In September 1941, Gerald B. Winrod, leader and organizer of a number of racist groups, wrote him ‘The Jews have us on the brink of war. International Jewish banking is crumbling. Roosevelt put in by the Jews is obviously carrying their mandate in trying to rehabilitate losses sustained by the reactions gathering momentum in all parts of the world against the damnable conspirators,” Bryant Jr. wrote.
Winrod believed Franklin D. Roosevelt was a “devil” linked with the Jewish-Communist conspiracy and that Hitler would save Europe from Communism.
James Michael Curley
James Michael Curley, who served four terms as mayor of Boston, between 1914 and 1955, and one term as Massachusetts governor, was a historical figure in Massachusetts politics. He also was a twice convicted felon, served time in prison during his last term as mayor and was known as being “as crooked as a pretzel.”
Curley was a favorite with his fellow working class Roman Catholic Irish Americans. During the Great Depression, Curley raised taxes to fund many improvements, including expanding Boston City Hospital and the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. At the same time, Curley was regularly collecting bribes, kickbacks and other graft.
His political tactics drove businesses and economically successful people from the city, and a 1993 survey of historians, political scientists and urban experts ranked Curley as the fourth-worst American big-city mayor to have served between the years 1820 and 1993.
Harvard economists Andrei Shleifer and Edward Glaeser wrote in “The Curley Effect: The Economics of Shaping the Electorate,” that Curley boosted his political base by using distorted economic policies, leading to long-term economic stagnation.
He ran for a seat on the Boston Common Council in 1897 and 1898, and lost both times, claiming he was a victim of corrupt vote counting, rigged against him because he was outside the political machine. Can anyone say “widespread voter fraud”?
Curley was elected to the Common Council in 1899 by joining the machine faction controlled by Charles I. Quirk. In his first two years on the council, Curley placed around 700 people into patronage positions.
Curley was elected to Boston’s board of aldermen in 1904 while imprisoned on a fraud conviction for taking the federal Civil Service exam while pretending to be one of his constituents, an Irish immigrant who hoped to become a mailman.
The imprisonment only added to Curley’s popularity among the Irish American working class and poor who saw him as a man willing to risk himself to help those in need. During that election, his campaign slogan was, “he did it for a friend.” He also quickly gained a reputation for taking kickbacks in exchange for his support.
In 1910, still a Boston alderman, Curley ran for Congress. He wanted to run for mayor but cut a deal with mayoral candidate, John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald, the czar of Boston Irish politics, and John F. Kennedy’s grandfather. If Curley dropped out of the race, Fitzgerald said he only run for one term. Curley ran after Fitzgerald’s first term but Fitzgerald soon broke his promise and ran for reelection. Curley got Fitzgerald to quit the race by threatening to expose an affair the older man had in a Boston gambling den with a cigarette girl by the name of Toodles. After Fitzgerald refused to quit the race, Curley said he would deliver a public lecture titled “Great Lovers in History: From Cleopatra to Toodles.” Fitzgerald quit and Curley won.
Curley was helped by Daniel H. Coakley, a lawyer whose specialized in extortion and bribing prosecutors to bury criminal charges against his clients. Coakley was disbarred in 1922 for deceit, malpractice, and gross misconduct. Regardless, Coakley was later was elected to the Massachusetts Governor’s Council, where he secured a pardon for mobster Raymond L. S. Patriarca, the long-time boss of the Patriarca crime family, whose control extended throughout New England for more than 30 years.
Coakley was impeached and removed from office in 1941 for using his position and influence to secure pardons in exchange for financial gain.
During his first term, Curley moved his family into a 20-plus room mansion that was apparently built for little or no charge by contractors seeking favors from Curley. Curley also stymied press investigations by threatening libel charges against offending media. Curley’s support also may have been key to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s nomination at the Democratic convention. Curley turned away from Roosevelt after the president refused to appoint him Ambassador to Ireland. In 1933, Curley served as the president of the United States Conference of Mayors.
