The Definitive FDR

by James Macgregor Burns

  Part of Roosevelt’s strength stemmed from the pains he took not to alienate any major faction of the party. To be sure, he had come out for repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1930, but he played down the subject in following years. He had fully retreated from his support in 1920 of American entry into the League of Nations—so much so as to bring scores of bitter letters from disappointed League supporters who remembered his stand in 1920. He favored U.S. adherence to the World Court, but refused to come out publicly for it. Even on the historic Democratic issue of the tariff Roosevelt straddled; he placated high-tariff groups in the West by suggesting to them that the tariff was really a local matter. On most economic and social matters, however, Roosevelt was ahead of the drift of opinion.

  The upshot of this situation was that the South looked on Roosevelt as a wet but a reasonable wet, the West saw him as a progressive (largely because of his water-power policies), the East rated him as mildly wet and reasonably liberal.

  Roosevelt’s first real move for the nomination was well disguised. In July 1931 Farley set out for Seattle to attend a convention of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, of which he was a high dignitary. Armed with a map, he and Roosevelt had laid out an elaborate trip through eighteen states, where Farley could stop off for chats with state chairmen ostensibly about party affairs but actually to sound out sentiment for the New York governor. For nineteen days Farley shook hands, carefully noted names, and warily discussed candidates. Where he found Roosevelt supporters he urged them to try to get their state delegations pledged to his chief as early as possible. “Have indicated that they must all get away from the ‘favorite-son’ idea,” Farley reported to the governor, “on the theory that it is only used for the purpose of tying up blocks of delegates to be manipulated.” He warned delegates not to expect that by plumping for their governors or senators they could trade off support for the vice-presidential nomination.

  Farley’s findings showed the extent of Roosevelt’s strength even before his active candidacy. In California he found “no sentiment for any one else at the moment except for the Governor.” He thought everything was “all right in Illinois.” Roosevelt’s friends in Indiana would have “absolute control of the delegation.…” In half a dozen more states the situation was at least satisfactory. Farley was bubbling over with optimism by the time he returned to New York.

  Actually, Farley’s reports were generally far too enthusiastic and in some cases misleading. A newcomer to national politics, he did not realize the extent of factionalism in some states; his one- or two-day trips did not give him time to explore the many centers of power. Party leaders who promised to deliver solid delegations simply were not able to come across. The attachments of delegates to presidential candidates were inextricably tied up with conflicting loyalties to a variety of candidates for state and local offices.

  This miscalculation was important, for it led Farley to pin his hopes and strategy on an overwhelming show of strength at the convention and to make repeated predictions of victory on the first ballot. To be sure, these predictions helped bring some delegates off the fence, but they also helped concentrate the pack in opposition to the front runner. And they prompted the question: What if Roosevelt does not win on the first ballot?

  All during 1931 trouble was piling up for Roosevelt in his own state. The great strength of a New York governor seeking the presidential nomination lies in the fat bloc of delegates he can take to the convention. By all the ordinary rules Roosevelt should have commanded such support in 1932. But he did not.

  The trouble arose on his traditionally weak sector, Tammany. One of the incidental effects of the Depression was to put severe pressure on the Hall for jobs and favors. Boss Murphy had been succeeded by men unable to provide leadership or discipline. Most of the corruption was petty, but it reached up to the higher Tammany levels and erupted in dramatic incidents—the murder of a redheaded adventuress, the revelations of Sheriff Thomas Farley about graft and his “little tin cup”—that helped make news of corruption for months on end.

  Once again Roosevelt had to walk the tightrope, but this time he leaned to the anti-Tammany side. He co-operated with the Republicans in establishing a well-armed legislative investigation committee, he appointed the redoubtable Samuel Seabury to look into charges against the office of the Tammany district attorney, and he gravely considered charges of laxness against Tammany’s beloved jack-a-dandy, Mayor James J. Walker of New York City. Roosevelt also was most circumspect in his relations with Tammany leaders, often using Howe, Rosenman, or his law partner, Basil O’Connor, as intermediaries.

  June 1932, William Ireland Columbus Dispatch

  Mildly spanking Tammany was perfectly safe for Roosevelt as long as the Hall had no other candidate to support for the presidential nomination. There was Smith, of course, but for several years Smith’s relations with the organization had been cool. But toward the end of 1931, as Tammany saw Roosevelt under mounting pressure from anti-Tammany forces and from Republicans eager to split the New York Democracy, the Hall looked around for a way out of its predicament. During this very period Smith was making up his mind to seek the nomination. A rapprochement between Smith and the Hall was in order.

  Smith’s entry into the race caught the Roosevelt forces off balance; for a long time they refused to believe that he was anything but a stalking-horse for some other candidate. Farley and Flynn had begun working for Roosevelt only on Smith’s assurances that he would not run in 1932. Sickened by the wave of religious prejudice that had helped beat him in 1928, Smith doubtless meant this disavowal at the time. But two things changed his mind. One was the increasing indication during 1931 that the Democrats would win. The other was the steady deterioration of his relations with Roosevelt.

