(gentle music) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) - [Narrator] After a long life in politics, Former Democratic Speaker of the House and Vice President John Nance Garner dies at age 98 in Uvalde, Texas.

(gentle music) He helped steer the nation out of the Great Depression and laid the foundation for today's Democratic Party, yet his impact on American history is barely known today.

- The history of the modern vice presidency really begins with John Nance Garner.

- If Garner had lived 50 years earlier or 50 years later, everyone would know him.

- He is born into the horse and buggy era and he dies in 1967 in the space age.

That is an incredible transformation to live through.

(gentle music) (lively folk music) - He was born in 1868, and the state that John Nance Garner grew up in was very much a southern state.

He grew up in Northeastern Texas in cotton plantation country, but I think it's really important to remember the Southern legacy.

- [Narrator] In the 1840s, his widowed grandmother moves to Texas from Rutherford, Tennessee.

She single-handedly steers an ox-drawn wagon with six children to Blossom Prairie.

During the Civil War, one of her sons serves as a courier in the Confederate Army, is captured, and released from a Union prison when the war ends.

He returns to Blossom Prairie where he and his wife have the first of their five children, John Nance Garner.

- Of course, he was raised in Blossom Prairie, Texas.

He wasn't poor, I guess, but he said his daddy offered him a two and a half dollar gold piece if he'd picked a hundred pounds of cotton that day.

He was up before daylight and he picked a hundred pounds and he got his two and a half dollar gold piece and he bought a donkey and he had it bred to a horse and he got him a mule and he started making money.

(Ray laughs) - [John] When Father raised a full crop, he would buy a full barrel of whiskey, and if he raised half a crop, he would buy a half barrel.

He was a man to keep things in proportion.

- [Narrator] The Garners make their home a welcoming place and always keep an unlocked door for neighbors to come over to drink, play poker, and talk politics.

In 1888, Garner enrolls in Vanderbilt University, but he's forced to leave in his first semester after battling both academic difficulties and tuberculosis.

He returns to Texas, and, determined to become an attorney, pursues an apprenticeship at a local law firm.

At age 21, he's admitted to the Texas State Bar.

- In Blossom Prairie, East Texas, he's never able to become the top dog.

He makes a race for a local office and he loses by just a few votes.

One of his mentors tells him, "You know, if you have any aspirations of going anywhere, you're pretty soon going to become Old Man Garner, Old John Garner if you stay here."

When he moves to Uvalde, he's leaving for the western part of Texas, the frontier.

- [Narrator] He becomes a circuit rider, traveling on horseback from courthouse to courthouse across the state, often camping under the stars.

He argues cases from land title disputes to horse and cattle theft.

Practicing law in Texas is the gateway for the ambitious Garner to run for the office of circuit judge at the age of 23.

Unbeknownst to him, another young Texan was determined to stop him.

(gentle music) Mariette "Ettie" Rheiner was the daughter of a Swiss immigrant who had sought his fortune in the California Gold Rush.

He then moved to Texas, where he acquired 36,000 acres of ranch land at a time of intense conflict between Native Americans and white settlers pushing into Texas.

(gentle music) Ettie loses her mother at a very young age and is raised by her father until he remarries.

Facing a lonely existence on the ranch, a friend persuades her to attend business school in San Antonio.

Ettie studies stenography, one of the few skills women could practice to find employment in those times.

The resilient young woman challenges Garner running for the office of circuit judges because of his reputation as a hard drinker and poker player.

She doesn't think a man like him is fit to be a judge.

One night, returning home to Sabinal, she's introduced to the popular Garner by a mutual friend.

They look one another straight in the eye and an immediate attraction is formed.

- And she was one of his opponents, if not the only opponent, and he beat her and then married her.

- [Narrator] While in South Texas, Garner begins to accumulate substantial wealth.

Politically, his ambition doesn't stop at being a county judge.

After the birth of their son Tully, he runs a spirited campaign for a seat in the Texas legislature, and on winning the election, moves his family to Austin.

In the Texas House of Representatives, he quickly allies himself with the powerful political and business bosses of South Texas called patrons.

- You got to understand the patron owned everything.

Now, the farm workers, the land they lived on, the houses they lived in, practically the clothing on their backs were provided by the patrons, and in return, they'd be expected to vote a certain kind of way.

That was a delivery system for politicians.

- It came time to create a new congressional district in Texas, and Garner was very upfront about what he was doing.

No one knew.

No one thought that, you know, his redistricting bill was to benefit anyone other than John Garner, and he worked his fellow members of the house through whiskey drinking, poker playing, after-hours sessions to create this district for himself, and this was a huge district, 400 miles long, 200 miles wide, stretching from Corpus Christi to Uvalde.