In 1942, Curley again ran for Congress, challenging Democratic incumbent Thomas H. Eliot. Eliot was the son of a Unitarian minister and grandson of Harvard president Charles William Eliot. Curley exploited Eliot’s background and fomented working class anger against Eliot’s Yankee upper class.
In a campaign speech Curley suggested Eliot had Communist leanings, exclaiming, “There is more Americanism in one half of Jim Curley’s ass than in that pink body of Tom Eliot.” Curley won the primarily and was re-elected in 1944.
In 1945, Curley gave up his seat in Congress to run for a fourth term as mayor of Boston. By then Curley faced felony indictments for bribery even as his popularity with the Irish American community remained high.
In 1943, Curley was arrested for a second time when the 68-year-old congressman was charged in a scheme to extract bribes from companies seeking federal contracts. His defense was that he was being persecuted by “Communists and radical reformers.” Under indictment in 1944, he won re-election to Congress. Curley was accused of accepting $60,000 from the Engineers Group, a firm Curley headed which was under investigation for war profiteering. He was found guilty of mail fraud and sentenced to 6–18 months in prison. Under pressure from the Massachusetts congressional delegation and in consideration of Curley’s poor health, President Truman commuted Curley’s sentence after only five months.
Curley returned to a buoyant crowd in Boston with a brass band playing “Hail to the Chief” and Curley telling reporters, “I have accomplished more in one day than has been done in the five months of my absence.”
In retirement, Curley received a state-granted pension pushed through the legislature by Rep. Tip O’Neill, D-Mass., the powerful longtime speaker of the House.
Curley’s death in Boston in 1958 brought out one of the largest funerals in the city’s history.
Ellison DuRant Smith
Ellison D. Smith, a virulent white supremacist and segregationist, was a cotton planter and a Democratic U.S. Senator from South Carolina from 1909 until 1944. He was a major supporter of the southern cotton industry and was known as “Cotton Ed” after he declared, “Cotton is king and white is supreme.”
Time called Smith a “conscientious objector to the 20th Century” while an observer claimed that Smith “taxed neither his brain nor the voters with a new issue.”
In reflecting the xenophobia of supporters, Smith sponsored anti- immigration bills culminating in the Immigration Act of 1917 that passed over President Wilson’s veto. Smith spoke out in support of the Immigration Act of 1924, which limited emigration from Southern and Eastern Europe and effectively entrapped European Jews from escaping the coming hurricane of Nazi fascism.
Smith opposed the women’s suffrage movement, warning it was akin to the 15th amendment to the constitution which prohibited denying the right to vote based on race.
“Here is exactly the identical same amendment applied to the other half of the Negro race. The southern man who votes for the Susan B. Anthony Amendment votes to ratify the Fifteenth Amendment,” Smith said.
In 1935, a group of reformist officials in the Agriculture Department proposed a directive that would ensure that Southern landlords actually paid their sharecroppers for their labor, which most of them did not. Smith stormed into the office of the author of the directive, Alger Hiss, and shouted, “Young fella, you can’t do this to my niggers, paying checks to them. They don’t know what to do with the money. The money should come to me. I’ll take care of them.”
At the 1936 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Smith walked out of the convention hall when he saw that a black the invocation was to be delivered by the Rev. Marshall L. Shepard, a member of the Pennsylvania Assembly and was a Philadelphia City Council. At the sight of Shepard, Smith shouted: “By God, he’s as black as melted midnight! Get outa my way. This mongrel meeting ain’t no place for a white man! I don’t want any blue-gummed, slew-footed Senegambian praying for me politically.” Shepard’s response to the incident was, “it was just a sign the good brother needs more prayer.”
Smith opposed a Federal minimum wage; he filibustered it in the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, saying “South Carolinians are willing to work for less than 50 cents/hour.” Smith became legendary for taking credit when the price of cotton was up and blaming Wall Street, Republicans, and nefarious other special interests when the price was down.
