(photo credit 5.1)
The man for whom a majority of the poor voted in 1932 was far from being one of them. Born into one of the few remaining pockets of landed aristocracy in post–Civil War America, that of the Hudson River country gentleman, Franklin Delano Roosevelt never wanted for anything that money could buy. This background is the single most important element in understanding Roosevelt’s career, beliefs, ability to deal with the Depression, and extraordinary relationship with the people, especially the poor.
One of the main differences between the social development of the United States and that of such European nations as Great Britain and Germany was the lack of a powerful landed aristocracy in America. Before the Civil War, the southern planters represented something of an American aristocracy; but the war and Reconstruction destroyed their power. Thus America’s rising capitalists in the late nineteenth century faced no effective counterforce such as that provided by the English Tories or the Prussian Junkers. The latter aristocratic groups checked the worst abuses of the British and German industrialists. They did this for two reasons: first, their sense of noblesse oblige led to a degree of paternalistic care for the poor; second, the aristocrats resented the rising power of the bourgeoisie and pushing social reform was a way to strike back at the new rich. Many social welfare laws that were enacted in America only in the 1930s had British and German counterparts dating from thirty to fifty years earlier.
Significantly, when American social legislation was finally put on the books, it was pushed through by a landed aristocrat. Although the United States lacked a powerful class of aristocrats, it did possess certain individual patricians of great influence. The Roosevelt family is, perhaps, the best example of this limited American aristocratic paternalism. Theodore Roosevelt was a leading figure in the new paternalistic, nationalistic liberalism of the Progressive era. His relative, Franklin, brought those ideas to fruition. The wealth of the Roosevelts has led to much confusion about their loyalties. Throughout his career FDR was critical of businessmen. “Business must get out of politics,” he declared in 1911. He saw Wilson’s 1916 victory as “the debacle of plutocracy.” The twenties found him calling for keeping “the control of our government out of the hands of professional money-makers” and denouncing “the old money-controlled crowd.” Neither such statements nor his far stronger denunciations of businessmen in 1936 indicated that Roosevelt was a traitor to his class. He never considered himself in the same group with the money-makers. His money was already made. “These millionaires,” Roosevelt said in a 1939 letter, clearly indicating that despite his wealth, he did not associate himself with the group, “are a funny crowd. They are perfectly willing to go along with lip service to broad objectives, but when you ask them to help put them into effect by any form of practical means, they howl in opposition and decline to suggest any other course.”
Throughout his political career, from his earliest days in the state senate, Franklin Roosevelt was an unrelenting conservationist. This was a revealing reflection of his patrician background. The lord of the manor has an obligation to maintain and preserve the land. As a country gentleman, FDR believed in conserving more than forests. He took a neofeudal, paternalistic view of “his” people. During the 1932 campaign he said privately that people who came to hear him speak had “the frightened look of children.” His background enabled Roosevelt to see himself as a true friend of the forgotten man. But it was a particular type of friendship, one based not on equality but on noblesse oblige. It was a characteristic of FDR, as it has been of most twentieth-century liberals, to speak of “community” but to see control of the national community as resting with a strong president who embodies the desires and needs of the people. It is fitting that a system with such feudal overtones was perfected by the Squire of Hyde Park. British diplomat Nigel Law made a point critical to understanding FDR when he said that Roosevelt “was a perfect example of the English Country Gentleman.”1
Franklin Roosevelt’s background was different from that of almost all presidents—save his relative, Theodore—since John Quincy Adams. Our first six presidents were all aristocrats. Andrew Jackson changed that by emphasizing his “common man” origins. Thereafter, it helped to put a log cabin in one’s past, even if none had actually been there. Henceforth, an elite heritage was taken as a severe political handicap. In this regard, Franklin Roosevelt’s disability was large, but he had a way of turning handicaps to his advantage.
In his “centenary remembrance” of FDR, distant relative Joseph Alsop argues that the Roosevelts were not American aristocrats. They were “nice people,” but were not at the “apex of the pyramid.” Strictly speaking, this is true, at least in terms of wealth. Roosevelt’s father, James, was “comfortable,” but his attempts to attain really great wealth had been thwarted by the depressions of the 1870s and 1890s. (His experience with economic depression was somewhat different from that of his younger son.) James Roosevelt left an estate of $300,000. His wife, Sara Delano Roosevelt—one of eleven children—inherited approximately $1 million from her father. This may strike some readers as placing the Roosevelts among the “nice people,” indeed, particularly when one remembers how much a million dollars was worth in the late nineteenth century. But this was a long way from the apex of the pyramid. By way of comparison, Cornelius Vanderbilt left an estate of between $70 million and $100 million. The difference is apparent in the contrast between the extravagant, gaudy display of the various Vanderbilt mansions—notably the one built for the Commodore’s grandson, Frederick, just up the road from the Roosevelt estate in Hyde Park—and the “very nice” comfort of the lesser Roosevelt mansion.
In another sense, however, Alsop’s contention that the Roosevelts were not aristocrats will not wash. The very contrast between the Roosevelts and Delanos on the one hand, and the Vanderbilts on the other, makes the point. The former were “old money”; the latter demonstrated in their ostentatious style the newness of their wealth. Aristocracy, after all, is not measured in terms of wealth alone. The ancestry of the Roosevelt and Delano families placed them, without question, at the top of the social order. Sara Delano Roosevelt, a student in the genealogy of the two families, claimed relationship to numerous European aristocrats and at least a dozen Mayflower passengers. Among the more interesting ancestors she listed were William the Conqueror and Anne Hutchinson. Sara Roosevelt did not exaggerate when she remarked that her son had “had many advantages that other boys did not have.”
That Franklin Roosevelt had this type of deep aristocratic heritage, rather than that of the self-made man or the nouveau riche, was of great importance. It provided him with a fundamental security and self-assurance. In addition, such people were customarily taught that their birthright carried with it the obligation of being good citizens. They had a duty of stewardship. Franklin Roosevelt’s achievement was to expand the concept of stewardship and combine it with a heavy dose of democracy, thus uniting Jefferson and Jackson.
The man who would accomplish this remarkable political feat was the product of the second marriage of James Roosevelt, to Sara Delano. If not a June-December match, it was at least a July-October one. The future President’s father was fifty-four, his mother twenty-eight, when FDR was born in 1882. The maternal influence on the boy was far the greater. As the only child of a mother from a large family, young FDR was the center of attention. His mother, who took a Victorian view of power relationships between the sexes, served father and son alike. What Franklin failed to obtain from his parents, he was able to get from adoring servants. The boy rarely got into trouble as he always wanted to please and seemed to know what was necessary to do so, no small advantage for a politician.
It was a terrible but necessary sacrifice for one in her social position when Sara Roosevelt sent her son at the age of fourteen to the nation’s most exclusive boarding school, Groton. Endicott Peabody had established the school for the purpose of instilling in boys of society’s upper ranks “manly Christian character.” The emphasis was not especially upon scholarship, but upon morality and vigor. Groton’s effect on Franklin Roosevelt in both regards was perceptible. Rector Peabody preached constantly upon the need for a man, especially one from the privileged class, to serve. This was very much in keeping with what young Roosevelt had been taught at home. The emphasis upon physical vigor also left its imprint on FDR. His build was too slight to excel at football, but he always tried with all his might to succeed on the playing field. The Groton ideal was implicit in a comment that Grotonian Averell Harriman made about Peabody: “You know he would be an awful bully if he weren’t such a terrible Christian.” What the Reverend Peabody wanted, it seemed, was for his boys to grow up to be like Theodore Roosevelt. That also became the passionate goal of Teddy’s young kinsman. The ideal may have placed an excess of stress on the “manly” and “physical,” and not quite enough on the moral, but this was only a part of Franklin Roosevelt’s education.