These places are not close to one another on a map.

- By 1902, Texas is still a backwater, politically.

Everybody in Washington sees Texas as full of hicks and Confederates.

His entrance into Congress was met with a sound of one-hand clapping.

(upbeat old-timey music) Jack Garner's in the Congress from 1902 'til about 1914 without anybody knowing who he is.

- [John] Instead of attempting to start right out making laws, I decided to get acquainted with men who were in the business of making law.

- [Don] Garner could see that the people who were effective in the House of Representatives were the people who knew every rule and the people who didn't showboat.

Garner quietly built up his strength during that period of time, getting appointed to key committees.

- [Narrator] Running as a Democrat with the support of the patrons, Garner is elected to Congress 15 times.

Every year for his reelection campaign, Garner returns to South Texas and throws a big party for the patrons.

- And so they would come to his place, they would eat barbecue and drink beer, and then when they were finished, Garner would get up and say, "Boys, I hope you've had a good time."

And everybody would rattle their cups.

"Yeah, yeah, Jack."

"Well, do you want me to go back to Congress?"

And everybody would go, "Yeah, Jack, we want you to go back!"

And then Garner would go, "Okay, campaign over," and that is, in fact, the way it worked.

- [Narrator] As a Congressman, Garner vigorously challenges the Republican Party over tax and trade policies that favor industrialists and wealthy bankers in the Northeast, post-Civil War disparities still resounding into the early 20th century.

- The great issues were trying to keep the northern industrial interest from dominating the state.

- [John] Money was gravitating to the Eastern banks.

There was inadequate venture capital.

When a rancher sold his cattle or crops, the money headed east.

When a rancher wanted to borrow, to buy seeds, stock, or capital equipment, the New York banks tell them they can get it by paying 20 or 30% interest.

Banks in my state are finding it difficult to get currency for their daily needs.

I wanted to know why quick aid was extended to stock gamblers in New York while the rest of the country are left without a semblance of assistance.

- Garner had to have absorbed those lessons, and it has to be a significant animating factor in his attitude toward the Northeastern moneyed interests.

- It shaped the way he looked at big banks, national banks, Wall Street, so he came up as a populist.

- There was a strain of Southern populism that supported the small banks versus the big banks, that supported the farmer versus the banker who was trying to foreclose on the farm.

That was his strength, and his opponents, the people he disliked were the Andrew Mellons.

- Garner could not stand Mellon.

He epitomized the Eastern banking establishment that he as a small banker had to put up with.

In 1926, Garner led the fight that killed a bill that Mellon wanted to pass that would basically take all of his wealthy friends off the tax rolls, so Mellon circumvented that as secretary of the treasury by ordering, literally ordering the IRS to send rebates back to wealthy people.

Well, Garner found out about it and he caused a great national scandal by forcing Mellon to publicize these lists, and the newspapers published the list of all of Mellon's friends who got tax rebates back.

- [Narrator] These friends of Mellon happened to also be the largest donors to the Republican Party.

(peaceful music) - Each state is allowed to have two statues on display in the capitol.

Texas, of course, picked Stephen Austin and Sam Houston.

Joe Cannon was speaker.

Very unusual at this point, but Joe Cannon let John Nance Garner be in the speaker's chair when the house received the Texas statues of Austin and Houston.

John Nance Garner realized that this is where he wanted to be.

He wanted to come back to the speaker's chair, not merely by a courtesy on one day, but rather to become speaker, to have that kind of power.

- [Narrator] After serving 29 years in Congress, on December 7th, 1931, Garner is elected the 39th Speaker of the House of Representatives by a majority of three votes.

One of them is delivered by a house member carried in on a stretcher.

- Honorable John N. Garner is duly elected speaker of the House of Representatives.

(crowd cheers) - The oath provided in the Constitution is all anyone who desires to serve his country need make to assume his office.

That oath provides that you are well and faithfully discharged the duties of the office that I hope to do, and that's the only promise I have to make.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Jubilant Democrats congratulate Garner.

It is the first time in a decade the Democrats control any branch of government, and Garner will help secure the modern revival of the Democratic Party.

- The focus of American politics was on Congress, and so the leaders of Congress are the ones who initiated important political movements.

The speaker of the House was perhaps the most powerful individual in America.

(lively old-timey music) - This is room H-128 in the first floor of the Capitol.

It was an informal meeting area after the House would conclude its business for the day.

and what they would do is they would plan the next day's legislative strategy.

A lot of the agreements between the two parties were hammered out in this room.

