Returning to work was only the beginning of Roosevelt’s efforts to resume a normal life. He and Howe had agreed that he would eventually restart his political life with the ultimate goal of the presidency, but he struggled to get on board with the idea. Years after FDR had won the White House, his son James recalled a conversation with Howe in which Howe confessed that it had been his plan all along, even during the most difficult times of his convalescence, for Roosevelt to become president. Howe established a timetable for when Roosevelt would seek his next office and even what that office would be. “I’ll tell you, Jim, it would make a marvelous primer on politics, on how you can maneuver the right man to the top if you plan properly.”8
An important part of the plan was for Roosevelt to speak at a prominent political event. As the 1924 Democratic convention approached, Howe decided that giving the speech nominating Smith would be good practice and an ideal place to reestablish Roosevelt on the road to the White House. Howe saw the convention as an opportunity to remind Americans that Roosevelt was still actively engaged in politics and was ready to serve if called. He thought if everyone could see that Roosevelt was strong and capable despite his illness, he would be well situated to run in his own right in eight years.
Howe convinced Eleanor of his plan and urged her to use her contacts in the women’s arm of the Democratic Party to persuade Belle Moskowitz, one of Al Smith’s chief advisers, to ask Smith if he would permit Roosevelt to introduce him at the convention. At first Smith refused, thinking that he lacked the stamina for the task. He also worried that if convention delegates saw Roosevelt on crutches, the sight would inspire so much pity in the hall that cheering for him (Smith) afterward might seem crass. Roosevelt had similar concerns when Eleanor and his personal secretary, Missy LeHand, raised the idea with him. Howe encouraged Eleanor and Missy to press him, hoping that if he was approached from multiple angles he might relent. When Roosevelt shared his doubts with Howe, Howe enumerated the reasons why the speech made political and strategic sense and assured him that he could do it.
Once Roosevelt agreed to do the speech, the real work began. Ordinarily, Howe would take the first stab at crafting his remarks, but in this case the text was written by Smith’s people. All Roosevelt and Howe had to worry about was the walk to the podium. Roosevelt liked people to think he was adjusting well to his physical limitations and that he was confident in his ability to maneuver on his crutches, but even after years of practice, he was still insecure about using them in public. Because he had no control over his legs and hip muscles, the only thing keeping him upright on his crutches was his upper-body strength. He had to balance himself the way a gymnast might balance on the parallel bars. Something as little as an unexpected bump could cause him to tumble. He had not forgotten his fall at Fidelity & Deposit, and he worried about the effect a fall might have on the crowd at the convention.
Howe helped him take charge of the situation. He found out in advance the exact distance from Roosevelt’s designated seat at the convention to the speaker’s podium and measured off a similar distance in Roosevelt’s Manhattan library. Over and over they practiced the steps. Roosevelt’s son James was only sixteen at the time, but being tall and strong, he was drafted to escort Roosevelt from his chair to the rostrum. When Franklin leaned on his son’s arm, James would have to accept a significant portion of Roosevelt’s body weight until he was able to swing his leg around under him and shift his weight back onto the crutch he would be holding in his other hand. At the same time, James would have to show no visible signs that Franklin’s progress was in any way difficult for either of them. James’s face muscles had to be relaxed and his expression calm at all times. But if Roosevelt lost his balance, James would be the only thing preventing him from collapsing.
The hall would be riddled with obstacles to negotiate. Even if they practiced every day, there was still so much that could go wrong.
On August 18, 1944, President Roosevelt invited his vice president, Harry Truman, to lunch in the Rose Garden of the White House. It was one of the few times Truman had seen FDR in person, and he was shocked by his appearance. Truman described to an aide later how close to death FDR looked. Pale, with dark circles around his eyes, the president was frail and weak. “His hands were shaking…physically he’s just going to pieces.”9 In the last years of his life, FDR had all sorts of physical ailments—cardiovascular issues, anemia, respiratory problems. There is even speculation that he had advanced-stage melanoma. And yet he still sought a fourth term as president. Historians have wondered why he would place himself under the intense physical strain of a presidential campaign when he must have known that he would not live to complete the term. Given his personality, however, no one should have doubted that he would run. A man like FDR simply could not imagine himself as anything but president.
As a child, he was raised to believe that the world revolved around him. Sara Roosevelt pampered her baby boy like the Prince of Wales—and he fully expected someday to be king. Even when he became an adult, his expectations were largely unchanged. It is true he cared about the public and about public service, but he also liked being in charge. In 1924, even as concerned as he was about failing, he recognized that the chance to give the nominating speech for Al Smith was probably the only way to regain his footing on the path to the presidency from which polio had diverted him.
The old Madison Square Garden was a massive Beaux-art fortress, with what looked like Italian renaissance towers rising from its four corners and a thirty-two-story minaret in the front that reminded some visitors of the ancient lighthouse at Alexandria. It was the second-tallest building in New York City. It was designed by the noted architect Stanford White, who had the unfortunate distinction of having been murdered in the restaurant on the top floor by the husband of his lover.
