Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (93 page)

“I should like to have it said of my first administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match.”

Another outburst, longer and louder than before. Roosevelt paused for the shouters to fall silent.

“I should like to have it said of my second administration that in it these forces met their master.”

The twenty thousand exploded in delirious enthusiasm. Their thunder rolled around the hall. The band struck up “Happy Days Are Here Again.” Roosevelt beamed defiantly.

I
N
1936 in New York state, gambling on presidential elections was legal, common, and regularly reported in the newspapers. As Americans trooped to vote that November, the published odds favored Roosevelt’s reelection by 3 to 1. A widely noted straw poll organized by the
Literary Digest
was forecasting a large Landon victory, but the bookies rejected the forecast, as did the brokers on Wall Street, where the wagering was 9 to 5 in favor of Roosevelt. “Betting commissioners recalled yesterday that the only time the favorite in the presidential election lost was in the Wilson-Hughes contest in 1916,” the
New York Times
gaming correspondent noted.

The Roosevelt camp was confident. Jim Farley, who had conducted a poll of his own, rounded out the campaign with a memo to the candidate. “I am sending you by special messenger a book which will contain copies of letters from leaders in every state,” Farley wrote, referring to Democratic officeholders, campaign directors, and other influential party members. The letters supported a prediction Farley had made earlier, which had seemed quite bold at the time. “I am still definitely of the opinion that you will carry every state but two—Maine and Vermont.”

Farley got it exactly right. Roosevelt’s 28 million votes constituted nearly 61 percent of the popular tally, the largest portion in American history till then (and the second-largest ever, surpassed only, and narrowly, by Lyndon Johnson in 1964). The president won forty-six states and 523 electoral votes to Landon’s two states and 8 electoral votes. Asked to comment on the outcome, Farley told reporters that the Republican adage that as Maine went, so went the nation, would have to be revised. “As Maine goes,” Farley chortled, “so goes Vermont.”

33.

“T
HE PRESIDENT SEEMED VERY HAPPY YESTERDAY,”
H
AROLD
I
CKES
wrote in his diary on November 7, 1936. “He talked a lot about the election and its implications. He spoke of the fact that he has now an absolutely free hand.” Roosevelt and the cabinet pondered how the administration might exercise its new freedom. “There was a good deal of discussion about the Supreme Court,” Ickes recorded. “I think the President is getting ready to move on that issue.” The solicitor general, Stanley Reed, filling in for the absent attorney general, Homer Cummings, noted that Justice Harlan Fiske Stone was ailing. Roosevelt responded, laughingly, that Stone might be sick but Justice McReynolds would still be rendering reactionary opinions when he was 105 years old. Roosevelt nonetheless instructed Reed to proceed as quickly as possible with pending government cases that touched on the constitutionality of the New Deal. “He expects this legislation to be declared unconstitutional,” Ickes remarked, “and evidently looks to that as a background for an appeal to the people over the head of the Court.”

I
NAUGURATION
D
AY
1937 came six weeks earlier than inauguration days past, as a result of the Twentieth Amendment, and the weather was as foul as winter could be in Washington. A cold rain drenched the crowds that began gathering around the Capitol and along Pennsylvania Avenue at dawn. The inaugural committee prepared to move the ceremony indoors but consulted with Roosevelt before making the final decision. The president asked whether the crowds were already in place outdoors. Informed that they were, he declared, “If they can take it, I can.”

Roosevelt arrived at the Capitol a few minutes before noon. A half hour later he stepped to the speaker’s stand, holding the arm of James. The rain beat down harder than ever, swirling about the rostrum, soaking the president’s bare head and streaming down his face. From time to time he wiped the water from his forehead and cheeks; he read his speech through rain-spattered spectacles. The previous four years had constituted a revolution in Americans’ moral and political understanding, he said. “We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics.” In the past four years, the people of America had enhanced the power of popular government and reined in the powers of private autocracy. “They have been challenged and beaten.” But much work remained.

In this nation I see tens of millions of its citizens—a substantial part of its whole population—who at this very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life. I see millions of families trying to live on incomes so meager that the pall of family disaster hangs over them day by day…. I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.