As a lover of sailing and an accomplished yachtsman himself, Franklin longed to go to Annapolis, but his parents objected. In the spring of 1898, when Cousin Ted and the rest of the nation got caught up in the excitement of a splendid little war with Spain, Franklin plotted with two other Groton boys to sneak away to Boston and enlist in the Navy. A mild case of scarlet fever nipped this romantic notion in the bud.
Harvard and the law, not Annapolis and the sea, were “proper” goals for a young gentleman. Harvard was, of course, an intellectual center, but not for all of its undergraduates. The other world at Harvard was that of the social elite: prep school backgrounds, parties, football, other extracurricular activities, and the “Gentlemen’s C.” It was to the latter Harvard world that young FDR naturally gravitated. He and a friend took a comfortable suite of rooms at one of the private dormitories and Franklin added a piano, even though he had never mastered the art of playing one.
Academically, Harvard’s influence on the future President does not appear to have been overwhelming. He worked hard, but only sparingly on his studies. He took few of the easy, so-called football courses. Although he enrolled in several semesters of history, his knowledge of the subject upon leaving Cambridge seems to have been quite limited. In 1904, Roosevelt wrote an essay on Alexander Hamilton that was nothing more than hero worship and was replete with errors. His economics courses, fortunately, left even less of a long-term imprint.
At Harvard, as at Groton, most of Roosevelt’s considerable energies were expended in nonacademic endeavors. He played scrub football and captained a club crew. Seeking the “strenuous” life, FDR took time to join the Harvard Republican Club in 1900 in order to work in support of Cousin Ted’s campaign to become Vice President. Although he had completed coursework for a degree in three years, Franklin returned to Cambridge for a fourth year in order to edit the Crimson. If his editorials are a gauge of his concern for the world’s problems at the age of twenty, the needle was pointing near “empty.” Editor Roosevelt directed most of his attention to the need for school spirit and a winning football team. If, at this age, winning was not to Franklin Roosevelt what it would later be to Vince Lombardi (“everything”), it was close to it. He did not, however, always win. Most significantly, Roosevelt failed to be selected for Harvard’s most elite club, Porcellian. This may have been the result of association with his nephew, who was involved in many escapades and who had just created a scandal by contracting what FDR biographer Frank Freidel calls “an unfortunate marriage.” Whatever the cause of Roosevelt’s rejection by Porcellian, many observers have contended it was one of the best things that happened to him. It may not have made him “more democratic” at the time, but it did reduce the additional elitist influences that the club might have had upon him.
While at Harvard, Roosevelt was entirely caught up in its atmosphere, but this does not seem to have had any large positive influences on his later career. Although he surely did not learn much about pragmatism in the courses he took, FDR, like most college students, obtained much of his education outside the classroom. Pragmatism was “in the air” at Harvard at the turn of the century and the future President may well have caught a dose of it. Otherwise, his Harvard experience was more something from which he had to escape than what made him what he subsequently became.
From Harvard, Roosevelt went on (as had Theodore, who was now President) to Columbia Law School. Before the end of his first year there, he had married his distant cousin (and the President’s niece), Eleanor. Franklin’s legal education made scant impression on him. When he passed the New York Bar Examination during his third year, he did not bother to complete his studies or take his degree. For the next few years, FDR settled into the pastimes of fathering children and being a legal clerk in a Wall Street law firm that specialized in defending corporations against antitrust suits. He was drifting into a life like that his father (who died while Franklin was a freshman at Harvard) had enjoyed. It was not long, though, before FDR decided that the footsteps he preferred to follow were those not of his father, but of Eleanor’s uncle.2
In 1907 a group of clerks in the law firm for which Franklin Roosevelt worked discussed their ambitions. Roosevelt, one of the others later remembered, listed the steps he planned to take to reach his goal. “They were: first, a seat in the State Assembly, then an appointment as Assistant Secretary of the Navy …, and finally the governorship of New York.” The clerk recalled FDR saying, “Anyone who is Governor of New York has a good chance to be President with any luck.”
It was a blueprint that had already been shown to be workable. These were the stopovers Theodore Roosevelt had made (along with a stint as a war hero and a final pause at the vice presidency) en route to the White House. Why could not another Roosevelt, of another party, tread the same path? At twenty-five, FDR was quite confident of his abilities, his luck, and perhaps his destiny. The next few years did nothing to undermine that confidence.
When a possibility arose in 1910 that he might become the Democratic nominee for the state assembly seat from Dutchess County, Roosevelt could not resist. His attractions for the normally losing upstate New York Democrats were his name and his money. FDR soon found himself the victim of a “bait and switch” tactic. The incumbent assemblyman decided to keep his seat and if Roosevelt wanted to run, it would have to be for the senate. This was a more prestigious position, but had two major drawbacks: Uncle Ted had started in the assembly, not the senate, and—far more serious—the larger senate district was heavily Republican. Franklin decided to give it a try, anyway.
Thanks to the growing progressive/Old Guard split in the Republican party (between followers of TR and of President Taft), FDR had a chance. Waging a strenuous—what else?—campaign on progressive themes and getting considerable mileage out of both his name and an attention-grabbing red Maxwell touring car, Roosevelt won by just over a thousand votes out of more than 30,000 cast. The long journey to duplicate TR’s achievement had begun. And FDR had picked up from Dick Connell, the local Democratic candidate for Congress, the habit of beginning speeches with “My friends.”
Franklin Roosevelt quickly made a name for himself. His surname was already well known, of course, but he now had to create an identity of his own, albeit one closely linked with that of his relative. The younger Roosevelt’s progressivism was at this point amorphous. In most respects it was not noticeably different from the “clean government” crusades so frequently identified with men of Roosevelt’s background. Despite his worship of Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin was still closer in philosophy to Grover Cleveland. No sooner had he arrived in Albany, though, than Roosevelt was making “good government” sound new and courageous.
Joining with several other “progressive” Democrats, Roosevelt headed a faction that declared war on Tammany Hall. Holding the balance of power in the state senate, Roosevelt’s group tied up the legislature for weeks by refusing to support Boss Charles F. Murphy’s candidate for United States senator. (This was prior to the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment and New York did not yet directly elect its senators.) In the end, the insurgents blocked Murphy’s original candidate, but had another Tammany choice shoved down their throats. Nevertheless, Franklin D. Roosevelt had gained much statewide and national publicity and was widely hailed as an up-and-coming progressive in the Democratic ranks.
The youthful state senator continued to take every opportunity to gain publicity as a rising progressive star. Unlike the Tammany organization, Roosevelt supported Woodrow Wilson for the presidential nomination in 1912. When Josephus Daniels, Wilson’s choice to head the Navy Department, met FDR on the morning of the inauguration, he asked him how he would like to become assistant secretary of the Navy. “How would I like it?” Daniels remembered Roosevelt blurting, “I’d like it bully well. It would please me better than anything in the world … the assistant secretaryship is the one place, above all others, I would love to hold.” The delight of the playwright—even one guilty of plagiarism—at seeing his script followed so neatly is understandable.
