Public life also exacted another toll. He was away from the family much of the time—away when children came down with semi-serious illnesses, away when one of them was burned in a picnic fire. His anxiety only increased at a distance; during a polio epidemic he badgered Daniels unmercifully until the secretary allowed him to dispatch a destroyer to Campobello to take his children home by sea. His personal life, like that of other public figures, was fair game for rumor-mongers. A story went the rounds that he had fallen in love with another woman and that Eleanor had offered him his freedom. At best the long separations were the source of difficulty. “You were a goosy girl,” he wrote his wife from Washington, “to think or even pretend to think that I don’t want you here all the summer, because you know I do! But honestly you ought to have six weeks straight at Campo, just as I ought to, only you can and I can’t.…”
The image Roosevelt presented to the world during the immediate postwar period was that of the brisk young executive. His job now called for a multitude of immediate “practical” duties rather than the glamorous actions of war, and much of the supervision of this work fell to the assistant secretary. He now became highly interested in improving the organization and administration of the federal government. Showing a keen grasp of the political context of public administration, he repeatedly urged that the President be given more control of budget-making, that Congress put its own houses in order by consolidating its appropriations activities in one general committee, that promotion be based on efficiency rather than length of service, that existing agencies be reorganized and functions redistributed, and that heads of executive departments be given more authority.
Toward politics he was cautious. “Quite frankly,” he wrote a supporter in February 1920, “I do not personally intend to make an early Christian martyr of myself this fall if it is going to be a strongly Republican year.” Yet this was precisely what he was to do.
CHALLENGE AND RESPONSE
Roosevelt spent the first few weeks of 1919 on navy business in Europe. While he helped tidy up the debris of war, Woodrow Wilson in Paris tried to lay the foundations of peace. The President was at the peak of his career; his tour of Europe had been that of an uncrowned monarch. “No one has ever had such cheers,” an observer said. “I saw Foch pass, Clemenceau pass, Lloyd George, generals, returning troops, banners, but Wilson heard from his carriage something different, inhuman—or superhuman.”
On a wintry day in mid-February Wilson left France for home. He carried with him triumphantly a draft of the Covenant of the proposed League of Nations. On the same ship was the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, returning to Washington with his wife. One day the Roosevelts lunched with the Wilsons and their party. The talk was mostly an exchange of stories, but at one point the President spoke of the League of Nations. “The United States must go in,” he said, “or it will break the heart of the world, for she is the only nation that all feel is disinterested and all trust.”
After their ship docked in Boston, the Roosevelts rode in the triumphal parade that escorted the President to his hotel. An estimated 200,000 Bostonians roared a welcome to the President, and even Governor Calvin Coolidge was moved to “feeling sure the people would back the President.” Watching the crowds cheer the President wildly at every station on the way to Washington, Eleanor Roosevelt felt sure that they had “grasped his ideals.”
Perhaps they had. But the Covenant was part of a treaty that had to win the votes of two-thirds of the Senate of the United States. And the Senate numbered men as proud and stiff-necked as Wilson himself, men jealous of senatorial prerogative in foreign relations, sensitive to large national-origin groups at home, keenly aware of the presidential election that lay ahead. The Senate, moreover, was under Republican management; despite Wilson’s plea to the people in 1918 for Democratic control of Congress for the sake of “unified leadership,” the voters had put the opposition party in control of both houses by slim margins.
Roosevelt watched with dismay as the President’s foes in the Senate outmaneuvered the administration in skirmish after skirmish. In February 1919 the Republicans, still a minority, filibustered vital appropriations bills to death in the last weeks of the Democratic-controlled Congress, thereby forcing Wilson to summon, months ahead of the normal session, an extraordinary session of Congress which the Republicans would control. Just before the short session ended, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge by a parliamentary stratagem presented the Senate with the “Round Robin”—a pronunciamento that the Covenant was unacceptable “in the form now proposed” to thirty-nine Republican senators or senators-elect. In July, after weeks of hard negotiating with Lloyd George and Clemenceau in Paris, Wilson laid the treaty before the Senate. In August the President expressed willingness to accept mild Senate reservations to the treaty stated in a separate resolution, but the Senate Foreign Relations Committee proceeded to rip the treaty. In September Wilson went to the country, gave forty passionate speeches, suffered a breakdown, and returned spent and stricken. In November the President urged Democratic Senators to vote against the Lodge reservations to the treaty, and these were defeated, but unconditional ratification failed by a vote of 38 for to 53 against.