Garner was a minority leader at the time, and they would, after concluding the House session at about five, would come down here for bourbon and branch water.

Garner would always pick the invitation list.

He always said there was a reason why you were there if you got invited.

- It was about finding the middle ground between Republicans and Democrats to craft effective public policy.

- [Fred] He learned how to pour stiffer drinks for them than he did for himself and he'd ply them with bourbon.

Then he did his work.

- [John] You get a couple of drinks in a congressman, and then you know what he knows and what he can do.

- It was during prohibition, but many of the congressman, while they may have been publicly dry, were, behind closed doors, wet.

The House did have its own bootlegger, a man by the name of George Cassiday called "The Man in the Green Hat," and the leadership actually gave Cassiday a room in the Cannon Building for him to store his stock so he didn't have to go back and forth from his warehouse.

Cassidy would actually have a briefcase.

They would go back and forth to each of the offices and fill the orders.

- That became a back channel for how legislation was done.

He called those meetings his Board of Education meetings, and when they would drink their whiskey, he would call that striking a blow for liberty.

- [Narrator] Entering the 1930s, Garner is becoming a household name.

In the popular press, he's depicted wearing cowboy boots, a 10-gallon hat, and wielding a tough gavel as speaker.

He is known as Cactus Jack, a nickname he acquired years earlier when he nominated the prickly pear cactus as the official state flower of Texas.

To his chagrin, the bluebonnet prevailed.

(lively folksy music) - Increasingly, the Texas caricature becomes a device for subsequent Texans to play with to catapult them further into the national spotlight.

- When Garner is speaker, you're starting the initial years in the Depression.

President Hoover is really trying to find some ways to expand the federal government role, but in very conservative ways, and Garner is pushing to expand public works, and so there's significant clashes between Hoover and Garner over the extent of relief operations, but also on the public works program.

- One of the initiatives of the Hoover administration was the Reconstruction Finance Corporation.

Its purpose was to save privately-owned banks and railroads and insurance companies.

John Nance Garner's biggest concern with the Reconstruction Finance Corporation is that it not become a boon for those Northeastern banking interests that he so despised.

The RFC had to present the voice of the economic peripheral of the South and the West.

- He went to Hoover and said, "I'll support the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, but I have to be able to appoint someone to that board."

Garner appointed Jesse Holman Jones, a banker in Houston, Texas, owning a real estate and banking and publishing empire.

- [Narrator] In 1928, the Democratic Party had held its first national convention since the Civil War in the South in Houston, Texas.

Garner's good friend, Houston businessman Jesse Jones, paid for the construction of the convention building out of his own pocket.

Jones' power in Washington will expand in 1933 when President Roosevelt makes him the chair of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation.

Roosevelt reportedly calls Jones "Jesus H.

Jones."

- Jones is in the middle of all of this.

Well, so is Garner, and they really link up at this point and they really become two power twins.

- [Narrator] While he is tying Texas to the corridors of power, Garner's career is also being shaped by one of the nation's worst natural disasters.

(water crashing) - One of the things that changed the politics in this period, I think, was the Mississippi flood in 1927.

That was the biggest single federal expenditure up to that point, and instead of it being a state project, it was a federal project, and there were a lot of Southern senators who were states' rights senators who began to see that there was a need for federal compacts and regional activities, and I think that flood is a very important factor in what brings the Southern senators around to thinking that the federal government has got to take a much more active role in solving the Depression.

- [Narrator] Natural disaster is soon followed by man-made calamities, beginning with the national banking collapse and the onslaught of the Great Depression.

- There was hardly a family that wasn't affected by the Depression.

(solemn music) And even my own daddy, I can remember he had very narrow feet and he had to wear expensive shoes, and I can remember him cutting out cardboard and putting it in his shoes, because he couldn't afford 50 cents to have it sewed, and we were a family that had nice things and never dreamed of such a thing that you couldn't afford a pair of shoes.

When the train would stop at North Uvalde, men in old ragged suits would come.

They couldn't stand to stay home.

They just left.

So many of them just abandoned their families and left.

It was a terrible thing.

It was awful.

- [Narrator] At the word "go," the Democratic candidate was off to tour the country and to establish a record of speechmaking energy and endurance never matched by any presidential candidate.

At the great meeting in Topeka, Kansas, many thousands of farmers greeted his appearance and listened intently to his message of the New Deal for farmers.

- The Governor Franklin Roosevelt of New York was the leading candidate, and they had a few primaries in those days, but the real nomination process was at the convention.