Sitting at TR’s desk in the Navy Department, Franklin was in a position to influence patronage in New York and get his name before the public periodically. It was a pleasant job for one who loved ships. When he visited a Navy vessel, the assistant secretary commanded a seventeen-gun salute and an honor guard. FDR loved it. He loved even more getting a chance to pilot destroyers he visited. Before long, though, the career script called for a new political move. Had he been able to win an endorsement from Wilson, Roosevelt would have run for governor of New York in 1914. Failing that, FDR attempted to alter Act II, Scene I, and took a fling at the available U.S. Senate seat. It was a mistake. Without Tammany support, the young reform candidate could not win the Democratic nomination. Roosevelt was crushed, both in and outside New York City. Overall, he lost by a ratio of nearly 3 to 1.
Fighting in a war was part of TR’s prescription for the strenuous life. It was also, if one was resourceful enough to become a hero, a great help in reaching the White House. TR had employed his escapades with his Rough Riders to help elect him governor within a few months of the war. His account of the war, one wag said, should be entitled, “Alone in Cuba,” by Theodore Roosevelt. Three years later, he was President of the United States. Given these considerations, it was to be expected that Franklin Roosevelt would attempt to resign his post and enlist as soon as the United States entered the World War. Perhaps with visions of a San Juan Hill somewhere in the north of France, FDR did just that: attempted to enlist. Wilson would no more hear of this than he would allow TR to raise a “Roosevelt Division.” Franklin’s superiors convinced him that his services were more valuable in Washington.
His fences with Tammany reasonably well patched, Roosevelt could probably have had the 1918 gubernatorial nomination and won the election. He declined, and Al Smith became governor. There was not too much danger that Roosevelt would be labeled a slacker, but he still hated to see a war go by without some personal adventure. FDR finally persuaded Secretary Daniels to send him on a mission to Europe. It gave the aspiring politician a chance to “see war” and even come briefly under hostile fire. When he returned, FDR planned to insist upon a commission so he could get into uniform before the war ended. His knack for contracting diseases, which had dashed his plans for enlisting in the Spanish-American conflict, now gave him influenza. By the time he recovered, it was too late; the Armistice was only a few weeks away. Roosevelt’s next brush with serious disease was not to turn out as happily.
As always, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s eyes were searching for opportunities to advance his political career. The situation in 1920 seemed singularly inauspicious for a progressive Democrat. The tide of public opinion had crested and was running rapidly in a conservative direction. The next stop in the Roosevelt script was to become governor of New York. But Democrat Al Smith was the incumbent. Roosevelt could have had the nomination for United States senator almost for the asking, but he was not at all sure he wanted it. A few friends and an occasional newspaper story actually boosted the man with the magic name for the Democratic presidential nomination. This was remarkable for someone whose total experience with elective office consisted of two years in the state legislature, but the talk was hardly serious.
Deciding that the time was not good for a progressive politician, Roosevelt had two options: he could change with the times and try to ride the conservative wave, or he could stake out a position as a future leader of Democratic progressives and wait for the next change in public mood. Both calculation and inclination pointed FDR toward the latter course.
Early in 1920 one of Roosevelt’s friends tried to push a Hoover-Roosevelt ticket. The proposed second name on the slate had no objections to the idea, and after Hoover announced his Republicanism the possibility of FDR as a vice presidential candidate lingered. That the ambitious Roosevelt was interested may seem surprising. The vice presidency was not only a seat of obscurity, it was also a road to political oblivion. Unless an act of God or an assassin intervened, no one was likely to hear of the vice president again. Other than those who were elevated by the death of a president, no vice president since Martin Van Buren, nearly a century before, had ever gone on to win a major party presidential nomination. What was more, it was almost certain that the Democratic nominee in 1920 was not ever going to become vice president. The ticket was highly likely to lose in November.
All of this was well known to Franklin Roosevelt. His willingness to accept the vice presidential spot was a bold stroke. He expected to lose, but to build up a national following in the process. He could then go back and become governor of New York a few years later and win a presidential nomination when it would be worth having. It was a strategy that had never been tried. The subsequent political records of losing vice presidential candidates were even worse than those of winners. Only twice in the republic’s early years had men lost a bid for the vice presidency and then been placed in the top spot on a major ticket. Charles C. Pinckney had lost as the Federalist vice presidential candidate in 1800 and been chosen to head the campaign four years later. His running mate in 1804, Rufus King, lost the vice presidency that year and again in 1808, but won the worthless Federalist presidential nomination in 1816. It was not a record to inspire others to try this route to the White House.
But Franklin Roosevelt was not a man who doubted the chances for his own success. Just because no one had ever lost a vice presidential race and gone on to become president was no reason to think he could not be the first. (FDR, incidentally, remains the only person ever to accomplish this feat.) Roosevelt went to the 1920 party convention in San Francisco in a more optimistic frame of mind than many other Democrats.
Much as New York’s Republican bosses had been glad to kick Theodore Roosevelt upstairs (or downstairs) to a vice presidential nomination in 1900 in order to get rid of him, Boss Murphy agreed to support FDR for the second position on the party’s national ticket. The degree of Murphy’s enthusiasm for the man who had caused him so much trouble in the past decade was apparent in his comment to Democratic presidential nominee James Cox’s campaign manager: “I don’t like Roosevelt … but … I would vote for the Devil himself if Cox wanted me to.”
The 1920 campaign was for Roosevelt the national counterpart of the anti-Tammany fight in 1911: his name had helped put him where he was; now he had to build a reputation of his own to go with the name. Despite a few grievous mistakes, Roosevelt was a bright spot in the 1920 Democratic debacle. He seemed to be in a good position to make his gamble pay off by returning at the head of a future national ticket.3
Several circumstances combined to make Franklin Roosevelt the man who could win the allegiance of so many of the down-and-out during the Great Depression. His patrician background with its supreme security and sense of stewardship was one; the influence of Eleanor Roosevelt was another. A third that is always mentioned, but which has generally been downplayed in recent years, was his struggle with polio. In searching for the basis of Roosevelt’s compassion and his rapport with the downtrodden, the importance of this dream-shattering disease deserves heavy emphasis.
The results of the 1920 election showed unmistakably the direction of the country. FDR did not follow entirely on that conservative route, but he was sufficiently adaptable that he took up a position with a Wall Street firm. The following summer at Campobello, the exhausted Roosevelt was stricken with infantile paralysis. Both the local doctor and a Philadelphia specialist found vacationing at Bar Harbor misdiagnosed his illness, the latter prescribing precisely the wrong treatment and sending a $600 bill for his trouble. (Doctors who vacation at Bar Harbor are rarely inexpensive.)
The pain was excruciating. At first, as was to be expected, Roosevelt was in “utter despair, feeling that God had abandoned him.” Until this point in his life, he had always gotten almost anything he wanted, effortlessly. Now he would have none of his desires—or so it seemed to others. But an upbringing in which a child usually gets his way if he is persistent is not all to the bad. It provided Roosevelt with his extraordinary self-confidence, tenacity, and optimism. He soon concluded that he could still attain his goals, only no longer would it be effortless.
Those who saw Franklin Roosevelt, before and after, as a “Mama’s boy” did not understand his nature at all. In fact, had he been that, he would simply have vanished from political life. After his crippling attack, his mother strove constantly and ruthlessly to make him a lifelong invalid. In one sense, it was her fondest dream. She could care for her son at Hyde Park as she had for her elderly husband. But Franklin would have none of it. Part of his aristocratic heritage entailed stoic acceptance of hardship, not complaining. FDR had previously had little opportunity to practice this virtue, but now he performed it superbly. With the support of Eleanor, he refused to admit defeat—or even the possibility of defeat.
