How many Al Smiths were there? He has presented a prob-
lem to two generations of biographers, who have grappled with a seeming
inconsistency between his record as New York assemblyman, as governor,
and later as strident critic of the New Deal. His running mate in 1928, Joe
Robinson, remarked in 1936 that "somehow I think there must be two Al
Smiths. One is the happy, carefree fellow behind whom we marched . . . in
1928. . . . Now we have this other Al Smith, this grim-visaged fellow in the
high-hat and tails, who warns us that we are going straight to Moscow." ¹

This "fundamental dichotomy" interpretation argues two related cases. ²
The first is that Smith's liberal tenure as governor of New York was a
rehearsal of the New Deal. The memoirs of prominent New Dealers sup-
port this view. Frances Perkins, for instance, reminisced that Governor
Smith's policies were "the stones we now recognize in the foundations

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