Despite the governor’s ostensible truce with Platt, the business corporations “served notice” on Platt’s political organization that if Roosevelt were renominated they would refuse to contribute to the Republican Party’s campaign chest. Since it was risky to flagrantly deny the popular governor a second term, the organization devised a perfect solution. They would promote Roosevelt to “the most dignified and harmless position in the gift of his country—the Vice-Presidency.” Exiling him to the vice presidency would kill two birds with one stone: The chronic irritant of his presence would be excised from New York politics; at the same time, the Republican Party and McKinley would be invigorated by Roosevelt’s charisma and energy on the national campaign trail.
Boss Platt’s scheme attracted the support of all the party bosses in the Republican Party save one—Mark Hanna, Republican Party chair. “Don’t you know that there’s only one life between that madman and the White House?” he warned. Even Hanna eventually concluded, however, that Roosevelt would add more traction to the national ticket than any other candidate. At first, Roosevelt strongly resisted the so-called promotion. He had no desire to be the “figurehead” in a job then considered a graveyard for political ambitions. Not a single vice president had been elected to the presidency in over sixty years. He understood, however, that if he refused the nomination, people would say, “Roosevelt has a big head and thinks he is too much of a man to be Vice-President.” When the convention nominated him by acclamation, he felt he had no choice but to accept with gratitude and grace. “His enemies triumphed,” Jacob Riis wrote, “at last they had him where they wanted him.”
For the first time in a decade and a half of focusing his full concentration on the job at hand, Roosevelt occupied a job where his active temperament could gain no hold. Frustration, depression born of inactivity grew by the day in that “useless and empty position,” where he was bereft of the spotlight he craved as a plant craves sunshine. The president gave him no responsibilities, nor did he seek Roosevelt’s advice. Roosevelt grew so bored that he contemplated returning to law school. Wistfully, he told his close friend William Howard Taft, then fully engaged as governor-general in the Philippines, “I am not doing any work and do not feel as though I was justifying my existence. More and more it seems to me that about the best thing in life is to have a piece of work worth doing and then to do it well.”
Friends counseled patience. They remained fully confident that the White House would be his future home. But Roosevelt reasoned that by the time McKinley’s second term ended, his window upon the presidency might be shut forever. Life had shown him that logic and step-by-step planning hardly controlled events. Before an opportunity might arise to attain the presidency (the position he could scarcely bring himself to mention aloud), he knew “the kaleidoscope will have shifted completely and the odds are that an entirely new set of men and set of issues will be at the front. Moreover, to change the metaphor, the chances are strong that the pendulum will have swung back and that a Democratic victory will be in order.”
Kaleidoscopes and pendulums—Roosevelt’s images connoted an abiding belief in the hard lesson of his crucible philosophy: All one can do is to prepare oneself, to wait in readiness for what might come.
Chance had placed him in the catapult and now it was up to the vagaries of history to cut the catapult’s rope. On September 6, 1901, an assassin’s bullet brought McKinley’s life to a slow end, and at forty-two years of age, Theodore Roosevelt was “shot into the presidency,” the youngest man to occupy the White House in the history of the country.
SEVEN
FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT
“Above all, try something”
On a late August day in 1921 at Campobello, the family’s island retreat off Downeast Maine, Franklin Roosevelt awoke with a mild sensation that something was wrong. His back ached and he felt oddly enervated. Nothing serious, he assumed; physical activity would surely shake off this peculiar torpor. From youth, Roosevelt took keen pleasure in a large range of physical exertion. His earliest letters expressed the thrill of sledding, skating, and fishing with his father. He developed into an avid golfer, tennis player, sailor, and horseback rider. While neither strong nor muscular, he was agile and graceful. A family friend never forgot the vision of young Franklin leaping “like some amazing stag” across a brook; an observer at the 1920 convention was struck by the moment he hurdled four or five chairs in order to make a motion: “It was the most wonderful athletic feat,” she recalled.