Many of the states that would not go for Franklin Roosevelt nominated their favorite sons, a person from that state who the state delegation has elected to lead them to the national convention and kind of stand as a symbolic candidate for president, and what that does is that favorite son has those votes as chips in the big game at the convention.

John Nance Garner was the favorite son of Texas.

That gave him a lot of votes.

The second reason he was a player is because of William Randolph Hearst.

- [Narrator] A powerful American newspaper magnate, Hearst had become acquainted with Garner when he served two terms in Congress.

As Hearst expanded his publishing empire and grew disenchanted with President Herbert Hoover, he began to see Cactus Jack Garner as a true prairie populist, a real conservative Democrat alternative to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Hearst thinks Garner will be his man in Washington, D.C. - William Randolph Hearst was a strong isolationist and appreciated Garner because Garner had been suspect about the need for the United States to enter the First World War and had isolationist views himself.

- [Narrator] Without Garner looking for it, he's chosen by Hearst.

On New Year's Day in 1932, Hearst makes a national announcement, heralding Garner as the next President of the United States and instantly throws his massive publishing empire's muscle behind a Garner for President campaign.

- [Don] There was just kind of this journalistic love affair with crusty ol' Jack Garner who represented and embodied true American values as a Texan.

(lively jazz music) (lively jazz music continues) (lively jazz music continues) - There's a lot of effort to prevail on William Randolph Hearst to back down on his support of Garner.

Everybody claims credit for calling Hearst that night.

They've had three ballots.

Roosevelt's ahead, but he's not got enough votes.

If he starts to lose votes, then he'll lose momentum, and then the question is, who will be the nominee?

And the smart money was Newton Baker, who was a former secretary of war and an internationalist, and Hearst, who is an isolationist, really disliked the idea of an internationalist.

Even Louis B. Mayer, who is head of MGM Studios, whose studio has Marion Davies, who's Hearst's girlfriend, on contract, so therefore has a good in with Hearst.

He calls up and says, "You know, if you don't support Roosevelt, you're gonna get Newton Baker."

(crowd chattering) - [Narrator] Hearst finally gives up his drive to put Garner in the White House, but the Texas delegation to the Democratic Convention still wants Cactus Jack for president.

- Roosevelt is desperate.

He's gotta get those extra votes to get the two thirds.

His people in Chicago are essentially offering the vice presidency to anybody who would give them the votes.

Later that day, Garner calls Sam Rayburn and he says, "I'm not a candidate."

Rayburn says, "Well, you know, this Texas delegation is not going to give up easily.

The only way to satisfy them is for you to be vice president on the ticket, and the Roosevelt people have offered this to you."

And Garner says, you know, "All right, anything.

I wanna live long enough to see one more Democrat elected president."

- The motion is that the rules of this convention be suspended and that John N. Garner be nominated for vice president.

Our candidate John Garner has released the Texas delegation out of caucus hell.

The Texas delegation determined to cast Texas' 46 votes for the splendid Franklin D. Roosevelt.

(crowd cheers) - The South in those days was supposed to be solidly democratic, but there was some wobbling, and there was considerable concern among southern Democrats, most of whom were quite conservative, that Roosevelt was too liberal.

So, with Jack Garner on the ticket, Roosevelt could hope to assuage the concerns of those Southern conservatives.

- Mr. Speaker, it is very delightful to welcome you here to Hyde Park and to have the chance to talk with my teammate about our plans for the next few months.

I'm very glad to introduce you to the Hudson River country and I hope we will see you here very often.

- Now, Governor Roosevelt, I came here to get instructions from my boss.

I belong to an organized democracy, which is for the benefit of this country, and I believe in party organization, and I come here to get my instructions.

The people of the United States are gonna elect you president, and I'm gonna be vice president, and it's for the benefit of the United States that we are gonna be elected.

- Thank you all so much.

It's a pretty good team.

- [Narrator] Roosevelt and Garner score an overwhelming victory in 1932, cementing the alliance between two powerful Democrats.

However, 17 days before the inauguration, a tragic incident almost changes the course of history.

While FDR is visiting Miami, an assassin fires on the president-elect.

(foreboding music) (gunshots banging) (crowd screaming) Thanks to the courageous intervention of a bystander, the bullets miss FDR.

- When the first shot was fired, I realized he was shooting at someone, and I had taken my right arm and pushed the pistol up just as hard as I could.

- The bullet struck Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak instead, who later dies from his wounds.

Had the assassin hit his target, Garner would have become president.

according to the 20th Amendment to the Constitution passed just a few weeks earlier.

FDR is sworn in as the 32nd president of the United States on March 4th, 1933, and Cactus Jack becomes his second-in-command.

