Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (61 page)

This expertise was precisely why Roosevelt had to offer Glass the Treasury post, and why Glass ended up not taking it. Glass was a sound-money man, opposing devaluation of the dollar; he was Herbert Hoover’s favorite Democrat. By offering Glass the Treasury, Roosevelt got credit for giving Glass’s views serious credence. He also made an ally of Glass. But even as Roosevelt informed Glass that he was the best man for the Treasury job, he acknowledged the strength of Glass’s counterargument that he could serve the country better in the Senate. When Glass pleaded poor health, Roosevelt let him know he understood about health problems and how they could limit a man’s options. The outcome was just what Roosevelt wanted. Glass declined the offer “with fervent good wishes for you and your administration” and a pledge that “I shall ever be ready to serve your administration to the full extent of my capabilities.”

Roosevelt settled on William Woodin, a Republican industrialist, director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and trustee of the Warm Springs Foundation who also happened to be a personal friend. Woodin’s Wall Street and commercial connections caused informed observers to assume he favored sound money—just as Roosevelt knew they would. But Woodin kept his views to himself—just as Roosevelt knew
he
would. Roosevelt didn’t intend to be his own Treasury secretary, but he took comfort in knowing that Woodin wouldn’t be overly independent. (He meanwhile got a laugh from Louis Howe’s method of casting his vote for the Treasury post. Afraid that word would leak, Howe wired Roosevelt in code: “Prefer a wooden roof to a glass roof over swimming pool.” Roosevelt read the message, and then read it again, wondering what Howe was talking about. When he realized it was a comment on the Treasury position—Woodin rather than Glass—he roared with delight.)

The remaining cabinet positions were less central to Roosevelt’s immediate plans. Thomas Walsh, the Montana senator, represented an additional nod to the Senate; when Walsh died before the inauguration, Roosevelt had to scramble to find another person for attorney general. Homer Cummings of Connecticut was known to favor Roosevelt’s views on important policy matters, having joined the Roosevelt camp long before the convention. Roosevelt had intended for Cummings to be governor general of the Philippines, but upon Walsh’s death he reassigned him to the Justice job. Henry A. Wallace had been consulting with Roosevelt for months on agriculture; besides being better versed in the problems facing farmers than just about anyone else in America, the Iowa editor was, like Woodin, a Republican. Roosevelt never forgot that the Republicans remained the majority party in the country; whenever he could bring a Republican aboard without compromising his overall objectives, he was pleased to do so. Wallace got the Agriculture Department.

Harold Ickes landed Interior, which shared with Agriculture the responsibility for America’s land-use policies. Roosevelt didn’t know Ickes at all; after inviting him for an interview, along with some other candidates for administration posts, Roosevelt looked at a list of their names and called out, “Which one of you is Ikes?”

“Ickes, Mr. President,” the Chicago lawyer answered, shortening the first of the two syllables.

“Oh, so that’s how you pronounce it.”

Ickes was yet another Republican, which counted in his favor, and a progressive, which did, too. Beyond that, Roosevelt found him engaging. “I liked the cut of his jib,” he told Moley.

The Labor Department went to Frances Perkins. Roosevelt was determined to nominate the first woman to a cabinet post, and Labor was the likeliest spot, since in those days it included most federal welfare programs. Roosevelt considered Ruth Bryan Owen, the daughter of William Jennings Bryan, for the position but decided on Perkins instead. The selection of either woman was expected to ruffle feathers among union leaders, who had heretofore furnished the secretaries of labor. But New Yorker Perkins was less a stretch than Nebraska native Bryan Owen. Besides, Roosevelt knew Perkins personally and had valued her work as New York’s industrial commissioner.

Yet not many other people knew Perkins, and there were many people Perkins didn’t know. Ray Moley remembered seeing Perkins and Harold Ickes in Roosevelt’s parlor on Sixty-fifth Street. They were clearly strangers to each other. Moley broke the ice. “As you will eventually meet anyhow,” he said, “give me the pleasure of introducing the secretary of the interior to the secretary of labor.”

“G
ENERALLY SPEAKING
, it is an average group of Presidential advisers,” Arthur Krock declared of Roosevelt’s cabinet. “Its composite trait seems to me to be diligence; brilliance it lacks completely.” Roosevelt wouldn’t have disagreed. The president didn’t want to be overshadowed by his advisers—didn’t want them to have or develop independent reputations or constituencies. Some of his motive was simply ego: having reached the top of the greasy pole, he wished for the world to see him as the great man he was convinced he was. But much was political strategy. The progressive revolution he intended would elicit plenty of resistance on its own; for his administration to get caught up in the quarreling that typically occurred when cabinet posts developed into fiefdoms would add unacceptably to his problems.

There was yet another element that contributed to Roosevelt’s preference for complaisant cabinet secretaries. To a degree that would become clearer with time, Roosevelt’s style of leadership involved setting his subordinates at cross-purposes with one another. The competition that ensued would ensure—or was supposed to ensure—that alternative policies received the fullest airing before Roosevelt himself stepped in and decided which way to go. Sometimes the advisers involved would know that others were on the same task; sometimes they wouldn’t until Roosevelt decided against them.

