November 7: FDR Wins 4th Term

On this date in History .... 1944:

FDR wins an unprecedented 4^th term and is the first and only president to serve more than 2 terms. This prompted Congress to pass the 22^nd amendment 1947 to limit the president to two consecutive terms.  Until this point, 2 terms had been either voluntarily following George Washington’s example, or failed attempts at a 3^rd term (T. Roosevelt ran for a 3^rd term but lost in 1912).   He was president during two of America’s worst crisis periods:  The Great Depression and World War II.

Roosevelt pioneered the 100-day yardstick that measures a President’s effectiveness in office soon after elected. "The first hundred days of the New Deal have served as a model for future presidents of bold leadership and executive-legislative harmony," said Anthony Badger in his book “FDR: The First Hundred Days.”

He was first elected in the fourth year of a depression that was affecting countries the world over. He called Congress into a special session and kept them busy for three months, passing what is called his Alphabet Soup of programs and bills to get America working, such as the WPA, CWA, NRA (Nat’l Recovery Administration), TVA, SEC, FHA, PWA, NLRB, and more.

That first year, “Roosevelt got 15 major bills through Congress in his first 100 days. "Congress doesn't pass legislation anymore—they just wave at the bills as they go by," said humorist Will Rogers.”

(quote source: http://www.usnews.com/news/history/

November 6: Reagan Wins by a Landslide

On this date in History .... 1984:

Ronald Reagan wins re-election by a landslide.  He won:

·         over 97% of the electoral vote, (525 out of 538)
·         58.8% to Mondale’s 40.6% of the popular vote, (54M to 37M)
·         49 states
·         was only the 2^nd President to take 49 states (Nixon was the 1^st in 1972).
·         It was the last election a Republican carried every Northeast state.
·         No candidate since has ever matched or passed his electoral result.

In the 1980 election (Reagan v. Carter), pre-election polls showed Carter 45% to Reagan’s 39%.  Reagan won by a 10% lead in the popular vote and took 91% of the electoral vote.

Mondale won only Wash DC and his home state of Minnesota, but the win in MN was less than 3800 votes (a winning margin of 0.18% or 0.0018).  It was the worst electoral defeat of any Democratic Party candidate in history. Despite Mondale’s tactic of choosing the first woman for the V.P. slot, 55% of women voted for Reagan.

The 1984 Republican Convention was the only time a Vice Presidential roll call was taken concurrently with the Presidential roll call.  It was the last time in history that the V.P. of either party was nominated by a roll call vote.

The Democratic Convention of that year is often referred to as “the closest in two generations” and the most recent election in which the nomination of a party’s candidate has gone all the way to the convention.  The three top candidates were Walter Mondale, Gary Hart, and Jesse Jackson.

While Jackson was a serious contender throughout the primaries, his off the cuff remark in which he referred to the Jewish population as “Hymies” and referred to New York as “Hymietown” derailed the rest of his campaign in spite of the apology issued by Jackson.

When Hart and Mondale got to the convention, Mondale was about 40 votes short of what he needed to cinch the nomination.  The votes from the super-delegates gave him the numbers he needed to go up against Reagan in the presidential election.

When Reagan was asked in early December 1984 what he wanted for Christmas, he joked "Well, Minnesota would have been nice."