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McCain may follow FDR in accepting nomination |
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By Kevin Bogardus
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Posted: 09/01/08 05:01 PM [ET] |
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) may follow in the footsteps of one of the Democratic Party’s greatest icons: Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Roosevelt accepted his party's 1944 presidential nomination away from the convention in Chicago but from his train on a U.S. naval base on the Pacific Coast. Consumed with winning World War II, Roosevelt was meeting with military generals to discuss battle plans for the conflict. The then-three term president spoke via radio to the delegates to accept their nomination.
McCain may not attend the GOP convention in St. Paul, Minn. Instead, he might speak to his party’s delegates over a satellite television connection to accept the presidential nomination.
With Hurricane Gustav making landfall on the Gulf Coast Monday, McCain has been in the region to observe emergency preparations for the natural disaster and could give his acceptance speech from the disaster zone.
If McCain does not speak from the podium in St. Paul, it could be the first time since Roosevelt that a presidential candidate does not accept his party's nomination in person.
FDR was also a history-maker in another element of convention lore, this one at the beginning of his presidential tenure. At that point, tradition had it that both parties’ presidential candidates did not accept their nominations in person at the conventions.
But Roosevelt, then the governor of New York, flew from Albany to Chicago to accept the presidential nomination at the 1932 Democratic Party convention. FDR would later win his first term in the White House.
Roosevelt’s opponent in the 1944 election, Thomas Dewey, another New York governor, was the first Republican to accept his party’s nomination in person at its Chicago convention. After defeating Dewey, Roosevelt died in office in 1945 and Harry S. Truman replaced him.
At the 1944 convention, Roosevelt said in his speech to delegates that he could not attend the gathering because of his “constitutional duties” to oversee the country’s war effort, according to a dispatch from The New York Times. In addition, FDR told conventioneers — his speech booming out over the hall’s loudspeakers — that he was too busy and the conflict too serious to actively campaign for reelection.
Like FDR, McCain has said politics should be put aside in order to concentrate on the well-being of the nation.
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