nation, then and then only will the stars and stripes again wave over the land of the free and the home of the brave. >> beverly gage, what's your reaction to hearing that? >> well, it's really remarkable how quickly and how viciously al smith ends up going after the people who had once been his greatest supporters. i was trying to think if there has ever been another major party presidential candidate who, in less than a decade after he had run on his party's platform, is actually endorsing actively the candidates of the other party -- >> joe lieberman? >> joe lieberman, i guess so. he's sort of hard to read. was joe lieberman ever really a democrat? i don't know. but so going around and actually doing these endorsements in

1936, in 1940 and i think in this way that is incredibly outspoken. i mean, he makes this speech in 1936 where he's accusing the new deal and fdr themselves as i mentioned earlier of being communists, socialists. he picks up really the most vitriolic langlanguage. he calls roosevelt a tyrant and he's abusing the constitution and becomes one of the standard bearers of the liberty league which is basically a business-funded -- it's really funded by the dupont family, but a group that begins in the 1930s to attempt to push back the new deal. and it really is a puzzling, puzzling moment in his career. and i think people who have tried to sit there and trace, well, he always had these platforms. he always believed in state-level power and not federal-level power. or he always had a more technocratic view and didn't believe in the more pop list

lid legislation. i just don't think those are answers. i think he went through something personally at that point and his circle in new york as he becomes head of the empire state building and as he begins to solidify these alliances with businessmen, that really becomes his world in the 1930s. >> and we're going to talk about that part of his life in just a minute. but we have another questioner here in the new york state assembly. tell us who you are and what you're doing here tonight. >> good evening. my name is sharita. i'm a professor at schenectady community college. i teach administrative law. as my students and i are talking about government and how it's getting larger, discuss state and federal agencies, we talk a lot about immigration reform as it relates to department of homeland security. and so as we're talking about al smith and his background and having come from new york city, south street sea port, being raised amongst a lot of ethnically diverse groups, i wonder what immigration policy would look like today for, you

know, governor al smith. what would he think in terms of, one, the ethnicity of the immigrants coming in are vastly different than those he grew up with. but also largely, we're looking for policies in today's immigration platform that would deal with labor issues. you know, whether or not people who have been here illegally should have the right to work after, you know, having been in the country for a certain number of years. so i wonder where would al smith stand on that type of issue, immigration as it relates to labor and also racism as you've talked about. you know, we don't really see much in terms of the cku klux klan anymore but agencies as it relates to immigration. would he be as strong, or would it depend on at what point in history you met mr. smith? thank you. >> thank you, professor. let's start with john evers. >> i think that smith would be very understanding of loose immigration. and that would probably be

because of where he grew up. smith was exposed to all kinds of ethnicities, all kinds of different immigrants. his mother was the daughter of immigrants. his father was the son of immigrants. he worked in an area that had sailors from all over the world. he worked in a neighborhood that had all kinds of people from all over the world. in fact, he had joked at one time that even representatives from chinatown came up for one of the marriages of his daughter. so i would say that he would be more understanding of an open immigration or a very widely construed program for immigration just because that's what he grew up with. >> beverly gage, you want to add anything to immigration? one of the questions i remember as a student was compare and contrast, immigration then, immigration now. >> right. i think it's really true that that was at the core of who al smith presented himself to be to the world. and this question of immigration

and labor was one of the hot issues. so immigration law, when it was being immigration restriction, which is passed in the 1920s, it was -- you had decades of debate about the relationship between wages and labor and immigration. and in fact, during al smith's day, immigration policy was actually under the department of labor. and so these things were really intimately tied, then. and as i said, when he ran for president in 1928, it was really at the wake of a wave of nativist sentiment. if he stood for anything as a presidential candidate, it really was a pushback against this kind of reactive nativism. now, what he would have ultimately come up with, had he been elected president, would he actually have been aable in his day to push back immigration restriction, it seems unlikely. but this period in the '20s is really very intensive around these issues, and it lasts for 40 years. during al smith's childhood, there had been almost no restrictions on immigration