What had happened? Early in 1919 Wilson’s fight for a League had been applauded by American and European alike; at the end of the year his hopes were in ruins. Many explanations were put forward. Italo-Americans were aroused by the refusal to let Italy have Fiume, Irish-Americans by England’s control of “six seats” in the Assembly, German-Americans by Allied treatment of the old country. Other Americans were simply tired of Europe and its troubles; they were distracted by labor troubles, high prices, the Red Scare. The League question was caught in a bitter battle between parties. Above all, Wilson continued to talk about idealism after the cynical men at Versailles had produced a treaty of real politik; he continued to insist on the Covenant as he framed it long after concessions were in order.
Whatever the truth, it is notable that Roosevelt’s approach to the matter was somewhat different from the President’s. The Assistant Secretary was, of course, pro-League, but his speeches lacked Wilson’s fine moral fervor. While Wilson talked about following “the vision,” about “destiny,” about “lifted eyes,” about America’s duty, about Americans’ dreams, Roosevelt was more pragmatic, more experimental. “It is important not to dissect the document,” Roosevelt said in March 1919. “The important thing is first to approve the general plan.” Unless the United States came in, he warned, the League would become simply a new Holy Alliance. “The League may not end wars, but the nations demand the experiment.”
He was more willing to compromise than Wilson seemed to be. As early as March 29, 1919, he favored an amendment recognizing the Monroe Doctrine, but he thought the League should be tried even if desired amendments were not forthcoming. Other reservations to the League Covenant would be necessary, he warned at the end of the year. He had little hope that the League, even with United States membership, would prevent all future wars; several months after the war he still wanted compulsory military training.
“I have read the draft of the League three times,” he said in July, “and always find something to object to in it, and that is the way with everybody.… Personally I am willing to make a try on the present instrument.” Only once during this period did Roosevelt talk grandiloquently in Wilsonian terms. This was in a speech to a meeting sponsored by the League to Enforce Peace, when he put the League of Nations on a plane with the Magna Charta and the Constitution. He knew what his audience wanted.
Unlike Wilson, who became more and more obsessed with the treaty and League alone, Roosevelt during the postwar period seemed concerned with a variety of issues, great and small. During 1919 and early 1920 he gave a remarkable number of speeches on a remarkable variety of subjects. He delivered over a score of talks describing and defending the navy’s record in World War I. He repeatedly advocated peacetime universal military training as the fairest way of maintaining an army.
He called for administrative and legislative reorganization. He even had time to take a politician’s straddle on a minor but touchy subject: vivisection was necessary for scientific research, he told a meeting of humane societies, but the medical profession should stop abuses of it.
Some of his ideas were simply fatuous. He expressed the hope on one occasion that state and national governmental affairs would be as “free from politics” after the war as during the war. Some of his talks were of the spread-eagle type, filled with references to “good Americanism,” “clean living,” “straight thinking.” But certain threads ran through many of his speeches: nationalism (“Americanism”) rather than localism or sectionalism, internationalism rather than nationalism, the use of government to solve problems, the improvement in governmental machinery to handle heavier burdens.
He was still a Wilson man. “The progressive movement within the Republican Party has been dying ever since 1916—yesterday it died,” he said late in May in a speech before the Democratic National Committee in Chicago the day after conservative Republicans had won a victory in the Senate. The Republican party was still the party of “conservatism and reaction,” of “little Americanism and jingo bluff.” He predicted a party realignment with Republican liberals joining the Democrats while the Tories in his own party shifted to the opposition. He lambasted the new Republican Congress, just convened, for its concern over restoring the “old form of preferential tariff for pet groups of manufacturers,” for truckling to the returned soldiers but doing very little for them, for revising the income tax to benefit millionaires, for mudslinging and slander.