So, rather than surrendering to his weariness by remaining in bed, he had launched upon a day of strenuous physical activity. First, he embarked on a long sail with Eleanor and their two oldest sons. On their return home, they spotted a brushfire on one of the islands. Bringing the boat close to shore, they jumped out and spent an hour slapping down smoldering flames. Eyes “bleary with smoke,” they no sooner had reached their “cottage” when Franklin challenged the boys to jog a mile and a half to their favorite swimming spot, a freshwater pond on the other side of the island. Still unrefreshed and uncomfortable after swimming, he raced the boys back home and plunged into the ice-cold Bay of Fundy. Then, suddenly so lethargic he was unable to take off his wet bathing suit, he slumped on the porch and tried to sort through mail. Abruptly, he announced that he had a severe chill and would go straight to bed. “I’d never felt quite that way before,” he recalled.
Within forty-eight hours, paralysis had spread to his limbs, thumbs, toes, back, bladder, and rectal sphincter. Pain shot up and down his legs. Misdiagnosis by the first attending doctors accelerated his dire condition. Fear, confusion, and persistent agony followed. Finally, a specialist was summoned who correctly diagnosed his condition—poliomyelitis, a virus that attacked the nerves controlling muscular activity. In the days that followed, Eleanor, with the support of Franklin’s assistant, Louis Howe, a guest at Campobello, lifted him off the bed onto a bedpan. She administered enemas and learned how to use a catheter. The doctor mandated complete bed rest, save a daily tub of soothing warm water.
For weeks, Franklin lay in bed, unable to perform the most basic bodily functions on his own. He had sustained a fundamental blow to his body, to his identity as a man and a human being. Until the acute phase passed, no predictions could be made about the subsequent course of his illness. Some muscles might return; others would recover only partial strength or remain totally paralyzed. In mid-September, he was transferred from Campobello to New York Presbyterian Hospital, where he remained for six weeks. While his bladder and sphincter muscles returned, his shoulders remained remarkably weak, his back could not support a seated position, and his legs showed no response at all. The physicians generally concurred that he would not walk or stand on his own power. Neither Eleanor nor Louis Howe believed he would ever be able to use his legs again. Upon discharge the chart read: “Not improving.”
The poet Koltsov, referenced by Turgenev in the story “Death,” asks:
What if a falcon’s
Wings are tied?
What if all ways
Are to him denied?
It was this dreary future of dependency and obstruction that this graceful falcon of a man was now forced to contemplate: loss of uprightness, deprived of the stamina and appearance of strength which political leadership seemed to demand.
Franklin Roosevelt’s ordeal provides the most clear-cut paradigm of how a devastating crucible experience can, against all expectation and logic, lead to significant growth, intensified ambition, and enlarged gifts for leadership. The trajectory he had envisioned as a twenty-five-year-old, the large figure he longed to cut in the world—climbing from the state legislature to assistant secretary of the navy, up to governor of New York, and then to the presidency itself—had in all likelihood been derailed. Months and years of striving lay ahead of him, accompanied by fear, anxiety, and concealed bouts of depression; but eventually, the sustained effort Roosevelt directed toward spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical recovery led him to
a spectacular, albeit risk-filled return to public life.
Roosevelt’s irrepressible optimism, his tendency to expect the best outcome in any circumstance, provided the keystone strength that carried him through this traumatic experience. From the outset, he set an objective: a future in which he would fully recover. Although necessity forced him to modify the timetable for attaining this goal, he never lost his conviction that he would eventually succeed.
Roosevelt’s physician, Dr. George Draper, feared that his remarkably upbeat patient would be unable to cope once he fully understood the gravity of his situation. During his hospital stay, Roosevelt was always smiling and cheerful, casting a genial glow of positive jocularity onto his visitors. In letters and conversations with friends, he predicted that he would be upright on crutches by the time he left the hospital, walking without a limp by the following spring. Then, it was simply a matter of time before he could resume playing golf. “The psychological factor in his management is paramount,” Draper told a fellow doctor. “He has such courage, such ambition, and yet at the same time such an extraordinarily sensitive emotional mechanism, that it will take all the skill which we can muster to lead him successfully to a recognition of what he really faces without utterly crushing him.”