Eleanor Roosevelt was not without a powerful ally in her struggle to keep her husband looking ahead. Louis McHenry Howe, a newspaperman who had joined Roosevelt’s entourage in 1912 and decided immediately that FDR was destined to be president, would not give up on that destiny. Until his death in 1936, Howe was a central figure in Roosevelt’s political efforts. During the 1932 campaign for the presidency, Roosevelt supporter Robert Jackson gave what may be the best capsule description of Howe, as he directed the campaign from his cramped office. Howe, Jackson said, was “an implausible little man … 5 feet 4 or 5 inches tall, his frail cadaverous frame is topped by a face that is stretched taut about the skull underneath.” “His age,” Jackson continued, “defies computation; he could be forty, or fifty, or sixty. His clothes are a sartorial ruin, disorderly and in need of cleaning. He appears constantly on the verge of physical collapse.”
Louis Howe clearly saw Franklin D. Roosevelt as the vehicle for a political rise that someone of Howe’s appearance and qualities could never hope to accomplish on his own. But his devotion to FDR was not mere calculation. Roosevelt was his idol. Jackson suggested that the worship may have been partly “the instinctive reverence of the physically inferior man for the Apollo.” After August 1921, Howe’s hero no longer fit the role of Apollo, but the devotion and obsession with reaching the White House remained; perhaps it even intensified.
Roosevelt’s political career scarcely skipped a beat when he was stricken with polio. Howe controlled the flow of information to newsmen, indicating that Roosevelt would recover completely. A month after the initial attack of the disease, Roosevelt accepted a position on the executive committee of the New York Democratic party. The road back to political prominence would be long and extremely difficult, but Roosevelt was determined to make the journey, even if he could not do it by foot.
The importance of Roosevelt being struck by a serious disability can be overestimated, but that importance was very great. Few if any events totally change a person after he has reached adulthood. A basic set of characteristics is already well formed and subsequent developments react upon that base. Frances Perkins has been criticized for asserting that Roosevelt “underwent a spiritual transformation during the years of his illness.” That term does imply too much. FDR’s religious faith appears to have changed little. It was, Eleanor Roosevelt later said, “a very simple religion. He believed in God and his guidance.… He could pray for help and guidance and have faith in his own judgment as a result.” That simple, undogmatic faith, Mrs. Roosevelt believed, helped account for her husband’s confidence in himself. Always convinced of his own destiny, FDR decided soon after he was taken ill that he “must have been shattered and spared for a purpose beyond his knowledge.” It was a short step to concluding that God’s purpose was what his had always been: to make him President of the United States.
Roosevelt’s illness did change him in important ways. Determined always to succeed in politics, FDR had nonetheless been something of a carefree playboy before his paralysis. He seems to have become inwardly more serious afterward. Most of all, Roosevelt’s suffering helped to broaden his patrician sense of stewardship into a more genuine sense of compassion. “The man emerged,” Frances Perkins wrote, “completely warmhearted, with humility of spirit, and with a deeper philosophy. Having been to the depths of trouble, he understood the problems of people in trouble.”
This was absolutely critical to Roosevelt’s later relationship with victims of the Great Depression. It worked both ways. He was able to understand suffering in a way a country gentleman would not have otherwise been likely to. And, to the deprived, the smiling “only thing we have to fear is fear itself” attitude Roosevelt took in the face of the Depression was acceptable and uplifting only because he had overcome a terrible affliction himself. Without this “blessing in disguise,” Roosevelt’s jauntiness in the thirties would likely have turned people against him as an overprivileged man who did not understand life’s hardships. When asked years later if he ever worried, Roosevelt responded: “If you had spent two years in bed trying to wiggle your toe, after that anything would seem easy.” It cannot be seriously doubted that Roosevelt’s paralysis changed him in more than the obvious physical ways. It enabled him to present voters with a magnificent success story, one with which people in the Depression could identify far more readily than they could with tales of business success.4
For all the qualifications, it can still be said that had Franklin Roosevelt not contracted polio, it is highly unlikely that he ever would have become the “man for the times” during the Great Depression. The disease was not alone, however, in providing FDR with sufficient compassion to deal with the collapse. He owed much of his success to his wife.
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fifth cousin, once removed. FDR’s great-great-great-great grandfather, Nicholas Roosevelt (1658–1742), of the first generation of the family born in the New World, was also Eleanor’s great-great-great-great-great grandfather. Eleanor was the first child of Theodore Roosevelt’s younger brother, Elliott, and his wife, the former Anna Hall. Eleanor’s arrival in the world was not an entirely welcome event, at least to her mother. Both parents had wanted a “precious boy” and the little girl was “a more wrinkled and less attractive baby than average.” This was not pleasing to Anna Hall Roosevelt, herself a beautiful woman. Moreover, Mrs. Roosevelt had a very difficult pregnancy and almost died. Eleanor began life under a cloud of guilt. Her mother never became reconciled to the little girl’s appearance and called her “Granny.”
Given this rejection by her mother, it was natural that Eleanor developed a strong affection for her father, a man of great expectations and little willpower, who frequently suffered from bouts with excessive quantities of alcohol. Her father’s health problems led to long periods in Europe, during some of which Eleanor was left at home. She felt abandoned and unloved. On her fourth birthday, Eleanor told her father that she “loved everybody and everybody loved her.” The first half of this was often the case later in her life, but Eleanor Roosevelt’s love for everybody was, she must have often felt, unrequited.
Her one love as a child, her father, was frequently exiled. When Eleanor was eight her mother died—an event that seemed most important to her as a chance to live again with her father. But Elliott Roosevelt died two years later, leaving Eleanor with a feeling of complete loneliness. She was placed with her grandmother, who treated her poorly and put her under the authority of a cruel governess. Even as a child, Eleanor felt sympathy for the poor and rejected (with whom she felt an obvious kinship).
Attendance at the progressive Allenswood School outside London helped Eleanor’s compassion blossom. When she returned home, she remade the acquaintance of her distant cousin, Franklin, whom she had met and played with on various occasions during their childhoods. They fell in love and Franklin shocked his mother on Thanksgiving, 1903, by telling her that he planned to marry Eleanor. Marriage was not what Sara Roosevelt had in mind for her pride and joy, at least not for another decade or so. She did all she could to break up the couple, but failed. They were married on St. Patrick’s Day, 1905, in New York. Eleanor’s uncle, the President of the United States, gave away the bride and, according to some accounts, strove to be the bride, as was his wont on most occasions. Marriage to the President’s niece gave FDR even greater social prestige than he already enjoyed and brought him closer to the family of his idol.
In the first eleven years of their marriage, Eleanor gave birth to six children, an occupation that left her little time for further intellectual and social development. Her mother-in-law continued to dominate the family. Sara was turning Eleanor into a conventional young society matron. The two women were, in fact, rivals for the affections of both Franklin and the children. In revealing fashion, Franklin always tried to ignore the conflict between his wife and his mother, acting as if all were well.
Besides her close relationship to TR, Eleanor soon proved in other ways to be an important political asset to her husband. Although still quite shy, her thoughtfulness and kindness made many friends for Franklin in both Albany and Washington during his early career. She was not nearly as physically unattractive as many people who knew her only from unflattering photographs in later years believed, and what she lacked in outward beauty was more than made up by her warmth and “inner radiance.” Eleanor’s eyes “caressed one with sympathy and studied one with intelligence.”
