The Pew Research Center has some bleak news for everyone concerned about the future. "Ordinary Americans," it reports, "are more polarized than in the past. Partisan divisions on issues are wider than they were a few decades ago, and many Americans hold deeply negative views of those on the 'other side' of politics." Similarly, a 2022 poll by The New York Times and Siena College found that "in interviews, people across the ideological spectrum told similar stories of estrangement: conversations broken off with siblings and children, decades-long friendships that have gone quiet."
This has not always been true. In 1939, Americans temporarily put aside their usual political hates and loves to cheer on a cinematic valentine to the Bill of Rights: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Directed by Frank Capra, now better known for It's a Wonderful Life, the movie was in development and production during two highly publicized controversies. Both arose because of attacks on free speech instigated separately by two close Democratic Party allies of President Franklin D. Roosevelt: Sen. Sherman Minton of Indiana and Mayor Frank Hague of Jersey City, New Jersey.
Minton, a down-the-line administration loyalist, was angering conservatives because of a partisan investigation of anti–New Deal critics and his proposed bill to criminalize any newspaper article "known to be false." Meanwhile, Hague, a key pro-FDR operative in a major swing state, was suppressing leftist demonstrators and union organizers, even expelling some from the city. The combined impact of the seemingly unrelated Minton/Hague episodes prompted the formation of a left-right coalition for free speech. Most notably, socialist Norman Thomas and Republicans Alfred Landon and Herbert Hoover jointly condemned FDR's culpability as an ally of both Minton and Hague.