In the New York summer heat, the building’s great hall could be a sweltering place. At capacity, the building comfortably held seventeen thousand souls. When the Democratic convention opened on June 24, the estimated attendance exceeded that figure by several thousand.
The entire convention, stretching over fifteen days, was the longest in US political history. It was dubbed the “Klan-bake” in recognition of the violent protests of Ku Klux Klan delegates who opposed the nomination of Al Smith. In those days, the Klan hated not only racial minorities, but also religious ones. A large Klan rally was organized across the river in New Jersey, where Smith was called dirty names and burned in effigy.
To escape the tumult, Roosevelt arrived at the hall early each morning, soon after the doors opened. The first delegates to arrive would find him already seated and waiting to greet them with his famous grin. At the end of the day, after the last of the delegates had found the exits, Roosevelt might be seen slipping out a side door into a waiting car, which would quickly whisk him away.
He was scheduled to take the stage on the twenty-sixth. James was made a special delegate and was seated next to his father when they received the signal to move to the stage. James rose nervously to his feet. A powerful cheer arose from the crowd as Roosevelt stood up beside him. As he slowly moved up the aisle toward the podium, Roosevelt greeted and thanked his well-wishers. Yet as James later recalled: “I was afraid and I know he was too. As we walked—struggled, really—down the aisle to the rear of the platform, he leaned heavily on my arm, gripping me so hard it hurt.”10
A few steps from the rostrum, James handed his father his second crutch so that he could take the last few steps on his own. As he neared the podium, Roosevelt nodded at a delegate sitting nearby and motioned toward the speaker’s stand. The delegate was confused. “Shake it,” Roosevelt instructed. “I must know if it will bear my weight.”11
For the final step, Franklin leaned his powerful torso forward and let his body fall gently toward the podium. He ignored the sweat bleeding through his jacket and running down his face as he flashed a confident smile to the cheering audience. Al Smith’s daughter was nearby. “I shall never fo
rget the thrill I felt as I sat on the edge of my chair and watched him grip the rostrum firmly with both hands and begin to speak,” she later wrote.12
Roosevelt gave a few opening remarks, thanked the crowd for the standing ovation and then began his speech. When he was done, the ovation lasted for an hour and thirteen minutes. Al Smith, who had been listening to the speech on the radio, said afterward, “Roosevelt was probably the most impressive figure in that convention.”13
James Roosevelt later wrote, “I never in my life was as proud of father as I was at that moment. And he never again was as popular, as he was in that instant. It has been dramatized, but no re-enactment could capture the intensity of the drama that was played out that day.”14
In many ways, that speech was the most important of his father’s career. Without it, he might never have been asked to run for governor of New York in 1928, where he was once again able to capture the nation’s attention.15 The progressive and bold action he took on behalf of New Yorkers in response to the growing Depression helped build his reputation and would establish him as a leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for president in 1932.
Louis Howe rarely spoke publicly about the 1924 speech, despite its centrality to Roosevelt’s return to public life. He thought to do so would only highlight Roosevelt’s paralysis.
Al Smith would eventually lose the 1924 nomination to a former congressman from West Virginia, who himself would lose to Calvin Coolidge in the general election. After the loss, Roosevelt and Howe returned to their old lives. Within a few months, Roosevelt would discover the soothing waters of Warm Springs, Georgia, and for the next several years at least, his activities would revolve around the community there as he built a retreat for young victims of polio. While he was away, Howe fell into a familiar rhythm of attending to Roosevelt’s many business and political responsibilities. But he never stopped laying the groundwork for his friend’s full-throated return to politics. In the face of President Coolidge’s popularity, as victory for the Democrats in 1928 looked less and less likely, Howe threw himself into preparing Roosevelt for a run at the New York governorship.
Years later, someone would ask Al Smith why he would raise up a rival like Roosevelt by giving him a chance to speak at the 1924 convention and then urge him to run for governor. Wasn’t he worried that Roosevelt might one day overshadow him? Smith replied that he had not worried because he thought that Roosevelt would never have the stamina for higher office.
IV
Howe: Partner to Power
Louis Howe is featured in this chapter for the way he personifies three important aspects of the particular type of right hand he represents—the chief of staff. First, although he lacked the title, as the person who Roosevelt selected to help manage the day-to-day operations of his administration, he stands as an important precursor of the contemporary White House chief of staff. Second, because Howe’s position in the Roosevelt Administration did not require Senate confirmation and his activities were often shrouded in secrecy, he is a critical reminder of the lack of accountability of many of the powerful men and women who have followed in his footsteps. And finally, Howe shows how much of the influence of right-hand men and women is derived from their relationship with the president, rather than from their official title.
Unlike those right hands who must undergo Senate confirmation, such as cabinet officers (like William Seward and Alexander Hamilton), Howe and senior advisers like him do not automatically enjoy the same level of deference throughout the administration. Because he was Roosevelt’s chief aide rather than the chief of a federal agency, Howe probably knew as well as most that if he were to suddenly fall out of favor with the president, his influence in the administration would suffer. Of course, a cabinet officer can lose favor as well, but an unpopular cabinet officer can at least still move the gears within his or her own agency. If Roosevelt had turned his back on Howe, busy staffers inside the White House might suddenly have found themselves searching for reasons to take his call.