Work during World War I led Eleanor Roosevelt to become more independent. It also saw her make a commitment to public service and helping others. The sleeping princess, as Archibald MacLeish put it years later, had been awakened. But it was not the World War experience alone that changed Eleanor Roosevelt into an independent woman dedicated to social service; there was at the same time a private war.
Eleanor apparently had long seen conjugal relations of a physical nature as a duty rather than a pleasure. Such was the expectation—although surely not always the reality—for women who were products of the Victorian Age. Mrs. Roosevelt fulfilled the expectation. Sex, Eleanor later told her daughter Anna, was an ordeal to be borne. She bore the ordeal often enough during the first eleven years of her marriage; but after giving birth to six children, she wanted no more. This was entirely understandable, particularly since her children all weighed more than ten pounds at birth, and one, Elliott, was almost twelve pounds. Having no knowledge of birth control, and too shy to ask anyone, Eleanor Roosevelt saw abstinence as the only way. After early 1916, Franklin and Eleanor never again lived together as husband and wife.
In his 1956 biography of Roosevelt, James MacGregor Burns said that “rumormongers” spread a story that Franklin “had fallen in love with another woman and that Eleanor had offered him his freedom.” Rumormongers are not always wrong. In the period beginning in 1916, FDR became increasingly fond of his wife’s social secretary, Lucy Mercer, with whom he eventually started an affair. Miss Mercer, although penniless, was descended from one of the “best” families. The Washington elite, Elliott Roosevelt has said, would have placed Miss Mercer a few rungs higher than the Roosevelts on the social ladder.
Some encouraged the affair—Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter, Alice, for one. She invited the clandestine couple to dinner, later saying with the cruelty for which she was noted: “He deserved a good time. He was married to Eleanor.” Anxious to cause as much trouble as possible, Alice attempted to tell Eleanor about the situation. Mrs. Roosevelt already had her suspicions; the proof came in September 1918, when Franklin returned from his trip to see the war. His flu had progressed into double pneumonia and Eleanor unpacked his luggage. There she found a package of love letters that Lucy Mercer had written to Franklin while he was away.
Eleanor promptly offered her husband a divorce, as the “rumormongers” said. FDR was of a mind to accept this proposition and launch a more permanent adventure with Lucy. Two considerations dissuaded him. His mother told him that if he followed that course, she would cut off his money. Equally compelling was the undeniable effect that being divorced for adultery would have on his political career. It would end it. (On this subject, at least, voters are more liberal in Ronald Reagan’s day than they were in Roosevelt’s.) So an understanding was reached. Franklin agreed never to see Lucy again and Eleanor stayed on as his public partner, but not his private wife. She kept her part of the bargain; he did not keep his. FDR and Lucy stayed in touch over the years. He secretly provided a limousine for her during his 1933 inauguration. With the help of many friends, including his daughter Anna, and Bernard Baruch, Franklin saw Lucy often during the last years of his life. She was present at his death. Eleanor knew nothing about this until after FDR died.
In some respects her husband’s infidelity was the sort of life-altering event for Eleanor that being stricken with polio would be three years later for Franklin. Eleanor Roosevelt now moved toward complete independence. She realized henceforth that advancing her husband’s career was a means to advancing her own. The more prominent he was, the more good she might hope to accomplish through humanitarian endeavors. In 1932 she frankly said in an interview, “I never wanted to be a President’s wife, and I don’t want to now.” She was, nevertheless, the best “President’s wife” this nation has ever had.
Their lack of “normal” marital life notwithstanding, Franklin and Eleanor were a winning team. Their strengths complemented each other. Her compassion was a match for his ambition, and over the years, particularly after their great crises, each of these qualities began to rub off on the other spouse. It is almost certain that Franklin Roosevelt would not have become president without Eleanor’s help; it is absolutely certain that if he had, he would not have been the same beloved, benevolent father figure that he became during the Depression. For Eleanor Roosevelt was at least as widely perceived as her husband as a person who genuinely cared for the fate of others. The letters that Depression sufferers wrote to her were every bit as laudatory as those written to FDR. Being First Lady gave Eleanor Roosevelt a wider arena in which to distribute her love.
For that is what it came down to. From her tragic childhood onward, Eleanor Roosevelt’s life was a search for love. In seeking to be loved by others, she was lavish in spreading her own love, both widely and deeply. She was not the sort of person who claims to love “everybody,” but has real affection for nobody. On the contrary, her general compassion was reflected in intensely warm, personal friendships with many individuals. She was, Joseph Lash writes, “a woman of great vitality, whose affectionate nature overflowed and … constantly sought opportunities to dispense love upon those she cared about and those who needed her love.”
In recent years, the suspicion has arisen that at least one of those who needed her love may have had an unseemly amount of it lavished upon her. Many of the letters that were exchanged between Mrs. Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok, an Associated Press reporter who was assigned to cover her in 1932 and became a great friend, suggest a passionate, physical relationship. Hickok gave Eleanor a ring, which—in a fascinating act symbolic of her private independence under her public role as Franklin’s wife—she wore during the 1933 inauguration ceremonies. It is interesting to compare this secret act by Eleanor with FDR’s secret provision of a car for Lucy Mercer on the same day. “Oh! I want to put my arms around you,” Eleanor wrote to Hickok a few days later. “I ache to hold you close. Your ring is a great comfort. I look at it and think, she does love me, or I wouldn’t be wearing it!”
There can be little doubt that Lorena Hickok did love Eleanor Roosevelt and desired to make that love physical. Given all we know of her quest for love and her problems with her husband, it would not stretch credibility to believe that such a desire was reciprocated. Yet, despite such passionate letters as the one quoted above, there is strong reason to believe that the sort of love Mrs. Roosevelt sought was neither heterosexual nor homosexual, but asexual. She wrote letters similar to those she sent Hickok to many other friends of both genders. What matters for a historical understanding of one of the most important figures in the twentieth century is her need for love and her expression of it for the downtrodden of the nation and the world. Helping others made her feel needed. Beyond that, it is not necessary to go into her personal life in an attempt to find conclusive answers.5
During the 1920s, Franklin Roosevelt and Al Smith, former opponents who later became bitter enemies, had an interlude of close political cooperation. In 1922 Roosevelt helped Smith regain the governorship he had lost in the Harding landslide. Two years later, Roosevelt became the titular head of Smith’s campaign to win the Democratic presidential nomination. Smith asked Roosevelt to make his nominating speech before the convention in Madison Square Garden, and Roosevelt responded to the challenge of his first major address since his illness with a superb effort in which he called Smith the “happy warrior of the political battlefield.” The speech helped Smith, although not enough to win the nomination that year. It helped Roosevelt more, by showing that he could not be written off as a political force.