It was a rousing speech—a “humdinger,” said a local editor. He was simply trying, Roosevelt commented afterward, “to go back to certain fundamentals as old as the country itself.”
1920 – THE SOLEMN REFERENDUM
With the advent of election year, Roosevelt’s friends as usual pressed him to run for governor or Senator. And as usual he was evasive. Much would depend, he told his supporters during the early months of 1920, on the type of candidate nominated at the Democratic national convention in July.
The Democrats were in an awkward position. Their party chief was an invalid in the White House. The Republicans, no longer riven by Progressive secession, were turning Congress into an anti-administration sounding board, and were exploiting the crop of domestic and foreign problems that followed the war. Opposition to the League seemed to be increasing not only among conservatives but also among progressive elements on whose support the Wilsonian Democracy had come to rely.
Many Democratic leaders wanted to discard the League as a major campaign issue. City bosses of the North, at odds with the President over patronage matters, wanted to shake off Wilson as party leader and symbol. But it could not be done. As tightly as he could, Wilson had tied his party to his League. Convinced that the people were with him, he told his party publicly that the election must be a “great and solemn referendum” on the settlement of the war and the shape of the peace. Sick at heart over the prospects of the League in the Senate, thousands of Democrats looked to the election as a means of breaking the deadlock.
One of these Democrats was Roosevelt. In sharp contrast to his status in 1912 he enjoyed a good deal of influence in the 1920 Democratic convention in San Francisco. He was both an important member of the administration and a full-fledged delegate, elected by fellow Democrats in his congressional district. His one vote, moreover, would count. He tried unsuccessfully to induce the New York Democrats to drop the unit rule, under which a majority of the New York delegates (under Murphy) could control the votes of the whole delegation, as they had in 1912. The rules committee of the convention, however, came to his rescue by holding, over the protests of Tammany, that the unit rule did not apply to delegations selected by primary elections.
Roosevelt grasped a chance to dramatize his support of Wilson on the opening day of the convention. The unveiling of a huge oil portrait of the stricken President touched off a noisy demonstration. Delegation after delegation poured into the aisles and waved their placards. But not the New York delegates—they sat conspicuously in their seats. “Get up, New York!” the paraders shouted, but in vain. This was too much for Roosevelt. He ran over to a bulky Tammany leader who was tightly grasping the state standard, grabbed with such force as to pull the indignant Tammanyite to his feet, wrestled with him for a moment, and then bore the standard triumphantly down the aisle.
For several days and two-score ballots the convention was deadlocked in a seesaw race among Governor James M. Cox of Ohio, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, and William G. McAdoo, former secretary of the treasury and now a son-in-law of the President. Roosevelt seconded the nomination of Governor Alfred E. Smith of New York, but after Smith and other favorite sons had dropped out, he and most of the other upstate New Yorkers voted several times for McAdoo. McAdoo, however, was not an avowed candidate and he was scornfully labeled the “Crown Prince” by those who feared Wilson’s influence over the convention. Wilson himself was silent.
Cox won on the forty-fourth ballot. It was as logical for the Democrats to nominate him as it had been earlier for the Republicans to choose another Ohio editor-politician, Warren G. Harding, after a conference of party leaders. Cox was a compromise candidate. Sufficiently pro-Wilson not to have alienated the administration, he still did not suffer the handicap of being a “Wilson man.” He had made a progressive and efficient record in the gubernatorial office—a place where he could sidestep some of the more ticklish national issues. On liquor he was wet, but not excessively so.