Smith’s racist views were lukewarm compared with his one-time Senate colleague, the despicable Coleman L. Blease, who blatantly advocated lynching. As governor and later senator, Blease opposed civil rights for African Americans, spoke in favor of lynching, and resisted educational opportunities for Black citizens. In the Senate, he introduced legislation targeting interracial relationships and criticized efforts at racial inclusion in public life.
Miriam Amanda “Ma” Ferguson
Miriam Ferguson served two non-consecutive terms as the governor of Texas, from 1925 to 1927, and from 1933 to 1935. She was the first female governor of Texas, and the second woman elected to the governorship of any U.S. state to assume office, after Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming.
The Great Depression forced the federal and state governments to cut funding of their organizations, and the Texas Rangers were no exception. Ferguson cut the number of commissioned officers in the law-enforcement agency to 45.
Immediately after taking office for a second term in January 1933, Ferguson fired all serving Rangers. Salaries and funds were slashed and the force was decimated to 32 men. The result was that Texas became a safe hideout for the many Depression-era gangsters escaping from the law, such as Bonnie and Clyde, George “Machine Gun” Kelly, Pretty Boy Floyd and Raymond Hamilton.
Ferguson issued almost 4,000 pardons during her two non-consecutive terms in office amid rumors that pardons were available in exchange for cash payments to the governor’s husband.
James Edward Ferguson Jr.
James E. Ferguson Jr. the 26th governor of Texas, in office from 1915 to 1917. His wife served as Governor of Texas from 1915 to 1917. During his second term, he was investigated by State Attorney General Dan Moody. The Texas State Senate impeached him, convicted him on 10 charges of embezzlement and prohibited him from holding state office in Texas again.
After he was re-elected in 1916, Ferguson vetoed the appropriations for the University of Texas because the school refused to fire faculty members who opposed Ferguson. They included William Harding Mayes, former Texas lieutenant governor and founder and dean of the University of Texas School of Journalism. He had been an opponent of Ferguson for the Democratic party’s nomination for governor in 1914.
Ferguson’s attack against Mayes resulted in a drive by the legislature to impeach Ferguson. The Texas Senate convicted him on 10 charges, including misapplication of public funds and receiving $156,000 from an unnamed source. He loaned himself money and nearly bankrupted his own bank but blamed his directors for running a shoddy operation.
Wilbert Lee “Pappy” O’Daniel
Wilbert “Pappy” O’Daniel was the 34th governor of Texas (1939–1941) and later its junior United States senator (1941–1949).
In the late 1920s, O’Daniel assumed responsibility for the Burrus company’s radio advertising. He wrote songs, sang, and hired musicians to form an old timey band to back his vocals. Originally called the Light Crust Doughboys, notable musicians such as Bob Wills got their start with O’Daniel. O’Daniel also hosted a regular noontime radio show heard statewide, which gave him his nickname after a catchphrase used frequently on air — “pass the biscuits, Pappy.”
O’Daniel ran for governor in 1956 and 1958 and claimed that the Brown v. Board of Education decision was part of a Communist conspiracy. He finished third in the Democratic primaries both times.
In his run for governor, O’Daniel had pledged to block any sales tax, abolish capital punishment, liquidate the poll tax (which he had not paid) and raise old-age pensions; but he reneged on all the promises. He unveiled a tax plan, secretly written by manufacturing lobbyists, that amounted to a multiple sales tax, but the legislature voted it down.
O’Daniel won again in 1940, after divulging that he had wired President Franklin Roosevelt that he had confidential information about a fifth column in Texas. No traitors were ever found.
O’Daniel began packing the University of Texas Board of Regents with people who wanted to limit academic freedom and ferret out alleged subversion on campus. The regents, along with those selected by his successor, Coke Stevenson, eventually fired University of Texas president Homer Rainey and provoked a nine-year censure of the university by the American Association of University Professors.
As governor, O’Daniel enjoyed little success in putting across his agenda. He was unable to engage in normal political deal-making with legislators, vetoed bills that he probably did not understand, and was overridden in twelve out of fifty-seven vetoes — a record. But he was able largely to negate his ignorance, his isolation, and his political handicaps with masterful radio showmanship.