Ah, history......................

 

     Raskob—a hero to the business community and a villain to much of the political establishment and public—planned to use the private dinner to set the record straight; he had no plans to resign from his role as chair of the Democratic National Committee, despite his friend Smith's brutal loss to Hoover.  Instead, Raskob was doubling down:  He planned to promise that he would get the party's finances in order and use his own fortune—estimated to be as much as $500 million—to underwrite the party's fight against Hoover.  That was what the dinner was really about; he wanted the Democrats to spend the next four years single-mindedly and relentlessly attacking Hoover with everything they had.

     Raskob saw his role—and his immense wealth—as the country's most vital counterweight to Hoover.  He believed his money could be used as a political weapon: a way to obstruct the president's agenda, weaken his standing, and ensure he would be a one-term leader.  Raskob considered Hoover a sanctimonious bureaucrat whose meddling and moralizing stood in stark contrast to his own bold, unapologetic faith in capitalism and risk.  But it was more than that, too.  This was deeply personal.  Raskob was not a man accustomed to losing, and his friend's defeat stung.  If Raskob had his way, the Democratic Party would become a well-financed engine of opposition, and a Democrat would be in the White House by 1932.

-Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History—And How It Shattered a Nation