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Alfred E. Smith: the Happy Warrior
Antioch Review, The, Wntr, 2004 by Lester Lee, P., Jr.
by Christopher M. Finan. Hill and Wang, 396 pp., $26.00. In this political biography, Finan, president of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, examines the life and career of Alfred E. Smith. Born on December 30, 1873, Smith grew up in an immigrant neighborhood on the Lower East Side of New York City. It was here that he was introduced to the meaning and substance of urban politics. With the backing of Tammany Hall and the Democratic Party, he was elected to the New York State Assembly and, later, governor of New York. In 1928, he became the first Catholic to win the presidential nomination of a major American political party. Although he lost his presidential bid, he continued to play an active role in national politics, including his support of Republican presidential candidates, until his death on October 4, 1944.
As a politician, Finan maintains, Smith is an underestimated symbol of the changing nature of American politics in the first half of the twentieth century. He represented the rising ambitions of urban, industrial America at a time when the hegemony of rural, agrarian America was in decline. He was connected to the hopes and aspirations of immigrants. As an assemblyman and governor, he supported legislation to improve the lives of working men and women. He was a devout Catholic, but his struggles against religious bigotry were often misinterpreted when he fought the religiously inspired Eighteenth Amendment and Prohibition. Although personal resentment was a motivating factor in Smith's break with Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal, Smith was consistent in his beliefs and politics. He believed in social mobility, economic opportunity, religious tolerance, and individualism.
This fine biography effectively integrates the personal and politic al in Smith' s life and career. Clearly written and well organized, its twelve chapters bring out the endearing humanity of Smith. He was a gregarious, optimistic man who loved politics and people. He was the Happy Warrior.
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