The Lessons of History: Elections Are at Stake

摘要

The 1936 presidential election was fought over Social Security. Late in the campaign, the Republican candidate, Alfred M. Lan-don, a good man, made a bad mistake attacking the new program as "unjust, unworkable, stupidly drafted and wastefully financed," its contributory features "a cruel hoax." Kenneth S. Davis, FDR's biographer, writes that Landon was looking for an "electrifying issue." He found it, all right.