He was, though, a man who had never held elective office higher than a seat in the state legislature, had lost his last two elections, labeled himself a progressive in a period of strong conservatism, and was partially paralyzed. It is certainly remarkable that such a man could continue to be a power in politics. There was, of course, the magic surname, but that cannot explain much. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., also had the name—and a much closer association with the man who gave it its attraction—but his political career never got past an unsuccessful New York gubernatorial nomination in 1924. Far more than his name, his unceasing effort kept Franklin Roosevelt a force in the Democratic party. The reverse side of the coin of political banishment for a party is opportunity for one whose name is already known and who is tenacious at political work. Richard Nixon did much the same thing in the 1960s. Roosevelt undertook many unglamorous political tasks in the twenties. He kept up a voluminous correspondence with Democratic leaders around the nation. And as Nixon did four decades later, Roosevelt staked out a position for himself moderately to the side of center toward which he believed his party would have to lean if it wanted to regain power. “Hamiltons we have today,” Roosevelt wrote in 1925. “Is there a Jefferson on the horizon?” It was a role he was most willing to accept, should it be offered.
In 1926, FDR declined all requests that he run for the Senate. He did not need another defeat on his record, and he had just started at Warm Springs, Georgia, what he hoped would be a cure for his paralysis. Two years later, the political outlook was no better, but Roosevelt’s career took its last, decisive turn toward the White House anyway. He again nominated Smith, giving a speech aimed at the radio audience rather than the crowd in the Houston arena. This was a significant development in itself, for Roosevelt was the first major politician to understand how the new medium was changing politics. He sensed that the rousing speech that worked well in a large hall was not right for entering people’s living rooms. (This was a lesson that Edward Kennedy had not yet learned in 1980.)
After Smith’s nomination, New York and national Democratic leaders mounted increasing pressure on Roosevelt to run for governor. He wanted no part of it, principally because he realized that the Republican tide was at its peak in 1928 and he thought he would lose. Even if he won, serving as governor of New York would propel him toward the presidential nomination in 1932. Anticipating a continuation of Republican prosperity, both Roosevelt and Howe feared that 1932 was too early to win the White House. Howe had from the start of his planning pegged 1936 as the year. But the party leaders and Smith himself, believing that Roosevelt’s upstate strength was needed for the presidential candidate to carry New York in 1928, would not take “no” for an answer. Thus one of the greatest Roosevelt ironies: for all the planning that he and Howe had done for nearly two decades, the decision that put FDR into a position to win the presidential nomination at a time when that turned out to be tantamount to election was forced upon him against his will, and over the strenuous objections of Howe. (“If they are looking for a goat,” Howe said, “why doesn’t Wagner sacrifice himself?”) Roosevelt’s belief in his destiny must have seemed confirmed by this twist of fate in which he took a giant step toward the White House in spite of himself.
While Al Smith was losing his home state in the 1928 presidential election, Franklin Roosevelt was narrowly winning the race to succeed Smith in Albany. The campaign and Roosevelt’s activities as governor dispelled fears (and carefully nurtured political propaganda) that he was physically incapable of carrying out the duties of an executive.
When the Depression began, Roosevelt’s policies did not substantially differ from Hoover’s. But the New York governor quickly developed a far more positive image. Roosevelt had done enough and the political tide had turned sufficiently against the Republicans that he won a smashing reelection victory in 1930, defeating his opponent by some 725,000 votes. “I do not see how Mr. Roosevelt can escape becoming the next presidential nominee of his party,” said New York Democratic party chairman Jim Farley the day after FDR’s 1930 victory, “even if no one should lift a finger to bring it about.” Roosevelt no longer had any thought of trying to escape this fate, and many fingers were lifted over the next twenty months to bring it about. Increasingly, Governor Roosevelt took a more liberal position. “I believe the country is ready for a more progressive policy,” Roosevelt wrote in 1931. During that year, while Hoover still clung to the hope that private philanthropy could meet relief needs, Roosevelt called for the creation of a Temporary Emergency Relief Administration. This organization was set up, with social worker Harry Hopkins as its executive director, but it provided little relief. In fact, Roosevelt’s program for dealing with the Depression remained only slightly bolder than Hoover’s. Roosevelt was the choice of progressives in 1932 largely because of the lack of alternatives. His liberalism was still timid, but in comparison with what others were doing, especially in Washington, it could be made to look daring. This he did rhetorically in the 1932 presidential campaign. It worked.6
As with most political figures, it is very difficult to find the real Roosevelt under his public mask, which almost always wore a smile. To most of those who knew him or met him, FDR’s dominant characteristic was reducible to the word “charm.” He was able to charm even those who opposed his policies or were not satisfied with the accomplishments of his programs. Millions of Americans credited Roosevelt for everything they liked, but blamed others for what upset them. This was especially noticeable among southerners, many of whom in the later thirties became uncomfortable with the New Deal but wanted to remain loyal to their party and President. “Now I understand how it was possible for my family to worship FDR despite all the things he had done during his administration that enraged them,” southern journalist Florence King has written. “… It was very simple: Credit Franklin, better known as He, for all the things you like, and blame Eleanor, better known as She or ‘that woman,’ for all the things you don’t like. This way, He was cleared, She was castigated, and We were happy.”
Such reasoning was not confined to the South or to conservatives. Many working-class people who were discontented with the failure of the New Deal to go far enough wrote to complain … and at the same time to praise the President. “You send the stuff to Poor but we dont get It,” protested a 1936 letter. The writer went on to say: “What wonderful man you have been I will always vote for you.” After informing him that her family’s children were suffering from undernourishment, a Californian told FDR in 1935: “You are the best president we ever had.”
Whatever a Roosevelt supporter disliked was someone else’s fault. For conservatives, the guilty party was likely to be Eleanor Roosevelt, Harry Hopkins, or Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace. For those on the left, blame was more frequently placed on relief administrators, Republicans, “Wall Street,” “the Interests,” or simply “them.” In any case, the fault was not the President’s. “I am sure the President,” a Seattle man wrote, “if he only knew, would order that something be done, God bless him.” Such letters became almost a litany:
If only he knew about the starvation wages on WPA projects;
If only he knew that people were not being paid when they were sick;
If only he knew that food was being destroyed while people went hungry;
If only … If only He knew, then he would make everything right.
But he did not know. That was certain. Because if he did, he would do something, God bless him. Even people on the verge of starvation believed this. A mother of seven hungry children wrote to the President early in 1934: “You have tried every way to help the people.” Another Californian complained of “slave wages,” but wrote to FDR: “You are wonderful. But surely this treatment is unknown to you.” A Chicago man was another of those who were sure the President could not “know whats going on around here.” The treatment of relief clients, he said, was very unfair, but “we know that it is not your fait but is the foult of those who are working in the relief stations.”7
Poor people were ready—even eager—to believe that local officials were destroying food and clothing to make the unemployed turn against FDR. “I’d give my heart to see the President,” a destitute North Carolina woman told FERA investigator Martha Gellhorn in 1934. “I know he means to do everything he can for us; but they make it hard for him; they won’t let him.” Here the “they” who were at fault were left unenumerated.
This pervasive tendency to absolve Roosevelt and blame unnamed others for what one dislikes has still not died. Ronald Reagan, even while attempting to dismantle the New Deal, continued to speak of Roosevelt with obvious admiration. He told an interviewer on the occasion of the one hundredth anniversary of FDR’s birth that “other people” caused the damage: “President Roosevelt started administering medicine to a sick patient, but those people who then gathered around and became the structure of government had no intention of letting the patient get well and cutting him off the medicine.” When he attacked the New Deal, Reagan carefully avoided mentioning Roosevelt by name.
President Reagan was well advised to refrain from direct assaults on the New Deal President. Franklin Roosevelt’s popularity remains remarkable a half century after the beginning of his presidency. In January 1982 an NBC-Associated Press national survey found 63 percent of the American public still had a favorable opinion of FDR, compared to only 11 percent who had an unfavorable opinion—and this in the midst of the putative Reagan reaction.