The president remarked this point not in discouragement but in hope. As much as Americans had achieved so far, that much and more could they yet achieve.

We are determined to make every American citizen the subject of his country’s interest and concern…. The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.

Roosevelt, with Eleanor at his side and the rain still pouring down, rode from the Capitol to the White House in an open car. His silk hat collapsed around his ears long before the limousine covered the mile and a half; Eleanor’s wool hat fared only slightly better. He remained exposed to the elements for another ninety minutes reviewing the inaugural parade. He came in from the storm only in time to greet the three thousand guests at the White House reception.

M
ISSING FROM THE
soggy celebration—missing from a Roosevelt victory for the first time in a quarter century—was the person more responsible for those victories than any besides Roosevelt himself. Louis Howe’s health had declined relentlessly during Roosevelt’s first term, till he became effectively bedridden. But the president insisted that he remain at the White House, a member of the family. He ensured that Howe be treated with respect by everyone in the administration, even after Howe’s laboring lungs and faltering heart so constrained his activity as to render his advice uninformed and irrelevant.

Howe conserved his energies for a few pet projects. The CCC he shared with Roosevelt, boasting to all who would listen how “he and Franklin” had planned the conservation corps for years before it became part of the New Deal. He toured the camps with the president when the journeys weren’t too arduous, and he took undisguised delight when, with Roosevelt’s quiet complicity, the young men at various camps named their principal thoroughfares “Louis McHenry Howe Boulevard.”

He shared a project of a different sort with Eleanor. A special bond linked Eleanor and Howe, namely Franklin, who needed them less than they each needed him and who needed them still less the more he grew into the presidency. Yet this only strengthened the connection between the First Lady and the First Assistant. Howe had made a political wife out of Eleanor during the 1920 campaign, and he made a politician out of her after the 1932 election. He applauded her press conferences, and he abetted the political turn they took as time went on. Eleanor nominally ruled out political questions, but she defined politics so narrowly as to rule in much that really was political. She condemned sweatshops and child labor and called for higher salaries for teachers. She lamented the isolationism that tied America’s hands as the world grew uglier and more violent. She took pains to state that she didn’t speak for her husband, but both she and Franklin let reporters infer that she said what he might have said had party and congressional politics not constrained him. “Sometimes I say things which I thoroughly understand are likely to cause unfavorable comment in some quarters,” she explained at one session. “Perhaps you newspaper women”—she still barred the men from her conferences—“think I should keep them off the record. What you don’t understand is that perhaps I am making these statements on purpose to arouse controversy and thereby get the topics talked about and so get people to thinking about them.”

She gave speeches around the country and fielded questions germane, inane, and sometimes intrusive. “Do you think your husband’s illness has affected his mentality?” a listener inquired in Akron. “I’m glad that question was asked,” she responded softly, while the audience squirmed. “The answer is yes. Anyone who has gone through great suffering is bound to have a greater sympathy and understanding of the problems of mankind.” The audience stood and applauded loudly.

She commenced a newspaper column that supplanted her radio broadcasts and magazine writing. “My Day” ran six times a week and was syndicated by United Features across the country. Designed to give readers a glimpse into the daily life of the First Lady, it also gave them a glimpse of her mind and heart. She again avoided the overtly political, but her preferences—for humanity, decency, equality—informed nearly every piece.

She consented to interviews that revealed more of her life than any First Lady had ever revealed. Cissy Patterson—of the romp on the floor of Alice Roosevelt’s house—had taken up writing features for the
Washington Herald.
Noting that Eleanor had become a model for many American women, Patterson asked where she had acquired her ability to move through “these cram-crowded days” with a “sure, serene, and blithe spirit.” Was she really so calm? “You are never angry, for instance?”

“Oh, no,” Eleanor answered. “I really don’t get angry…. You see, I try to understand people.”

“But when you were young, were you free like this? So free—so free of yourself?”

“No. When I was young I was very self-conscious.”

How the change, then? Surely it was a struggle.

“Little by little, as life developed, I faced each problem as it came along. As my activities and work broadened and reached out, I never tried to shirk. I tried never to evade an issue. When I found I had something to do, I just did it. I don’t know….”