- I think Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Garner did give the people hope, and that's all you have when you don't have anything is hope.

(triumphant music) (gentle music) - [Narrator] The Garners moved to the Hotel Washington after the election.

Ettie remains her husband's most trusted aid.

To find some time for herself, she gets up at five o'clock in the morning to read and paint.

By 7:30, she and her husband are at work in the Senate office building.

(gentle music) Running the vice president's office, Ettie maintains a Texas flavor by having a pot of beans simmering on a hot plate for her husband's lunch.

- It was not uncommon for members of the House and Senate to have their wives, their spouses on their payroll.

You couldn't leave your family at home, because you didn't go home on the weekends.

It was a long journey by train back to Texas.

(peaceful jazz music) - Well, right after the Roosevelt-Garner ticket won the election in 1932, Ettie Garner, who had always been her husband's secretary and gatekeeper, and she didn't know if it would be appropriate if, all of a sudden, she set up house in the vice president's office.

She made a trip and actually visited with Eleanor Roosevelt to get Eleanor Roosevelt's special dispensation woman to woman, and Eleanor Roosevelt thought that was just a splendid idea.

In fact, she even gave her an idea about building her own team in the White House.

- [Nancy] She was, to use the language of today, his chief of staff.

- [Donald] She would be the person who would block people from coming in when he didn't want to talk to somebody.

She would be the defense line in the process.

- John Nance Garner and his wife Ettie had an unusual relationship for the time and the culture.

I think she was his equal that he sometimes referred to her as the boss, you know, joking kind of, but she pretty much ran the ruse.

(peaceful jazz music) (upbeat old-timey music) The New Deal was an attempt to end the depression and bring the country back up economically into full employment.

Historians divide the New Deal into a first New Deal and a second New Deal, and it's been characterized over time as the first New Deal being the conservative New Deal and the second New Deal being the liberal New Deal.

The conservative New Deal focused on reforming the banks, reforming corporations.

Garner was in the middle of that.

Garner was pushing it.

Garner was the leader of it.

(lively jazz music) - Roosevelt was getting support from Republicans as well as from Democrats, from conservatives as well as from liberals.

His first banking bill is passed by the Senate the morning that he sends it up there in the House in the afternoon, and he signs it that night.

Nobody's even had a chance to read it.

It's trust that's going on, and Garner is one of the people who is really helping to get people on board to support the the skipper, as he calls it.

- [Nancy] He's very much a team player in helping the administration get its program through Congress.

- I would call John Nance Garner Roosevelt's legislative leader on Capitol Hill.

Before the New Deal, when you put your money in a bank, it was good luck, you know?

God bless and good luck.

Hopefully, the bank wouldn't run off with your money or collapse, and because of the banking crisis during the Depression, several members of the House representatives in the Senate were pushing a federal insurance program.

- [Narrator] So Garner pushes to have a bill passed to establish the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, FDIC.

It would safeguard the deposits of every citizen and is still with us today.

(lively jazz music) - He struggled to get that done over Roosevelt's objections, and once Garner got it passed, Roosevelt came along and signed the bill.

Now, here's the Vice President of the United States playing a major role very early on in a major piece of legislation.

- As the New Deal went along and people had more time to read some of the legislation, there was more unease about this, but for the most part, everybody wanted to get the country out of the Depression.

- [John] It was a time of great emergency.

Trading was at a standstill.

After the banks closed and the people had no money, they couldn't go on and do business!

The main thing was to get money to them, and one way was to get it out of the treasury.

We got some buildings built and some things done.

- [Narrator] Vice President Garner uses New Deal policies to bring home massive projects to his beloved Texas.

Tens of thousands of Texans were put to work.

Critics call it pork barrel politics, but there's no denying the scope.

From the stunning art deco buildings at Fair Park in Dallas to the San Jacinto Monument and airfields around the state, Garner's imprint on Texas would be deep and lasting.

(gentle music) - He believes that the federal government has a role to play in leavening society, but he sees that role through infrastructure development more than through social welfare policy.

He believes that, if the infrastructure is provided, then people can work to take care of themselves as he did in Blossom Prairie and everything will ultimately work out all right.

- [Fred] He was all for giving contractors money to build big public projects, but he was against giving people what he called welfare.

Even social security really stuck in his throat.

(gentle music) - He did have a practice every morning around 10 o'clock in the morning of inviting the boys, as they are, from the press corps to come into his office and he would pour himself a shot and he'd pour a shot for each of the reporters, and, at 10 o'clock in the morning, they would have their first drink of the day and start talking politics about what was going on.