Dr. Draper was not the first to miscalculate the resourceful depths of Roosevelt’s character. Appearing “bright and happy” had been the expected pattern of behavior in the Roosevelt household in the wake of the heart attack that left his father an invalid. The changed dynamic at Springwood—a defense fashioned to protect Mr. James from worry or anxiety—had demanded secrecy and duplicity. Franklin’s letters from Groton sparkled with reports of how splendidly he was getting along with his classmates, when in reality he was lonely, ill at ease, and having difficulty fitting in.
Now, in the face of traumatic illness, Roosevelt brought these old patterns of behavior to bear in a more powerfully nuanced way than ever before. The positive image he projected, so starkly incongruous from the ordeal he was confronting, was not simply to protect others but to buoy his own spirits. Some days were harder than others. In time, however, the steadfast affectation of good cheer begot real cheer. If there was something contrived and theatrical about the relentless sunniness he conveyed—a willful whistling in the dark—he radiated warmth, hope, and confidence that would, in the end, prove contagious.
Fueled by resolution, perseverance, and newly acquired patience, he set forth on the tortuous journey to reclaim his “rebellious” body. Told that his upper body had the greatest likelihood of recovery, Franklin endured punishing exercises to salvage and remake his chest, shoulders, neck, arms, and back. In a manner more grueling than any body building of Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin did everything possible to solidify the intact remnant of his physical core. Hour after hour he pulled himself up on a set of rings installed in “a trapeze-like contraption” above his bed, slowly and painfully strengthening his muscles until his upper body came to resemble that of a champion boxer or wrestler. With powerful arms, he could finally manipulate a wheelchair, and push himself into a sitting position. Everything below the waist, however, remained “a goner,” according to one of his doctors, preventing him from getting into or out of the wheelchair without assistance. Day after day he would ask to be lifted from the wheelchair and set down on the library floor so that he could further exercise his back and arms by crawling around the room. He then proceeded to tackle stairs, grabbing railings on either side with his hands, hoisting up his body step by step to the top, sweat pouring from his face. He insisted that family members be on hand to witness and cheer on each of these triumphs.
And with every small “win,” Eleanor observed, Franklin felt stronger than before. “He regained his joy in living,” she later wrote, “his hearty laughter, his ability to be happy over little things.” The day he was at last able to move one of his frozen toes called for a grand celebration, creating a shared mood of joy and happiness. When asked during his presidency how he dealt with continuing problems, he half-jokingly observed: “If you spent two years in bed trying to wiggle your big toe, anything would seem easy!” Each increment of increased mobility led to the possibility of new progress. After being fitted with heavy steel braces to keep his legs rigid, he met the laborious challenge of learning to totter awkwardly on crutches. Through it all, he adamantly refused to relinquish his ultimate goal of walking on his own.
In his never-ending search for treatment, Roosevelt deployed a “trial and error” method, an indelible fingerprint of his leadership style. In the Navy Department, he had flung ideas against the wall to see which ones might stick; during the New Deal he would experiment with one program after another, swiftly changing course if the present one proved ineffective. Now, he enthusiastically embraced dozens of novel contraptions: an electric belt, an oversized tricycle, a specially designed shoe, a children’s double-swing. Over time, he invented his own devices to deal with “a number of mechanical problems” that obstructed his mobility. He designed a small wheelchair without arms to exercise his quadriceps and fastened pincers to a stick to reach his library books. He had the first hand-operated throttle and brake installed in his motor vehicle.
And all the while, he carried out an extensive correspondence with his “fellow polios,” as he addressed them, comparing ideas for overcoming common dilemmas. The shared vulnerability revealed in these letters represented the first flowering of a new humility of spirit, a concern for the pain and suffering of others that would later grow to maturity during his years at Warm Springs, Georgia.
