Mary Grabar, Resident Fellow, The Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization (AHI), does not like what she is hearing from the Kamala Harris campaign for the Presidency. Drawing on research for her forthcoming book Debunking FDR: The Man and the Myths, Dr. Grabar challenges Harris’s supporters for their use of the “happy warrior” and “Happy Days Are Here Again,” lines widely associated with Franklin Roosevelt, to promote Harris’s campaign message of “joy.” Writing this week for the August 14 issue of The Federalist, Harris, in effect, “Repackages False ‘Happy Warrior’ Claims As Old As FDR.”
A recent analysis by a New York Times reporter cited FDR’s adoption of the “Happy Days Are Here Again” song in his 1932 campaign to promise Americans a bright future. It “did not note,” Dr. Grabar writes, “that the reality failed to match up to the theme song, as the Depression dragged on for much longer until industrial preparations for World War II.”
Similarly, a piece at The Bulwark cited Harris and her running mate Tim Walz as “happy warriors,” a term it said was “introduced to modern American politics” by Roosevelt to describe Al Smith, for whom he made a nominating speech at the 1924 Democratic convention.
According to Dr. Grabar, Roosevelt had opposed using the “happy warrior” line, considering it too poetic for convention delegates.
A key Smith advisor who had added the phrase, speaking for the candidate, told Roosevelt to use that version of the speech rather than the one Roosevelt had written himself or else not speak on behalf of Smith’s nomination. “FDR gave in, predicting it would be ‘a flop.’” But the speech was a success, and he later took credit for it. “This was just one of the innumerable cases of Roosevelt’s twisting of history and taking credit for the work of others.”
Dr. Grabar’s Debunking FDR, to be published this fall by Regnery, will be her third book in recent years. She is also the author of Debunking Howard Zinn: Exposing the Fake History That Turned a Generation Against America (2019) and Debunking the 1619 Project: Exposing the Plan to Divide America (2021).
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