In those days, there was no air conditioning, so they kept the doors open to allow fresh air to breeze through, and so one of the old time Senate staff members told me that if you sat in the Senate galleries by three o'clock in the afternoon, the smell of whiskey had just permeated up there from those outer offices, but that was the way Garner kept good relations with the press.

- [Narrator] Accustomed to playing a significant role as speaker of the House, Garner is conflicted about the lack of power in the vice presidency.

- [John] The vice president has no arsenal from which to draw power.

He has no offices to bestow or favors to extend.

Now, he can make power for himself sometimes by his personality and ability.

He comes to the place through a national election, not as the choice of the senators over whose sessions he presides.

A vice president may move to the presidency and he may be a great president.

A great man may be a vice president, but he can't be a great vice president, because the office itself is unimportant.

- [Narrator] Legend has it that Cactus Jack once said, the vice presidency was "not worth a bucket of warm piss."

- There's been some speculation that Garner sized up Roosevelt, saw a paralyzed guy who had suffered from polio, and the vice president, of course, as we all know, becomes president.

There's also some speculation that he had promised Sam Rayburn that he would leave the speaker's position.

He'd been grooming Rayburn behind him, but when he does become vice president, he becomes the most powerful vice president in the history of the United States.

(crowd murmuring) - Mr. Chairman, delegates, and friends, my words shall be as few as they shall be fervent and sincere.

I am a soldier, and my duty is to follow where the commander leads.

I gladly accept the nomination for the vice president now tendered me for the second time.

The sense of personal satisfaction in this honor is enhanced and heightened by the thought that I am again to be on the ticket with Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

(crowd cheers) - [Narrator] In 1936, the Democrats win a landslide victory.

Roosevelt and Garner carry 46 states and lose only Maine and Vermont, but there are serious cracks developing in the political partnership between Garner and Roosevelt.

- Garner was something of a difficult fit in a Roosevelt administration, because Roosevelt was your sort of classic Northeastern democratic liberal who believed in a stronger role for government, who believed in greater influence for labor unions, who thought that government ought to take a more active role in the lives of ordinary Americans.

Garner was a fairly typical Southern conservative who believed the opposite.

- [John] Roosevelt has been a good president for the country, but he's got too much power, and we're at a point where the country knows better what to do for itself than Washington knows what to do for it.

No government can make us prosperous.

The most we can hope to do is to keep the government from making some classes prosperous at the expense of all the rest.

- Roosevelt believed that the American people had spoken in favor of a more active federal government, had spoken twice in 1932 and again in 1936.

He was reelected overwhelmingly in 1936, but the Supreme Court then stepped in and said the American people cannot have what they very clearly wanted.

- The Democratic administration and the Congress made a gallant, sincere effort to raise wages, to reduce ours, to abolish child labor, and to eliminate unfair trade practices.

(audience applauds) We tried to establish machinery to adjust the relations between employer and employee, and what happened?

You know who assumed the power to veto and did veto that program.

(audience applauds) - Justices who had been appointed by people like William Howard Taft and Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover really were not in sync with the direction that the federal government was going in, and Roosevelt had big things like social security on the horizon and child labor legislation that he was afraid that this very conservative court was going to strike down.

- [Narrator] The nation is growing divided, with one side saying the Supreme Court is standing in the way of President Roosevelt and workers' rights, and the other side saying the Supreme Court is bravely combating a runaway president.

Striking auto workers have taken to chanting "nine old men, nine old men," referring to the Supreme Court justices.

(somber music) - Here are thousands upon thousands of men and women laboring for long hours in factories for inadequate pay.

Here are strike more far-reaching than we have ever known.

- [Narrator] Roosevelt's closest ally is the first woman Cabinet member, Frances Perkins.

Perkins champions the idea of unemployment insurance and drafts the Social Security Act.

She introduces legislation to end child labor, to cap work hours, and to enforce a minimum wage.

- There was a turn and Roosevelt started paying more attention to Madame Perkins, who was secretary of labor.

He started supporting labor unions.

Garner hated labor unions.

He was anti-union to the core.

- [John] I urged FDR to publicly assail the sit-down strikes as mass lawlessness.

At a Cabinet meeting, I grew so irate at the president and Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins that she began to cry and the meeting ended.

I supported federal intervention to break up the Flint strike, but this idea was rejected by President Roosevelt.

Mr. Lewis, the head of the United Mine Workers, referred to me as a labor-baiting, whiskey-drinking, poker-playing, evil, old man.

I think what he said did me as much good is harm.

- The ultimate break, though, came when the Supreme Court of the United States overthrew some of Roosevelt's New Deal programs, and in a fit of frustration, Roosevelt came up with a plan.