whatsoever. and so we had seen this kind of constriction then, and that constriction wasn't reopened until the 1960s when, as you said, we began to get different groups of immigrants coming in. >> about 25 minutes left in our program this evening on al smith. howie in philadelphia, good evening to you. you're on the air. >> caller: yes, good evening. i just wanted to shed some light about prohibition and how president harding did not force prohibition in states that did not do the jobs themselves. and that was in 1923, i guess, around may when al smith filed an appeal of the prohibition act. and can you also shed some light about kansas politics leading to the 1936 election where smith talked about the new deal? thank you. >> john evers. >> i think prohibition is something that's heavily identified with al smith. he never favored prohibition. it was not an issue that he

championed. he didn't like how new york state ratified it anyway. they did it by a simple resolution through the legislature. he thought it should be a referendum. in fact, i believe it was in 1924, ned a referendum in new york state on what you think about prohibition. should you change the percentage of alcohol and i think it was in the federal 1.5, they wanted beer and light wines to be allowed. and it passed overwhelmingly in new york state, but it was just a memorialization of congress. it didn't mean anything. smith himself was elected the president of the convention in new york state in 1933 to repeal the prohibition amendment officially in this chamber. the 150 delegates that gathered overwhelmingly voted, and they overwhelmingly voted for al smith to be the president. so he got the last laugh on that. in fact, they brought out 88-year-old l. root, the former senate and secretary of state to second the nomination and come

in and pat him on the back. prohibition shaped him because he thought it was almost ridiculous to say that you could use the constitution to control individual behavior. it actually took a right away from people rather than the amendments in the bill of rights giving rights to people. and he thought it was also hypocritical. he used to say that he saw more people that would come out there and say that they were dries having their community break the law whereas all the wets were out there trying to enforce the law, and the wet meaning those that wanted to repeal prohibition. so he found it as governor almost ridiculous. >> if i could add one thing, it was also intimately tied with all of these questions about immigration, about kind of rural versus urban america. and a lot of the imagery that had been used to promote prohibition is imagery that's about the german saloon or about drunken immigrants running wild in the city. and smith also took objection to that, to both the saloon as a

real urban institution but also to the kinds of imagery that had been mobilized to get prohibition passed. >> beverly gage, was prohibition a christian right issue in a sense back in the '20s kind of like abortion or gay marriage may be today? >> well, i think it was an issue that a lot of people mobile -- you know, it was certainly a cultural issue that mobilized certain sections of the population. but i wouldn't necessarily call it a right-wing issue in its day. it got a lot of its base of support from protestant groups, certainly from protestant fundamentalists during that day. this, again, being one of the great issues of the '20s with the scopes trial, questions about fundamentalism are also at the forefront of american political debate. but you also had a lot of progressive reformers, particularly women, who had been suffer rajettes, who had been progressive on any number of other issues who were also

supporters of prohibition, partly as a feminist issue, saving you from your drunken husband. so it was really a complicated issue. and i think it doesn't line up neatly on this left/right spectrum. >> john evers, in between presidential runs, 1928, his last time he was nominated, 1930, what happens to al smith in 1930? >> well, al smith, after he retires from the governorship here in new york, actually as a little bit of a sidenote, he believes, and a lot of people attribute this to him, this ahe's going to help fdr out. fdr is going to need help. he's going to draft the budget for him. he's going to hold his hand. that turns out not to be the case. fdr wants to stand on his own and doesn't want anything to do with smith. smith eventually goes back to new york city and gets a job to run the empire state building. it's going to be built. >> had it been built?

>> not yet. they're knocking down the waldorf astoria in 1929 and they're going to break ground for this right around the time that the stock market crashes. but they continue through. the dupont family and rascob and all the money interests that wanted this building, this huge building that goes up just as the depression happens, just as the rents are everybody's leaving, nobody wants to rent anything. it's cub ee eed -- dubbed the e state building. and smith -- >> a large amount? >> a large amount, but he's running deficits. he even goes to fdr and says, can you put manufacture your federal agencies in there? hat in hand. by the way, it's good to see you. could you guys rent some space in the empire state building? but smith, that's his job. and he holds that job until 1944 when he dies. in fact, the economy changes, and he does recover. but at first, it was a very difficult job to have, trying to

