“The Greatest Show on Earth” by Mike Angelo (August 30, 1940)

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1940.08.30 “The Greatest Show on Earth” by Mike Angelo (August 30, 1940)
by Emidio (Mike) Angelo (1903-1990)
18 x 18 in., ink on art board
Coppola Collection

Emidio Angelo was born in Philadelphia, a year after his mother and father, a baker, arrived from Italy. He studied art from 1924 to 1928 at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Angelo joined The Philadelphia Inquirer as a political cartoonist in 1937 and worked there until 1954. He also drew cartoons for the Saturday Evening Post, Life and Esquire.

Henry Agard Wallace served as Secretary of Agriculture under FDR from 1933 to 1940. He strongly supported Roosevelt’s New Deal. Overcoming strong opposition from conservative leaders in the Democratic Party, Wallace was nominated for vice president at the 1940 Democratic National Convention. The Roosevelt-Wallace ticket won the 1940 presidential election, and Wallace continued to play an important role in the Roosevelt administration before and during World War II.

As Roosevelt refused to commit to either retiring or seeking reelection during his second term, supporters of Wallace and other leading Democrats laid the groundwork for a presidential campaign in the 1940 election. After the outbreak of World War II in Europe in September 1939, Wallace publicly endorsed a third term for Roosevelt. Though Roosevelt never declared his candidacy, the 1940 Democratic National Convention nominated him for president. Shortly after being nominated, Roosevelt informed his supporters that he favored Wallace for vice president. Wallace had a strong base of support among farmers. But many conservative Democratic Party leaders disliked Wallace because of his former affiliation with the Republican Party.

The Roosevelt campaign settled on a strategy of keeping Roosevelt largely out of the fray of the election, leaving most of the campaigning to Wallace and other surrogates.

After the July convention, Wallace made foreign affairs the main focus of his campaigning.  On August 29, 1940, he gave his own acceptance speech to a crowd of 7000 at the Des Moines Coliseum and, by radio, to the nation. He used Hitler’s name so often that the Chicago Times asked “Who is FDR running against, Hitler?” But he had used FDR’s name more, saying that “the replacement of Roosevelt … would cause [Adolf] Hitler to rejoice.”