For every Supreme Court justice who stayed on the court after they hit a certain birthday, he got to appoint new justices.

- [Narrator] When Roosevelt's court reform legislation is introduced in the Senate in July of 1937, Garner disappears to Texas and is absent when the bill is voted on.

Not supported by either party, the bill is roundly defeated.

Garner's lack of support infuriates Roosevelt.

- And it went downhill from there, from then on, between Roosevelt and Garner.

- There will be one more major point of contention between Vice President Garner and Roosevelt.

The president decides to break up the coalition of conservative Southern Democrats, many of them close friends and longtime colleagues of Garner.

(somber music) - Roosevelt believed that party loyalty ought to go one way primarily.

All Democrats ought to support him.

He didn't think that there was a reciprocal relationship, that he ought to support all Democrats.

Not surprisingly, some of those other Democrats, including Garner at times, thought that, well, this wasn't fair.

(somber music) - The Southern members of Congress could be pretty liberal or progressive, and they could also be very conservative.

One thing that kept them together, even though they were ideologically divided, was the race issue, and white Southern representatives were there essentially to promote and to protect the segregation system.

- African Americans who were elected members of the House could not eat in the members' dining room.

They had to go down in the basement and eat with the help, and they were members in full standing of the House of Representatives, but Washington is a Southern city.

It was segregated and it was following all the old traditions that limited anything beyond what white males did or wanted.

- Roosevelt's heart was in civil rights reform, but his head understood that, if he threw the weight of the presidency behind, for example, a federal anti-lynching law, he could immediately kiss goodbye any chance of keeping that Southern conservative coalition as part of his New Deal group.

- He wants to turn the Democratic Party into a truly liberal party.

He urges that voters turn out conservatives in the primaries and elect progressives or liberals who are committed to supporting his programs.

- John Nance Garner was horrified by this.

You don't always get people to agree with you, but you can always work out some sort of a compromise.

The last thing in the world you do is campaign against members of your own party.

- [John] It's not the business of the President of the United States to choose senators and representatives in Congress.

These men stand well in their party.

The leader of the party ought not to treat them as outcasts.

Roosevelt seems to want men to do his bidding.

You can't demand intellectual servitude from a self-respecting senator or representative.

- It's very hard to campaign against incumbent members.

They usually have very good organizations.

They're well entrenched.

They know what their constituents want, and, in fact, all of the Southerners that he campaigns against in '38 are all re-elected.

(peaceful music) - [Narrator] As Roosevelt considers running for a third term, Garner weighs his own political future.

He harbors ambitions to become president, but it could remain an elusive dream if FDR runs again.

- Roosevelt was the sphinx.

You know, he kept quiet.

He was the great riddle.

You know, will he run or won't he?

Well, the other candidates have got to announce.

Garner gets serious about this, and you can tell he's serious 'cause he loses weight, he buys some expensive suits, and he stopped drinking for a little while, and he cleans up his image a little bit to look more statesman-like, and he gets into the primaries, and public opinion polls show that he is a serious challenge.

If Franklin Roosevelt is out of the race, then he would probably be the leading candidate.

(planes roaring) But then the war in Europe is heating up.

Hitler invades Poland in 1939.

It's beginning to look like, no matter what we do, we're going to be in this war.

(solemn music) People feel that they need to have an experienced foreign policy person at the helm.

They trust Roosevelt and Roosevelt beats Garner like eight to one in the Illinois primary, and that ends Garner's ambitions.

(gentle music) - [John] You get peace and quiet and a chance to think down there.

A man can attend to his chickens and go fishing and watch the water flow by under the shade of the trees.

Here, everything's in turmoil.

Now, I've been here 38 years.

That's just one fourth of the 152 years of the life of this republic up to now.

(gentle music) - When Jack Garner left Washington in 1941 after Franklin Roosevelt won his third term in office and had a new vice president, Garner was very bitter about how things had turned out, and he told people, "When I get on that train and go back home and I cross the Potomac, I'm never gonna cross the Potomac again."

And he didn't.

- Garner leaves Washington, D.C. in 1941 and he goes back to Uvalde, and pretty soon thereafter destroys the bulk of his papers.

There are a few scrapbooks that remain, but the correspondence, memoranda, telegrams, notations, speech drafts, they're all destroyed.

They're burned.

Garner was close friends with those in Congress who had become very opposed to the President.

Perhaps there was material in his papers critical of Roosevelt.

Perhaps it might have also been to protect himself.

He didn't want it known that he had ceased being a loyal general.

- He knew, where there are no records, there's no history, and it's a great shame.

We don't really know otherwise why he did it, but we have to assume it's because he ran his entire professional life behind closed doors.