rent space when nobody's buying office space in new york city. >> you kind of have to feel for al smith. i mean, we were going to talk about his failures. one of his greatest failures is really bad timing. he ends up as the democratic candidate in 1928. if it had been 1932, he would have been a shoo-in. he ends up taking over this building that breaks ground in something like august of 1929 and ends up as its president. he had a timing problem in the early '30s. >> we have another question from the audience. hi. >> hi. i'm jha political science major in albany. and i just have a question. when andrew cuomo first got -- first came to office as governor, he said he wanted to emulate some of the qualities of alfred smith. and earlier in the program, we talked about how at one point the governor's office was a very weak political office. can you just -- if anything, go

over what he did to make the office of governor stronger and what example did he leave behind for others to follow? >> thank you, sir. john evers. >> that is probably one of the lasting legacies of alfred e. smith. and when governor cuomo entered office, he put smith's portrait behind the rostrum so that all the press conferences will see al smith. and he replaced teddy roosevelt who was there for the last three governors. and then governor cuomo also instituted a sage commission which would investigate government and try to make it more efficient which is also like smith's reconstruction commission. the point that smith is probably being emulated the most for is efficiency in government. smith took 187 massive rolling bureaus, boards, commissions, departments and rolled them into the 20 departments of government and had the legislature pass the constitutional amendments, and

then they were ratified by the people to make the governor a strong governor. and this is prior to fdr reforming the executive office of the presidency in d.c. smith wanted to make sure that if i appoint a commissioner, i want him answerable to me. prior to smith's reforms, commissioners' terms overlapped. the health commissioner had a six-year term. certain commissioners like the insurance commissioner could be appointed by the previous governor. this governor -- the governor that assumes office can't remove him. or certain boards or bureaus like ag and markets, the department of agriculture, were appointed by a board of regents-like people that were apointed by the legislature. so the short answer is that smith really reformed government. he right-sized it. he made it responsive to the executive who, in turn, is responsible to the people. that's probably his most lasting legacy. and that's been emulated by a lot of states and had a little bit of the template taken to d.c. when fdr reformed the

office of the presidency. >> albany, new york, mark, we're here in your hometown. what's your question on al smith? >> caller: well, my question is this. and by the way, i do work for state government. i'm an internal audit director for a public authority. and i teach a two-day class to state employees about the state budget process. and one of the things i teach them, as i understand it, and i wondered if you could talk about this, is al smith also reformed how budgeting is done in new york state. and i was surprised that prior to him becoming governor and making reforms in this area, that budgeting wasn't done very well. and also, it may have been the budgeted may have been put forward by the legislature, and now we have a very strong executive budget that is put forth by the governor. and that's another legacy that to this day exists for al smith. that may be, in my opinion, one of his strong contributions to the whole governance structure of state government in new york. i wondered if you could comment

on that. >> mr. evers. >> yeah, that's a great point because prior to smith getting executive budgeting, it was done by the legislature. and basically, the legislature would get together all the budget estimates and what they thought it would take to run government. very inefficient. you had executive agencies reporting to the legislature to say this is what i need. whereas these executive agencies technically reported they work for the governor. smith used to joke about it and say when the initial budget bill was presented, it was then added to by the legislature so much so that the original budget bill could almost be unrecognizable. they would just laden it down with pork. in fact, they joked that the 1915 constitutional convention that at one point they claimed a clerk passing the bill from one house to the next house actually added his own budget item in there. so the inefficiency was so bad that smith says let the governor submit an executive budget to the legislature based on estimates from his own executive departments that the legislature

then can act on. and that made budgeting much more responsible to one individual, the governor of new york, and that's how it is today. >> beverly gage, we began this program with a video from the annual al smith dinner for catholic charities. what is the al smith dinner, and how did it come about? >> so the al smith dinner is most famous as a place that presidential candidates show up every four years. and they show up, democrats and republicans. i mean, it's really a memorial dinner for smith. and i think that it's the thing that if anyone's heard al smith's name at this point in time, that that's where you've probably heard about al smith unless you hang around these hallowed halls. but in general, it's probably his most lasting public legacy, the place where his name gets out. and but it's held every year. it's not just every four years. you have prominent figures coming in. as i said, it's really a memorial dinner. it's a catholic charity dinner.