The popularity of Franklin D. Roosevelt is unprecedented among twentieth-century American politicians. Four years after his death, more than 42 percent of a group of nearly one thousand Philadelphia residents named FDR as their first choice as the greatest person in history. Another 10.6 percent named him as their second choice. Finishing second in the survey was Abraham Lincoln, with only 8.5 percent of the first-place votes. George Washington was third with 5.1 percent. It is highly unlikely that a similar poll taken either during the thirties or today would obtain similar results. The findings are stunning all the same. The survey also showed that admiration for Roosevelt was highest among those whose economic class was listed as “lower,” but that those listed as “middle” and “upper-middle” nominated him as a great man almost as frequently as did the lower-class people. Only among the “upper” economic group was there significantly less liking for the late President among Philadelphians in 1949.
Part of Roosevelt’s popularity, doubtless, is attributable to the circumstances in which he held office. Few presidents whose administrations never faced a major crisis have been labeled “great” by many observers beyond their immediate families. Roosevelt experienced two of the nation’s largest crises during his twelve-year reign: the Great Depression and World War II. Yet facing crisis does not guarantee popularity. Not even being in office when a crisis ends does that. Rutherford Hayes and William McKinley each had the good fortune to be in office when a depression begun under his predecessor came to an end. Although McKinley was certainly popular, his “greatness” was never rated on a level even remotely close to FDR’s. (And this despite the fact that McKinley also had a “splendid little war” to advance his prestige.) Presiding over a war is no assurance of popularity, either, as the more recent experiences of Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson attest. Richard Nixon spent much of his time in office trying to find—or create—major crises with which he could deal and so become a “great” president. The end of his presidency is a testament to the inadequacy of such an approach to popularity and greatness.
Hence we must search beyond the mere “good fortune” of facing a depression and a war in order to explain the extraordinary public affection for FDR. The answer seems to lie in the man’s position and Weltanschauung. During hard times, people want a leader from a secure background. Roosevelt obviously met that requirement. But that is not enough. In the aforementioned 1949 study of Roosevelt’s popularity in Philadelphia, Fillmore H. Sanford hypothesized that to underprivileged people “a tremendously powerful man who still is personally very human and who still champions the little man’s cause is the truly admirable man.” This, Sanford rightly concluded, was the way most of the forgotten Americans looked at FDR. “He was perceived,” Sanford wrote, “as a warm, understanding man, a man with great power and status, a man with competence who was, withal, a champion of the little man.”
No other American politician in this century has been able to play the part of the democratic patrician quite like FDR. The Kennedys, perhaps Robert more than his brothers, have come the closest; and Roosevelt’s Republican kinsman did a good job in originating the role at the start of the century. But no one else has gotten quite the audience reaction or rave reviews that the Democratic Roosevelt received.
The combination of warmth and power allowed Franklin Roosevelt to remain popular with many working-class Americans almost without regard to his particular actions or policies. When Hoover said that all the country needed was a restoration of confidence, people jeered; when Roosevelt told them that they need fear nothing but “fear itself,” people nodded their agreement and their spirits rose. “From his fresh mind and resolute utterance,” The New York Times said editorially of Roosevelt after his inauguration, “the people accept, with great calm and fine spirit, what would have seriously upset them if it had been set forth by a dying Administration.” Will Rogers captured the early attitude toward Roosevelt when he said: “The whole country is with him. Just so he does something. If he burned down the Capitol, we would cheer and say, ‘Well, we at least got a fire started anyhow.’ ”8
To many working-class Americans, Franklin Roosevelt was the one great hope in the midst of despair. He could do no wrong. Martha Gellhorn’s 1934 report from the Carolinas indicated the adoration of FDR in terms that would be difficult to improve upon:
Every house I visited—mill worker or unemployed—had a picture of the President. These ranged from newspaper clippings (in destitute homes) to large coloured prints, framed in gilt cardboard. The portrait holds the place of honour over the mantel; I can only compare this to the Italian peasant’s Madonna. And the feeling of these people for the President is one of the most remarkable emotional phenomena I have ever met. He is at once God and their intimate friend; he knows them all by name, knows their little town and mill, their little lives and problems. And, though everything fails, he is there, and will not let them down.
This admiration—love is not too strong a word—of poor Americans for Franklin Roosevelt was something so powerful that in some cases it has survived for decades after his death. In 1981, Southern Exposure magazine published a recent photograph of a Kentucky coal mining family in their home. On the wall above the family members is a wall hanging showing Jesus tending His flock. Above that hangs a picture of FDR.
The association of Roosevelt with Jesus or other religious figures was common among Depression victims. A Wisconsin woman who reported that a three-year-old girl who was visiting her home had identified a picture of FDR as “Saint Roosevelt” spoke for many when she wrote: “As long as Pres. Roosevelt will be our leader under Jesus Christ we feel no fear.” Others referred to the President as a new Moses. And for those who saw Roosevelt’s place in the Chain of Being as a bit lower than those of Christ and Moses, Abraham Lincoln provided a convenient substitute. “My wife and I consider you to be the most humane man to occupy the chair since Lincoln,” an elderly Texan wrote to FDR in 1935. An Arkansas Republican agreed: “Roosevelt has proved himself to be one of the greatest humanitarians and the most Christian of any President since Lincoln’s time.”
Even people who normally distrusted politicians had affection for FDR. “Your husband is great,” a Denver woman wrote to Mrs. Roosevelt in 1936. “He seems lovable even tho’ he is a ‘politician.’ I wish him all the success in the world.” Here was a critical point. Roosevelt was unquestionably a master politician, but few viewed him that way. Rather, it was in his role as paternalistic guardian that he was most commonly seen. A textile worker spoke for millions in 1934: “The president isn’t going to forget us.” Frequently letter writers addressed the Roosevelts in their communications as father and mother of the nation.
The personality, rhetoric, and actions of the Roosevelts all added to their popularity among disinherited Americans. Ironically, however, conservative businessmen and partisan Republicans may also have provided significant assistance to FDR in winning worker support. People are often known by their enemies. That the rich hated Roosevelt was all many poor citizens needed to know to convince them that he was their friend. Opponents often made FDR seem more radical than he was. Soon after Roosevelt’s famous “Forgotten Man” speech in 1932, his former ally, Al Smith, declared: “I will take off my coat and vest and fight to the end any candidate who persists in any demagogic appeal to the masses of the working people of this country to destroy themselves by setting class against class and rich against poor!” In a similar vein, the arch-conservative Liberty League probably added unwittingly to the President’s popularity when it suggested early in 1936 that he sought “redistribution of income on a grand scale.” The year before, Roosevelt aide Rexford Tugwell had asserted that a sweeping attack on the New Deal by the United States Chamber of Commerce was “perhaps one of the best things which has happened politically.” He seems to have been right. An Indiana admirer wrote in a typical 1935 letter that she liked FDR because “his most bitter opponents are the (Rich) the Chambers of Commerce Principaly the manufacturers.”9
It has often been said that Franklin Roosevelt was a pragmatist. In one of his more famous statements, he said at Oglethorpe University in May 1932: “The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.” But what he intended to try was something, not anything. In the proper sense of pragmatism, Roosevelt had a goal in mind. His experimentation was always aimed at particular, if often vague, ends.
