Los Angeles

Los Angeles is the first major California stop in Charles A. Lindbergh’s 1940 cross-country campaign flight, where his arrival joined the spectacle of his aviation fame to a direct political appeal. At Los Angeles Airport, a crowd made up largely of aircraft workers greeted him; there he argued that voters faced a choice between his candidacy and war.

Setting and Arrival

After Lindbergh unexpectedly bypassed the scheduled campaign launch in Detroit, he flew west from Long Island in the Spirit of St. Louis, the aircraft associated with his celebrated transatlantic crossing. The journey did not break his coast-to-coast record: by 1940, he had set a faster time a decade earlier in a more advanced plane. Yet at Los Angeles Airport, tens of thousands of people—many employed by the large aircraft manufacturers in and around the city—received him with an enthusiasm comparable to that which had greeted him elsewhere.

The crowd’s composition connected the airport welcome to the city’s aircraft industry. The campaign stop was not simply a meeting with an undifferentiated public: workers from the new manufacturing enterprises formed much of the audience that gathered to see the famous aviator arrive.

The Campaign Appearance

Lindbergh addressed the crowd in a brief, plainspoken speech. He wore high boots and jodhpurs with a lightweight jumper over a shirt and tie, reproducing the flight outfit associated with his Atlantic crossing. He kept on his leather flight headgear, while his goggles rested on his forehead. Their position recalled Sandy Roth’s charcoal drawing of Lindbergh, hidden beneath Sandy’s bed.

After the crowd stopped chanting his name, Lindbergh said: "My intention in running for the presidency," he told the raucous crowd, "is to preserve American democracy by preventing America from taking part in another world war. Your choice is simple. It's not between Charles A. Lindbergh and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It's between Lindbergh and war." The speech amounted to forty-one words, counting the A in his name. Its compressed form made the campaign’s central appeal unmistakable: he framed opposition to American involvement in another world war as the purpose of his presidential run.

The Airport as a Campaign Stage

The Los Angeles stop brought together two versions of Lindbergh. His arrival in the old famous plane and his reproduced flight costume summoned the adored, seemingly unspoiled Lone Eagle; the candidate then used that inherited public image to deliver a political argument. The airport setting gave the campaign appeal the force of a return performance, even though Lindbergh was now asking for votes rather than undertaking the Atlantic flight that had made him famous.

After a shower, a snack, and an hour’s nap at the airport, Lindbergh took off again in the Spirit of St. Louis, flying first to San Francisco and, by nightfall, to Sacramento. Los Angeles was therefore a brief stop in a fast-moving statewide itinerary, but a decisive one in the account of the tour: here the aircraft workers’ reception and the candidate’s compact antiwar message occupied the same stage.