and it's a place that people get together and try to assess the legacy of al smith and presidential candidates always especially try to crack good jokes about each other. >> and, in fact, they show up together most times. they show up, both the democrat and the republican nominees, show up together. we want to show you some of the past al smith dinners. >> mighty ask if monsignor clark would come up here because either the president of the united states or i are without a seat, and i have no intention of standing. >> i must say, i have traveled the banquet circuit for many years. i've never quite understood the logistics of dinners like this and how the absence of one individual could cause three of us to not have seats. >> mr. vice president, i'm glad to see you here tonight. you've said many, many times in this campaign that you want to give america back to the little guy.

mr. vice president, i am that man. >> as i looked out at all the white ties and tails this evening, i realized i haven't seen so many people so well dressed since i went to a come as you are party in kennebunkport. >> we just had really good news out of yugoslavia. i'm pleased to hear that mr. milosevic has stepped down. that's one less name for me to remember. you know what this world really needs? it really needs more world leaders named al smith. >> it is an honor to share the dais with a descendant of the great al smith. and al, your great grandfather was my favorite kind of governor. the kind who ran for president and lost.

>> about 15 minutes left, and glen in freeland, michigan, you're on "the contenders." please go ahead. >> caller: thank you very much. the question i have is with all the anti-roman catholic racism and his being the first major party american presidential candidate that was roman catholic and everything, how much international attention did this get, specifically did the pope at the time ever weigh in or comment on any of the campaign he ran or anything like that? thank you very much. >> thank you, glen.

beverly gage. >> in terms of polls, you didn't really have the same kind of polling mechanisms that you have today. so these things are a little bit harder to gauge in the 1920s. you certainly didn't have polls that took part. which issue do you care about more, and which issue of which electorate? it's kind of tough for historians and historians often make grand claims based on actually not knowing that much about the electorate. on the international question, i think it's really interesting because yes, there was a lot of attention paid to this. and if came in the wake of two trials as well that really raised these questions about america's national character. the first with the scopes trial in 1925 and the second -- well, the trial had happened earlier, but the second was the execution of two italian immigrants that -- italian anarchists that had happened in 1927. and so these questions of what the united states' presentation to the world in terms of race,

in terms of immigration policy, in terms of its attitudes towards radicalism, in terms of political tolerance, all of these were really out there already by the time smith became the candidate. and so his candidacy then on the world stage becomes another moment to ask those questions and call the questions. >> well, after the election and he loses, he does eventually go to europe at one time. he does meet the pope. he recounts on a few occasions in many of his travels around italy, they thought he was the president because they knew that he had run. he goes to the house of commons. he had a very good relationship with winston churchill. so it certainly did catapult him to the world stage. in that sense, he was a famous also ran around the world as well. >> beverly gage, catholicism in 1928, african-american president 2008, a woman -- serious woman contender in 2008, potential mormon president in 2012.

is that a fair comparison? >> i think it is a fair comparison in certain ways. i mean, i in that sense, al smith was a trail blazer on this front. and i think that in many ways, it's hard for people today to understand the depth of anti-catholicism in the united states at that moment. when al smith was on the campaign trail, particularly in places like oklahoma, places that he had never been before, places that he didn't know very much about, his train would pull into town, and there would be crosses burning. i mean, he faced physical danger around these sorts of questions. and he also faced a whole series of conspiracy theories about what his role was going to be. he was afraid he was going to be taking orders from the pope or that they were building secret tunnels from the vatican to other -- i mean, just all of these kind of really intense conspiracy theories that i think are very hard to remember, although maybe in certain ways we've seen other conspiracy theories come up in recent

years. but the intensity of the anti-catholic sentiment that he faced, i think, can be hard to remember. and so that's a nice way to kind of bring in some of these parallels. >> another member of our studio audience has a question. >> hello, i'm cassie and i'm a junior in new york. i'm excited to be here. my question is how has president obama reflected al smith's legacies in his presidency thus far? >> who wants to start? >> i'll start. i went to siena. so very good. there you go. i think one of the things that there's a great parallel between the two is the working with a legislature that is seen as hostile. that's seen as the two party -- the partisanship. smith faced that every year that he was in office here in albany. he only had control of the senate for two years. and that was by a single vote. the other eight years it was eight years republican dominance here in this chamber.

