With this cheerful welcome, Iowa Sen. Lester Dickinson opened the 1932 Republican National Convention: “It’s about time that you folks quit talking about your families at home and how you’d run the government if you got the chance and take your seats. Let’s get this convention started.” Some 1,153 delegates grudgingly took their seats inside the massive Chicago Stadium.

In a time when political conventions were raucous weeklong events where anything could happen (and frequently did), the 20th quadrennial GOP gathering was, in the words of Time magazine, “singularly colorless.” Just like the president they had met to renominate. And that had the party faithful in a deep funk.

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