Howe’s official title at the time was “secretary to the president,” and, in addition to acting as Roosevelt’s chief political adviser, he helped oversee White House personnel (along with Missy LeHand, the president’s personal secretary). Though Howe served in the days when much of the White House political staff was borrowed from agencies, given his duties, most Americans would recognize him today as the chief of staff—not by title, but certainly in light of his responsibilities.
The White House chief of staff is a relatively recent invention. In 1953, President Eisenhower was the first to formally confer the title when he appointed his former campaign aide Sherman Adams to the post. In his role as an immediate forerunner of what has now become a widely recognized position within the White House chain of command, Howe enters into an important discussion regarding the accountability of senior White House officials and of the role of the president’s right hand himself or herself. Despite his extraordinary influence, Howe was conspicuously exempt from the public scrutiny to which other senior government officials were subjected. Advisers like Howe remind us that some of the most powerful people working in the White House—indeed, in the whole of government—are often unelected, unvetted and little known by the public.
Though Howe lived only long enough to serve the president for a couple of years, in that brief period he helped establish the role of the modern-day chief of staff and, by doing so, significantly influenced the role of the presidential right hand. If today there is an expectation that someone like Howe exists at the side of every president, the assumption is meaningfully attributable to Howe’s example.
When Roosevelt was president, he once sent a White House valet with a message to give to Howe, who at the time was living in the Lincoln Bedroom. The message, whatever it was, has long since been forgotten, but Howe’s response endures. Howe looked up from whatever work he was doing and told the valet to tell the president to go to hell.16 If anyone outside of the president’s family had a right to speak to him in such a way, it was Howe. He had earned it.
For almost twenty-five years, Howe was a central figure in Roosevelt’s political and personal life. Roosevelt consulted Howe after Eleanor asked for a divorce in the wake of his affair with her secretary Lucy Mercer; Howe was vacationing with Roosevelt the day he began to exhibit signs of polio in 1921 and Howe helped Eleanor nurse him back to health afterward. Howe was the one person who never let Roosevelt give up on his dream of becoming president, and he devoted much of his life—at considerable personal and financial cost—to making that dream a reality.
Without his influence and assistance, the achievements that FDR is best remembered for might never have occurred. Howe was responsible for the line “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” and Howe came up with the idea for the CCC.
After his death, Howe was succeeded by a parade of similarly influential figures in the Roosevelt Administration—Missy LeHand, Raymond Moley, Rexford Tugwell and eventually the most powerful of them all, Harry Hopkins. By the time Clark Clifford arrived in the Truman White House ten years later, people like Howe were widely accepted as a fixture.
Perhaps mindful of Howe’s example, Clifford devoted himself to the task of breaking into President Truman’s inner circle. He would eventually emerge as the president’s most trusted and powerful adviser. He became Truman’s eyes, his ears and, more importantly, his voice. During his most difficult moments, it was to Clifford that Truman turned. Such was the case when it became clear that someone needed to remind an insubordinate secretary of state that Truman, not he, was the president of the United States.
FINDING TRUMAN’S VOICE
Even at their closest, President Truman harbored nagging suspicions about Clifford’s motives. Truman appreciated Clifford but thought him at times challenging to work with. He took Clifford’s advice and encouraged his efforts on his behalf, but in his private papers Truman confessed that he thought Clifford was a ”prima donna.” (US Navy/Harry S. Truma
n Library)
The President is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway.1
—President Harry Truman
Clark Clifford’s official title during the Truman Administration was White House counsel, but he is presented here for his role in helping shape the job of White House chief of staff. He symbolizes a key skill in the arsenal of the type of right-hand men who were particularly relevant during the postwar and post-Depression years and who would become the most effective chiefs of staff: policy synthesizers.2
Clifford’s keen understanding of President Truman and his ability to translate the president’s thinking for others—as well as his ability to assemble, shape and package for the president the ideas of his advisers—would fuel his success in the administration. Even though in later life he would serve as secretary of defense and become one of Washington’s most powerful lobbyists, Clifford is often remembered for his service in the Truman White House.
Clifford was an unlikely candidate for the role of right hand. He was unknown to the president when he first joined the administration, he possessed little experience in politics, and he had even less knowledge of policymaking. Yet this outsider desperately wanted to be an insider.
What he did possess was a gift for persuasion and a masterful ability to shape and present the ideas of others, a skill on which Truman grew to depend. From the modest perch Clifford first held as an assistant naval aide, in just two years this modern-day Machiavelli clawed his way up, first into Truman’s inner circle and then to the summit of White House power.
A dramatic confrontation between Clifford and Secretary of State George Marshall over official US recognition of the new state of Israel would become one of the events that enabled Truman to wrest control of the nation’s foreign affairs away from the men who believed they knew better than the president what direction to take the country. The incident would also strengthen Clifford’s position as Truman’s right-hand man. The legendary showdown in the Oval Office has become a critical piece of US-Mideast political history. It all began on a sweltering May afternoon in 1948…
Partner to Power Page 12