As usual, choosing the vice-presidential candidate was a convention afterthought. By long tradition he must balance the ticket. Geographically he must come from a different part of the country from the presidential candidate. Politically he must represent different interests in the party. In contrast to Cox, Roosevelt was identified with the Wilson administration, he was a moderate dry, and he was considered an independent in the party. Moreover, he had a good record in government, and his name might bring over some progressives from the Republican camp, T.R. having died the previous year.
The nomination was accomplished easily. Presented with a list of available candidates, Cox expressed a preference for Roosevelt, but as an experienced politician he wanted to clear the matter with Tammany, which had gone down the line for him in the convention. When Cox’s manager, Edmund H. Moore, called Murphy out of bed, the Tammany chief was blunt.
“I don’t like Roosevelt,” he said. “He is not well known in the country, but, Ed, this is the first time a Democratic nominee for the Presidency has shown me courtesy. That’s why I would vote for the devil himself if Cox wanted me to. Tell him we will nominate Roosevelt on the first ballot as soon as we assemble.”
Murphy as usual was as good as his word. Several other candidates were put in nomination, but word traveled quickly through the hall that Cox and Murphy wanted Roosevelt. When Al Smith seconded the nomination of the assistant secretary, Tammany’s position was made clear. The other nominations were withdrawn, and Roosevelt was nominated by acclamation. He had had no part in his selection.
Viewed in retrospect, Roosevelt’s nomination seemed wholly natural if not inevitable. But it was not. Other candidates met the eligibility requirements. Roosevelt had no organized machine working in his behalf, although some of his friends had started a small boom for him. He had been a McAdoo man, and Cox had never met him. Roosevelt himself was caught somewhat by surprise at the outcome. If his nomination was due in part to fortuitous circumstances, such as his name and place of residence, it was due also to his improved relations with Tammany, a political reputation that had spread outside New York, and to his record in the navy.
Roosevelt and Cox at the outset faced a critical question of strategy. To what extent should they base their campaign on the League issue? Obviously they could not be rid of it, but they could soft-pedal it and play up a number of domestic matters—tried and tested issues such as the
tariff or “Republican reaction.” This was precisely what many Democratic leaders urged them to do. It was pointed out—quite accurately, as it turned out—that the Republicans, not being committed to the Covenant, could hold both supporters and opponents of the League in line for Harding, while large elements of the Democratic party—especially the Irish and Italians—would desert.
The decision of Cox and Roosevelt, however, was to make the League the central issue of their campaign. Together they visited the President to symbolize this intention. Wilson sat on the White House portico, gray and gaunt, a shawl covering his paralyzed left arm. Cox said, as Roosevelt later remembered it, “Mr. President, we are going to be a million per cent with you, and your Administration, and that means the League of Nations.” The President seemed to come to life. “I am very grateful” was all he could manage to say.
The Democratic candidates also decided on an aggressive campaign, despite advice that, as the representatives of the party in power, they should allow the Republicans to carry the election to them. Harding, on the other hand, elected to conduct a front-porch campaign in McKinley fashion. Roosevelt was itching to take to the road. Between mid-August and Election Day he traveled almost ceaselessly, usually in a car attached to regular trains, sometimes by auto, and once by airplane. He took a wide swing through the Northwest in August, then into New England and New York in September, then swung west again by a more southerly route as far as Colorado, and campaigned intensively in his home state again during the last days of the campaign, winding up in Madison Square Garden at the end of October. He probably made more than a thousand speeches.
Ahead of him ranged a Democratic party publicity agent, named Stephen Early; with the candidate was a general assistant, Marvin McIntyre; Howe helped out in Washington and New York and later on the campaign train. Early’s staccato reports gave the candidate the political lay of the land. “Washington state is DRY,” he telegraphed to McIntyre from Spokane. “Interest centers on reclamation of lands and destruction of Non-Partisan League. The Boss will be asked to express himself on Non-Partisan League and their kind of radicals. This section of country vitally interested.… Advise strongly that you do not hit the NPL directly. Lumber is the big industry. Wheat is the big crop. Agricultural development is the aim of all.…”
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