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Great Scot

© Earl Rickard

The little black dog scampered across the deck of the USS Baltimore, barking repeatedly as he reached the galley. Some of the galley sailors gave him treats, while other clipped off a few locks of the dog's hair to send home; after all, this was the most famous dog in America -- his name was Fala and he belonged to the President of the United States.

The Scotch Terrier, born in 1940, was a gift for FDR from his cousin Margaret "Daisy" Suckley. The dog went everywhere with the president including a controversial inspection tour of Alaska and Hawaii in the summer of 1944. This trip, during the election campaign of 1944, would become famous not because of Fala's missing locks, but because of a supposedly missing Fala.

President Roosevelt's run for a fourth term in the middle of history's worst war dictated a post convention strategy that emphasized his role as commander in chief of the armed forces, therefore, above the political battle. FDR intended to wait until the campaign's closing phase before opening up his political guns on the Republican nominee, New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey. In order to portray the president as commander in chief, an inspection trip of American bases in Alaska and Hawaii was arranged for the summer of 1944.

The war notwithstanding, the Republicans were determined to make political hay from the trip and quickly found a rumor to embellish. On August 31, Minnesota Congressman Harold Knutson fired the first shot of the Fala controversy when he commented on a rumor that the President's dog "had been left behind at the Aleutions and that a destroyer was sent a thousand miles to fetch him." A White House spokesman immediately denied the charge.

The next day Democratic Majority Leader John McCormick quoted FDR's Chief of Staff, Admiral William D. Leahy, who said the Fala tale was false. Knutson replied, "Of course, I accept Admiral Leahy's word." Neverthless, Knutson refused to give up. On September 13, the Minnesota representative said a military plane had been sent to airlift Fala to his master.

None of these charges were ever proven, but in an election year a piece of nonesense like this is often tossed out to see if it has legs. Unfortunately for the Republicans this bit of nonsense not only had legs, but also made a U-turn and bit them.

President Roosevelt spent mid-September with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill at the Octagon Conference in Quebec, Canada. During his stay FDR began work on the speech that would kick off his political campaign scheduled to begin at a Teamsters Union dinner on September 23. The President sent a few lines to Judge Samuel Rosenmen, one of his speech writers, with a note describing the paragraphs as "just a happy thought."