* * *
Far more than the sum of its parts, the unorthodox, fiercely loyal, and intimate team that Franklin assembled during his seven-year convalescence—comprised of Eleanor Roosevelt, Louis Howe, and Missy LeHand—became an extension of Roosevelt’s body. Together, they functionally diminished the isolating impact of his paralysis. We have seen how Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt reassembled and reinvented themselves in the wake of their crucible experiences. The nature of Roosevelt’s paralytic polio was such, however, that he had to depend on others as he fought to recover his physical and mental strength. This highly talented team dedicated their lives to “serving his purposes,” as Eleanor once said. Simultaneously, he manifestly served their purposes. For Franklin’s long period of recovery and transformation was also a time of metamorphosis for all three members of the core team, a time of realignment and growth, a time when they discovered previously undeveloped interests and talents of their own.
Both Eleanor Roosevelt and Louis Howe recognized from the outset that Franklin’s spirit would be destroyed if his political ambitions were throttled. “If he didn’t have political hope,” they believed, “he would die spiritually, die intellectually, and die in his personality.” Working side by side, they mobilized a strenuous campaign to sustain his political dreams. Anxiously at first, and then with genuine enthusiasm, Eleanor took on the task of keeping her husband’s name alive in political circles. She served as his surrogate at public events, joined various Democratic Party committees, volunteered for the victorious gubernatorial campaign of New Yorker Al Smith, and spoke at luncheons and dinners. Having little experience in public speaking, her son James recalled, she gave more than a hundred practice speeches to an audience of one—her mentor and coach, Louis Howe. Howe taught her to restrain her nervous giggle, lower her high-pitched voice, say what she wanted to say, and then sit down. When she began to speak before packed audiences, Howe would sit in the back row, using a series of hand signals (similar to those Lyndon Johnson would employ with his debate students) to indicate where she was reaching her audience, and where she had fallen into nervous mannerisms. Before long, she was recognized as a powerful speaker.
Entering public life proved a liberating force for Eleanor. Her marriage had foundered three years earlier upon her discovery of a packet of love letters to her husband from a young woman named Lucy Mercer. When Franklin pledged never to see Lucy again, Eleanor agreed t
o remain in the marriage. From that moment on, she later told friends, she no longer loved him in the same way, though they remained joined by unbreakable ties and retained “a deep and unshakeable affection and tenderness” toward one another.
Now, in the wake of Franklin’s paralysis, she could serve her husband’s initiatives and simultaneously forge a role for herself. In the course of her political activities for Franklin, she joined a circle of progressive feminists dedicated to abolishing child labor, passing protective legislation for female workers, fighting for the minimum wage and maximum work hours. She further developed the leadership traits she had exercised during her days as a star student in boarding school: organizing people, inspiring them to loyalty, articulating their goals. She was stirred once again by the ambitions that had been curbed by the responsibility to care for a husband and five children. With his paralysis, new opportunity had opened up whereby she might aid him and realize her own dreams of leaving a mark on the world.
Franklin’s paralysis transformed Louis Howe’s world in equally dramatic fashion. For nearly a decade, while married with two children, Howe had served as Franklin’s secretary, adviser, and friend. Franklin’s illness, Howe told an interviewer, “changed everything.” From the moment his boss was stricken, Howe never lived with his family again, choosing instead to make the Roosevelt family his own, visiting his wife and children only on occasional weekends. He had his own room at the Campobello cottage, the New York townhouse, the Governor’s Mansion, and ultimately, the White House. “He had one loyalty in life and it was a kind of religion,” White House speechwriter Sam Rosenman said: “Franklin D. Roosevelt.” He courted politicians on Franklin’s behalf; held private conferences with Democratic governors, mayors, and congressmen; attended local and state party conventions; and put together a twice-weekly roundup of interesting articles and gossip about politics, business, and world affairs—creating in effect a newspaper designed for a readership of one—Franklin Roosevelt. “Father was too busy with his fight for his life to think of his political future,” Roosevelt’s son James said. According to his biographer, “Howe’s solution to balance the two priorities—Roosevelt’s physical well-being and the resumption of his public life—was to lift one of them off of his shoulders.” Howe’s belief in Roosevelt’s destiny was a matter of faith. Soon after Franklin was stricken by polio, when Eleanor queried Howe as to whether her husband could navigate the rough-and-tumble world of politics, Howe assured her that nothing had altered his belief that one day Franklin would be president of the United States.
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