John Dewey, one of the founders of pragmatism, insisted that Roosevelt’s approach was not what he intended. “Experimental method is not just messing around nor doing a little of this and a little of that in the hope that things will improve,” Dewey wrote in 1935. His criticism was generally well taken, but Roosevelt does seem to have had a more consistent end in view than Dewey or many Roosevelt critics gave him credit for. He was what might be called a “pragmatic humanist.” His pragmatism was always rooted in compassion.
Like most political leaders, Roosevelt was no intellectual. Former Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, in his ninety-third year, perceptively summarized FDR after talking with him in 1933. “A second-class intellect,” the famous jurist stated, “but a first-class temperament!” That temperament, that personality, was able to lift the nation’s spirits in the depths of the Depression. Perhaps more could have been accomplished by a first-class intellect, but under the circumstances a first-class temperament may have been more effective.
Several of the more noted intimations that Roosevelt was an intellectual lightweight went too far. Walter Lippmann said he considered Roosevelt “a kind of amiable boy scout.” George Creel referred to him more accurately as “a gay, volatile Prince Charming.” “His mind is quick and superficial,” William Allen White wrote of Roosevelt in 1934. “Of this I am dead sure. He still smiles too easily for one who shakes his head so positively. I fear his smile is from the teeth out.… He is a fair-weather pilot. He cannot stand the storm.” On this last point, White was obviously proven wrong. He was not far off, though, in seeing Roosevelt’s mind as “quick and superficial.” Roosevelt had always been able to read books at an incredible speed and easily retain the gist of their contents, but he was not given to deep reflection.
Franklin Roosevelt was a figure of great importance in the development of modern liberalism, but he was anything but a systematic thinker himself. Ironically, though Roosevelt was a longtime advocate of planning, he had no plan. He wanted simple answers, but he was quick to move from one expedient to another. On one occasion, for instance, President Roosevelt laughingly said: “I experimented with gold and that was a flop. Why shouldn’t I experiment a little with silver?” But he never lost confidence. And that, perhaps, was the key to his popularity. FDR never expected anything that he did to go wrong. Although the only thing he had to fear may have been fear itself, his countrymen had far more tangible problems. Roosevelt was always reassuring, but he was not quite a Pollyanna. Like other liberals, he sought action. Roosevelt never denied problems, he simply asserted his capacity to solve them. People tended to believe him. One reason for this was his remarkable ability, first demonstrated at the 1928 convention, to utilize the radio. His personality and warmth came across the airwaves in extraordinary fashion. Even lifelong Republicans and veteran Roosevelt-haters have testified that while listening to his broadcasts they sometimes weakened to the point of almost believing him—a condition from which they usually recovered by the next morning when they read newspaper accounts of what he had said. The President was able to identify himself and his programs with the people, and to do so in a believable manner. “My friends,” he would begin, and continue with such phrases as “you and I know …” When Roosevelt addressed “our problems” and illustrated them with touching stories, few Americans were able to resist his charms.10
What Franklin D. Roosevelt sought, he said in a 1932 speech, was “social justice through social action.” It was an excellent statement of Roosevelt’s political position and the dominant values of Depression America. The key to understanding FDR’s political success is that his positions so often coincided with the values of a people struggling for economic—and in many cases, physical—survival. Roosevelt stated the relationship perfectly in his first inaugural address: “The people of the United States … have made me the present instrument of their wishes.” This sounds like the sort of democratic hogwash that all politicians indulge in, and it probably was little more than that to Roosevelt when he said it. But it was an accurate forecast of the relationship between President and people during the next few years.
Why were Roosevelt and a majority of the American people on the same wavelength during the Great Depression? Did he sincerely want to help the nation, or was he oriented only toward self-advancement? These raise other questions that can no more be definitively answered about Roosevelt than they can in general. Doubtless Roosevelt, with his sense of stewardship, his democratic feelings, and his personal experience with suffering, really wanted to help the people; he also wanted to become president, be reelected, and go down in history as a great leader.
Whatever the particular mix of motivations, Roosevelt succeeded on all counts. The recent Chicago Tribune poll of presidential scholars impressionistically rated Roosevelt as the third best President of the United States. He came in second, behind Lincoln, on a composite of separate ratings for different qualities, and would have easily won the top overall ranking had it not been for his justifiably low score on “character/integrity.” Roosevelt did receive the highest rating of all presidents for leadership.
Roosevelt had, we should hasten to add, numerous faults. John Gunther, in his largely hagiographic Roosevelt in Retrospect, offers a representative list: “dilatoriness, two-sidedness (some would say plain dishonesty), pettiness in some personal relationships, a cardinal lack of frankness…, inability to say No, love of improvisation, garrulousness, amateurism, and what has been called ‘cheerful vindictiveness.’ ” Several of these flaws centered on one basic defect in Franklin Roosevelt, one unfortunately shared by most politicians. Lippmann had seen it at the beginning of 1932: “He is too eager to please.” This led to FDR’s “two-sidedness,” his “cardinal lack of frankness,” and his “inability to say No.” Louisiana Senator Huey Long explained the problem during the period prior to Roosevelt’s inauguration: “When I talk to him, he says, ‘Fine! Fine! Fine!’ Maybe he says ‘Fine!’ to everybody.” FDR, Richard Hofstadter noted, “could say ‘my old friend’ in eleven languages.”
That Roosevelt wanted to please everyone was a serious, if understandable, character flaw, and one that hurt him on many occasions. Perhaps more striking was his failure to recognize the problem. The most interesting revelations to come out of the tape recordings Roosevelt secretly made during the 1940 campaign demonstrate his remarkable ability at self-deception, at criticizing others for faults he himself exhibited to an even larger extent. “Of course, the trouble with Willkie, as you know, his whole campaign—the reason he’s losing—,” Roosevelt said in October 1940, “is that he will say anything to please the individual or the audience that he happens to talk to. It makes no difference what he’s promised. J.P.M. [perhaps J. P. Morgan] … will come in and say, ‘Now Mr. Willkie, please, will you, if elected, do thus and so?’ ‘Quite so!’ Then somebody else comes in, and he says ‘Of course I won’t.’ ”
Along the same lines is the most damaging information to emerge from the tapes—Roosevelt’s suggestion that his campaign workers “way, way down the line” spread rumors about Willkie’s affair with a New York woman. The President further urged that word be spread that Willkie’s wife had been paid to act during the campaign as if they were happily married. “Now, now,” FDR said, “Mrs. Willkie may not have been hired, but in effect she’s been hired to return to Wendell and smile and make this campaign with him. Now whether there was a money price behind it, I don’t know, but it’s the same idea.”11
At the very least, such a statement coming from the lips of a man who had had an affair beginning more than two decades earlier with a woman in whose arms he would die—and whose own spouse was a political partner, not a wife—was incredible hypocrisy. But these two 1940 statements together seem to indicate that Roosevelt actually failed to realize that he was guilty of the faults he pointed out in others.
It must be recognized not only that Roosevelt was far from perfect, but also that he did things in his personal and political life that were simply despicable. None of this, however, prevented him from being one of the few people who can truly be said to have personally changed the course of history. One need not be an advocate of the “great man” school of history (I emphatically am not) to argue that had Roosevelt not won the Democratic nomination in 1932, or had the unemployed bricklayer who attempted to assassinate him in February 1933 been a better marksman, the United States—and, presumably, the world—would be a different place today than it is. How it would be different cannot be said with any certainty, but Roosevelt personally had an important impact on the course of history during the ensuing years.