A Woman in the White House from “Radio Diaries”

Speaker 1: Major funding for Backstory is provided by an anonymous donor, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation.

Speaker 2: From Virginia Humanities this is Backstory.

Brian Balogh: Welcome the Backstory. I’m Brian Balogh. If you’re new to the podcast we’re all historians and each week, along with my colleagues, Joanne Freeman, Ed Ayers, and Nathan Connolly, we explore a different aspect of American history.

Brian Balogh: Today on the show we’re bringing you a compilation of past segments in celebration of March as women’s history month. With over a hundred women serving in Congress and already a record number of women announcing their 2020 presidential candidacy this year marks the strongest female presence in American political history. But for most of American history, of course, the US government was almost exclusively male. That is until Margaret Chase Smith, a Republican senator from Maine, ran for President in 1964 and made it all the way to the party’s convention. A few years back the podcast radio diaries ran this piece about her campaign, the farthest any woman had gotten in major party politics up to that point.

Margaret C.S.: There are those who make the contention that no woman should ever dare to aspire to the White House, that this is a man’s world and that it should be kept that way.

Janann Sherman: My name is Janann Sherman, and I wrote the book No Place for a Woman, A Life of Senator Margaret Chase Smith.

Martin Henry: My name is Martin Henry, and in 1964 I worked on the Margaret Chase Smith presidential campaign.

Janann Sherman: Margaret Chase Smith was born in a little town in central Maine called Skowhegan. Her mother struggled working in the shoe factory, working as a waitress and so forth, so it was not an easy life, and I think that was a basis for a lot of Margaret’s ambition, that she didn’t want to end up like her mother had. She had better ideas for herself.

Martin Henry: She was the first woman ever elected to the Senate in her own right. She was very much a middle of the road republican who really followed her own instincts on things.

Janann Sherman: She definitely was seen by 1964 as a hawk.

Margaret C.S.: It does not pay to play footsie with the Communists.

Martin Henry: She was probably the only woman in 1964 that had the stature to be a serious candidate for president.

Margaret C.S.: It is contended that I should not run for president because the odds are too heavily against me for even the most remote chance of victory.

Janann Sherman: In January, 1964 Margaret Chase Smith was scheduled to make a regular speech to the Women’s Press club.

Margaret C.S.: Third, it is contended that as a woman I would not have the physical stamina and strength to run. So because of these very impelling reasons against my running, I have decided that I shall.

Janann Sherman: So that was the opening shot.

Speaker 7: (singing)

Speaker 31: Senator Margaret Chase Smith Maine, the first woman to announce a serious bid for the White House, will enter the New Hampshire presidential primary on March 10th.

Speaker 7: (singing)

Martin Henry: She campaigned in Illinois. She campaigned some in Oregon. She campaigned in small towns before rotary clubs. She drove most places by car.

Janann Sherman: She would not accept campaign contributions, though she had no money, no poll workers, no buttons, no bumper stickers. Goldwater and Rockefeller, her opponents, were both millionaires, so I think she decided to take the moral high ground by saying, “You don’t have to be a millionaire to be President of the United States.”

Speaker 8: From Washington, DC, Senator Margaret Chase Smith, Republican of Maine, will face the nation.

Janann Sherman: She tried to get people to pay attention to her record, what she had done of substance, not the fact that she was a woman, but of course she was constantly asked that. I mean, it’s the very first thing that people see.

Speaker 8: Senator Smith, not all countries have the same attitudes towards women as the United States. How do you think a woman President the United States would make out in international conferences and those so-called nose to nose meetings?

Margaret C.S.: Well, I would remind you that once there was Catherine The Great, I would remind you that there was Queen Victoria. I would also call your attention to Mr. Khrushchev’s references to me through the years when he called me and Amazon warmonger hiding behind a rose.

Speaker 8: But how do you think you would make out in the kitchen confrontation with Mr. Khrushchev?

Margaret C.S.: Oh, I wouldn’t care to estimate that. If it was making blueberry muffins, I probably would win.

Speaker 8: We are well aware of that, having sampled them.

Janann Sherman: She was always having to walk that tightrope between being strong enough and tough enough to be Commander in Chief, to run a country but still feminine enough and ladylike enough because being feminine was absolutely essential, so she tried to balance it the best way she knew how.

Speaker 9: (singing)

Martin Henry: She was always meticulously dressed. She was very careful about her appearance and everything.

Janann Sherman: She would tell Time magazine that nothing clears her mind like vacuuming, or pose with a mixing bowl, or primping in the mirror. That was a favorite. Senator Smith had a campaign song: I’ll Leave It To The Girls.

Speaker 9: (singing)

Janann Sherman: The response from the press was not pretty. One of the pundits said that a woman could be President just as long as she didn’t act like one

Speaker 9: (singing)

Janann Sherman: The press never treated her as if she had a realistic shot at it.

Speaker 10: Good afternoon. This is the Republican National Convention at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. Before this day is out, the nominee of the Republican Party will have been determined.

Speaker 9: I am now proud and honored to nominate the senior Senator from the great Republican state of Maine, Senator Margaret Chase Smith.

Martin Henry: She knew at that point that she was not going to get the nomination, to say the least. Goldwater had the nomination pretty much sewed up.

Speaker 11: And there it is, Senator Barry Goldwater is the Republican Party’s nominee for the presidency of the United States.

Janann Sherman: The standard is if you’re the loser and you don’t have enough delegates to swing it, well, then you very graciously release your delegates to vote for other candidates, but Senator Smith never released them and the total of the 27 votes that she got on the floor she hung onto, denying Barry Goldwater the unanimous vote for the nomination. So she came in second.

Speaker 12: The tumult and the shouting has died. Senator Margaret Chase Smith, the lady from Maine, has emerged from her precedent-breaking bid for the presidency with even greater stature and reputation. Let’s get around to it, you made some history, lovely lady, in being the first woman ever nominated.

Margaret C.S.: Yes. It’s quite a satisfaction today to think about-

Martin Henry: Why do it at all? People run because they want to prove a point. They run because they want to make a statement. They run because they’ve got an oversized ego as something. There are all sorts of reasons that people run for President, even though they may know they have little chance of winning. Her reason was to prove that a woman could be a serious presidential candidate. And she did. She proved it.

Speaker 7: (singing)

Speaker 13: Will we see a woman elected president of the United States during our lifetime? Perhaps not so wild a dream. The world is changing rapidly. Politics change with it. Many of the once impossible things have happened. Time alone will tell if a woman will some day break the tradition that only men can hold that office.

Speaker 7: (singing)

Brian Balogh: That piece was produced by Joe Richmond and Samara Freemark. It came to us from the podcast radio diaries as part of the contenders series, profiles of the most original presidential candidates who never won the White House. To hear more of these profiles head to radiodiaries.org.