Roosevelt’s style of decision-making entailed certain risks. The duplication of effort could waste time and resources. The competition among advisers could fray nerves and ultimately alienate the losers, who might then cause problems for the administration. By concentrating power in Roosevelt’s hands, it could overwork him, threatening his health, or overwhelm him, leading to tardy, hastily conceived, or simply bad decisions.

Grace Tully noticed something about Roosevelt’s cabinet that may have occurred by accident or perhaps by the president’s design. Tully had begun working for Roosevelt in Albany, as assistant to Roosevelt’s secretary, Missy LeHand. She followed her bosses to Washington and remained with Roosevelt throughout his presidency. “So far as I was able to judge,” Tully said, “no two members of the Roosevelt cabinet were ever real friends. There were the dinners given cabinet members by the President, and there was now and then a poker game held in Harold Ickes’ or Henry Morgenthau’s house.” Morgenthau, Roosevelt’s Hudson Valley neighbor, replaced Will Woodin at Treasury after declining health forced Woodin’s resignation at the end of 1933. “But beyond these random and infrequent social events, the contacts between cabinet members were largely of an official character.”

Much closer personally—to one another and to the president—were Roosevelt’s less senior advisers. Louis Howe, having accomplished his life’s goal by making Roosevelt president, received the post of president’s personal secretary. Of all Roosevelt’s official family, Howe was the only one who called him by his given name, and the one who got the first and last words on all matters of substance. Roosevelt put Brain Trusters Moley and Tugwell on the federal payroll, making Moley an assistant to Cordell Hull at the State Department and Tugwell an aide to Henry Wallace at Agriculture. Jim Farley was appointed postmaster general, the traditional slot for campaign managers. The tradition survived from the pre–civil service days of the spoils system, and although the postmaster now had much less patronage to bestow, the practice continued to reflect the fact that neither campaign managers nor postmasters typically had much influence over policy, as opposed to politics.

P
RESS CONFERENCES
had been a feature of White House life since Theodore Roosevelt, feeling sorry for the stringers assigned by their papers to keep an eye on the president’s movements and visitors, invited them to come in out of the rain. TR held press sessions irregularly, and he insisted that he not be quoted or, in most cases, even attributed. When he wished to speak as president, he did so through the formal channels of written messages and set speeches.

Press conferences were institutionalized under TR’s successors. The typical session with Wilson was something between a lecture and a seminar, with both of which Wilson was familiar from his days as a professor. The World War put a crimp on Wilson’s candor, as a slip of the tongue might compromise military secrets or America’s position with respect to other countries. Between his concern for confidentiality and the general duress of the war, Wilson suspended his news conferences; after his 1919 stroke they never resumed.

Warren Harding had been a pressman himself and was happy to restore journalists’ access to the White House. Yet he too discovered the limits American diplomacy placed on presidential frankness, when he said too much during the Washington Conference. An angry Charles Evans Hughes would have suspended the press conferences again had the matter been his to determine, but Harding resisted, and eventually the president and secretary of state compromised. Harding would answer written questions submitted in advance. This procedure gave him time to prepare answers and if necessary check them with his cabinet secretaries. A further stipulation forbade reporters from revealing which questions the president declined to answer.

Calvin Coolidge kept the requirement of written questions and allowed himself to be quoted in reply, but only with his explicit permission. Herbert Hoover elaborated on this scheme, devising three categories for the information he divulged: written statements that could be quoted and attributed to the president, extemporaneous remarks attributable to “official sources,” and sensitive information that must not be cited at all. Hoover’s system might have worked had he possessed a more engaging personality or had his perception of presidential responsibility not impelled him to put a uniformly positive gloss on the calamities the country was experiencing. The news corps came to distrust him, and the distrust exacerbated Hoover’s reticence. The press conferences grew painful for all concerned.

Roosevelt’s relations with the press had always been good, from his days as a state senator to his most recent experiences in Albany and on the campaign trail. More than any president since Theodore Roosevelt, he loved to talk—and even more than TR, he liked to listen to others talk back. Beyond that, his disability, which in another person might have provided an excuse to keep the press at a distance, became for Roosevelt a reason to let the correspondents get close. He didn’t stand at a podium in addressing them; he sat behind the desk in his office and let the correspondents gather round. They did so with pleasure, as many as two hundred crowding the room, and the ones in front sometimes being pushed right onto Roosevelt’s desk.

At Roosevelt’s first session with the reporters, on the morning of March 8, he explained the ground rules. “My hope is that these conferences are going to be merely enlarged versions of the kind of very delightful family conferences I have been holding in Albany for the last four years,” he said. “I am told that what I am about to do will become impossible, but I am going to try it anyway.” He would eliminate the requirement that questions be in writing, he said, adding, “I see no reason why I should not talk to you ladies and gentlemen off the record just the way I have been doing in Albany and the way I used to do it in the Navy Department down here.” Some questions he would decline to answer, for reasons of discretion, policy, or plain ignorance. “There will be a great many questions you will ask about that I don’t know enough to answer.” Hypotheticals he would reject on principle.