and in the other house, he only had, as i said, the one term. so i would think that the problem of dealing with the other party is something that smith had to battle with and undertake. that's something that the current president has a problem with as well. the other thing that he has, it's remarkable the sense of humor. now, president obama has a very good sense of humor. he handles press conferences very well. al smith was the same way. al smith also knew that he could be funny on occasions but not all the time because then people wouldn't take him seriously. so he could really play a very good statesman with a sense of humor, which is another good parallel. >> beverly gage. >> the only thing i'd add is that i'm not sure that barack obama has quite learned how al smith managed to make it all happen. i'm not sure he actually learned al smith's lessons for dealing with a hostile legislature. >> that's true. all right. thank you, cassie. next call comes from houston, texas. joe, good evening to you. please go ahead.

>> caller: oh, thanks for taking my call. my first question, i know smith lost new york in 1928 to hoover. how well did he do in the five boroughs? i also want to know, was anti-catholicism vote more prevalent in the southern states as compared to, like, the midwest, say kansas, nebraska, et cetera? and i also want to know, he had a fallout with fdr. i was surprised to hear they didn't go swindle wilke in 1940. but i'd like to know, how did he feel about social security? >> all right. >> caller: thank you. >> john evers. >> he did well in new york. he did well. and he always did well in new york city. he did extraordinarily well in his own district. but he just couldn't make it over the whole state. the other question -- what was the other -- >> well, he wanted to -- did he

win new york city, do you know offhand if he won in 1928? >> i don't know. i don't recall. i don't think he did. >> not even new york city? >> well, new york city also had outer boroughs that had republican dominance, which is still the case in staten island. but in pockets of queens as well. >> social security was another question. >> social security. the issue on social security is something that smith had tried to implement in new york state when it came to widows and orphans' pensions. he tried to experiment with health insurance for industrial workers. and he also tried to do all kinds of social security issues when it came to trying to support those that were downtrodden. make work projects were something that he had experimented with. and it might have been one of those programs he would have carried into the new deal, had he won. >> we have -- please go ahead, professor. >> i just want to address one other aspect that came up which is about the south. and one of the strange things that emerges, was anti-catholicism more powerful

in the south than the midwest? i think that's actually a fairly hard question to answer. but we've been talking a lot about the democrats versus the republicans here. and one of the things that was really difficult for smith were divisions within the national democratic party. so that the whole south at this point is still a edemocratic south with smith as their national candidate. and so you had real tensions within the democratic party between this kind of urban core that smith was coming to represent and the more southern wing as well as other wings of the democratic party as well. so there's interparty tensions where i think it's important as these tensions between democrats and republicans. >> and skrus just to recap, 192 election, herbert hoover, 444 electoral votes. al smith, 87 electoral votes. herbert hoover won 40 states. al smith won 8. those 8 states, arkansas, louisiana, mississippi, alabama, georgia, south carolina, then massachusetts and rhode island.

we have another question here from our audience. hi. >> jay. i hope i'm not too close. two questions. if you were to grade his governorship, what letter would you assign to it? and the second question is, as the first catholic presidential candidate, did he help how the country viewed religion as a factor? >> let's take the governor question here and the religion question there. >> i would give the governor smith an "a" because he faced a tremendously uphill battle. new york was a republican state at the time. and as i mentioned, he had a very tough time dealing with the legislature which was overwhelmingly republican. in fact, in 1920 when they expelled the socialists, i never understood why because they had 110 republicans out of 150 seats. and it didn't really matter when it came to the votes. but i think that i would give governor smith an "a." he created so many things, as i mentioned, the executive budget, the short ballot, making the short