Transcript:

The danger to America, and such a ghastly hoax, is that when the people have been fooled by the cry of "wolf!, wolf!," when there is no wolf, they are apt to think that every leader is just another foolish shepherd boy, and every emergency is unreal. We Americans like straight shooters. We don't need to be fooled or duped into making sacrifices for our country. In the heart of every American lives the spirit of Decatur's famous toast, "our country, in her intercourse with foreign nations--may she always be right; but our country, right or wrong."

Background:
On June 12, 1936, the Republican National Convention chose Governor Alfred M. Landon of Kansas to challenge President Franklin D. Roosevelt in his bid for a second term. A wealthy oilman before he entered politics, Landon's conservative economics appealed to a Republican Party strongly opposed to Roosevelt's New Deal and the emerging welfare state. In a presidential campaign that focused on class to an unusual extent, a number of prominent Democrats supported Landon, as did many newspapers, which labeled the New Deal a threat to American individualism and liberty. However, from southern farmers to northern industrial workers, the president had the support of the average American, who remembered the economic despair of the three years before he was elected. On November 3, Roosevelt was reelected in the greatest Democratic landslide in U.S. history, carrying every state except Maine and Vermont. Roosevelt's decisive electoral victory marked the beginning of a long period of Democratic Party dominance.