- Garner left.

I think Garner missed the House representatives more than anything else.

He probably did not miss having to sit in the Senate chamber and listen to a lot of senatorial speeches.

He probably did not miss the New Deal and the controversies that were involved in it, but I think he missed his friends in the Congress.

He missed the the socializing and the deal cutting and patronage building.

He was a great person for bringing home the bacon to his district.

He used to say, whenever a Yankee got a ham, he was gonna get a whole hog, and that was gone.

- After he got back to Uvalde, he literally does become a front porch political sage.

He maintained all of his lines of communication.

There's a pipeline, a information, communication, advice pipeline from Uvalde, Texas to Washington, D.C.

So, Jack Garner didn't have to physically be present in Washington, but he still exerted a great deal of influence.

- [Narrator] Content to be home in Texas with Ettie, Garner is often seen shelling pecans on the front porch and chatting with locals.

Powerful Democrats including Dolph Briscoe, Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn, and Senator Lyndon Baines Johnson frequently visit him and thank him for mentoring their careers.

Garner continues to shape the Democratic Party well into his 80s and 90s.

In 1948, he endorses Harry Truman during the presidential election and secures the Texas vote to help elect him as the 33rd president of the United States.

(crowd applauds) (gentle folksy music) That year, Garner loses Ettie, his closest confidant and aid for over 50 years.

He moves into a small cottage behind the house he had shared with his wife and donates their home to the City of Uvalde as a memorial to Ettie.

Their house today is known as the Briscoe-Garner Museum.

(gentle music) As John Nance Garner prepares to celebrate his 95th birthday on November 22nd, 1963, statesmen from all over the country come to pay their respects.

(gentle music) As celebrations are underway in Uvalde, President John F. Kennedy arrives in Dallas.

The president is visiting Texas to prop up the Democratic party and keep his election bid on track.

(crowd applauds) Before entering the fated motorcade, President Kennedy makes one last phone call to wish John Nance Garner a happy 95th birthday.

(triumphant music) - There was a big party and everybody was visiting with him and congratulating him and everything, and Mr. Garner told me, he says, "I want you to stay with me."

So I stood on the porch right behind him, and Mary Salazar was the maid there, and she'd come out the front door and said that the president was on the phone and wanted to talk to you and wish you happy birthday.

I waited 'til all the news people got in and they closed the door and locked me out.

They were trying to hold me out.

No, I kicked the door in and I stepped in, and I missed all of the conversation except for just these words, and he said, "You are my president and I love you."

(gentle music) - Perhaps his most important contribution was to help Roosevelt forge this democratic coalition, the liberal Northeasterners and the Southern conservatives, but Jack Garner gave him this foothold in the South and was able to explain Roosevelt to Southern conservatives who otherwise probably wouldn't have been able to understand him.

and they would have distrusted Roosevelt even more than they did, and the Democratic coalition that came together in the 1930s persisted into the 1970s.

- He was able to make all these Texans chairs of important committees.

Texas was by far the most powerful single state in the United States, more than New York, more than California, through its congressional delegation.

- [Brands] He made it possible for Sam Rayburn, for Lyndon Johnson to be viable national politicians.

(gentle music) - And he did his best to promote the New Deals programs.

In terms of the new Democratic Party, in terms of the new role for the federal government, in terms of establishing the New Deal, Garner was a major player.

- Roosevelt couldn't have done it by himself.

Garner couldn't have done it by himself, but the two of 'em working together for eight years managed to put together this coalition that did last and really changed the face of America.

(gentle music) - [John] I never sought fame or glory.

I only wanted to be a competent workman in the business of government.

My only promise was to do what any American would say, to serve the nation the best way I knew how.

I have had great love for and debt to my party, and wanted it to be an instrument of good, but in the end, I couldn't do half of what I wanted to do in Washington, even though some folks say that the country looks different today because of me.

I suppose that, if I hadn't agreed to be vice president, I would have remained speaker of the House for many years, and then maybe, just maybe, history would have remembered me differently.

(gentle music) (crowd applauding) (gentle music continues) (lively folksy music) (lively folksy music continues) ♪ Beautiful, beautiful Texas ♪ ♪ With a beautiful bluebonnet rose ♪ ♪ We're proud of our forefathers ♪ ♪ Who fought at the Alamo ♪ ♪ You can live on the plains or the mountains ♪ ♪ Or down where the sea breezes blow, ♪ ♪ And you're still in beautiful Texas ♪ ♪ The most beautiful place that we know ♪ (lively folksy music) (lively folksy music continues) (lively folksy music continues)