  The smoldering conflict broke out into the open in the November election of 1931. Roosevelt was sponsoring a $20,000,000 reforestation amendment as Referendum No. 3, which Smith attacked in a blistering speech at a Tammany rally. “What a queer thing that was for Al to fight so bitterly on No. 3!” the governor wrote to a friend. “I cannot help remembering the fact that while he was Governor I agreed with almost all the policies he recommended but I was against one or two during those eight years. However, for the sake of party solidarity, I kept my mouth shut.…” Passage of the amendment was seen as proof of Roosevelt’s influence in the state.

  In December Roosevelt got definite word as to the extent of Smith’s feeling in a letter from Clark Howell, publisher of the Atlanta Constitution, who had just visited Smith in his office in the Empire State Building. After some preliminaries, Howell had asked Smith whether there was any ground for personal hostility on his part against Roosevelt. Smith had answered that their personal relations were pleasant, but then he rose, stamped his foot, according to Howell, and demanded: “Do you know, by God, that he has never consulted me about a damn thing since he has been Governor? He has taken bad advice and from sources not friendly to me. He has ignored me!” Raising his voice and banging his fist on the table Smith went on to charge that Roosevelt had refused to tell Smith about his candidacy, that he was dodging on prohibition, and that his “damn fool friends” were arranging Roosevelt dinners and the like. A political friendship had collapsed for political reasons.

  Tammany—like Boss Plunkitt—saw its opportunity and took it. Smith was the lesser of the two evils; moreover, he was still popular with the New York City Democracy’s rank and file. The New York delegation was made up of delegates at large chosen by the state committee, and of district delegates elected locally. In open defiance of Roosevelt, Tammany forces on the state committee chose a delegate-at-large slate largely composed of their own men; the district delegates were split about equally between Roosevelt and Tammany. Shrewdly Tammany left the delegates at large uninstructed so that they could be used as a club against the governor in the corruption situation. The upshot was that Roosevelt found himself in control of less than half of his own state delegation.

  B
ATTLE AT THE GRASS ROOTS

  On January 23, 1932—a week before his fiftieth birthday—Roosevelt formally announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for President by authorizing the Democratic Central Committee of North Dakota to enter his name in the preferential primary of that state. Two weeks later Smith announced that he would accept the nomination if it should be offered to him, but that he would not conduct an active campaign—an announcement that politicians correctly interpreted as meaning his supporters would conduct an active campaign. Half a dozen other candidates were entering or eying the arena.

  By now Roosevelt’s campaign had become a major operation. Outside the immediate entourage of Howe and Farley and their assistants was a circle of old Roosevelt friends and supporters. Colonel Edward House, the indefatigable little Texan who had served and then left Wilson, was quietly pulling strings with his friends throughout the country. Such influential senators as Cordell Hull of Tennessee, Alben W. Barkley of Kentucky, and Thomas J. Walsh of Montana helped Roosevelt in Washington. No national organization could do the job, however; Farley and Howe relied mainly on state politicians. The campaign took money—almost $90,000 in the first three months—but money was not a serious problem. Large donations came from Lehman, Henry Morgenthau, Sr., William H. Woodin, Joseph P. Kennedy, Robert W. Bingham, and a score of other financiers, merchants, and industrialists. Central in the operation was Roosevelt himself, conducting a huge correspondence, entertaining prominent out-of-state politicos in Albany or Hyde Park, almost daily advising Farley and Howe on their activities. Roosevelt was at his best in entertaining visiting national politicians. Senator Clarence C. Dill of Washington remembered years later how the governor had got wind that he was in Albany and invited him to dinner. “I talked with him three hours and came away a devoted and enthusiastic booster.…”

  Roosevelt’s supporters were a remarkably varied lot—a strange assortment of old Harvard friends, city bosses, millionaires, Western radicals, Southern Bourbons, opportunistic Midwesterners who knew how to jump on the right bandwagon, Ku Kluxers, old Wilsonites, old Bryanites, professors, high-tariff men, low-tariff men. Directly or indirectly he was dealing with leaders who were then, or later, some of the most controversial personalities in American life: Hearst, Huey P. Long, Thomas J. Pendergast of Missouri, James M. Curley of Boston. This diversity of support was a source of both strength and weakness—strength in that it gave him the appearance of nationwide appeal, weakness in that his supporters might lack unity and staying power at the convention.

  Presidential nominations are usually won not by one great campaign through the nation but by a series of guerrilla battles, by tortuous, often undercover manipulations in each of the states and territories. Grand strategy must give way to petty strategy, and petty strategy to the mastery of detail. The network of detail surrounding a thousand potential convention delegates was Farley’s forte.

  Backed by a year’s strenuous effort, the Roosevelt forces pulled far ahead in the early contests of 1932. Alaska, Washington, North Dakota, Georgia, Iowa, Maine, and Wisconsin fell to Roosevelt in an impressive demonstration of the wide compass of his support. Yet Roosevelt never took a decisive lead. The difficulty was twofold. Running ahead of even the combined opposition was not enough for the Roosevelt forces; they had to win the magic two-thirds. And sensing a possible stalemate ahead, several state delegations did the precise thing that Farley had been trying so desperately to avoid—they pledged to favorite sons as a means either of hoarding their votes for future bargaining purposes or of capturing the nomination in a stalemate. Oklahoma instructed its delegates to vote for their rustic governor, Alfalfa Bill Murray, whose political antics and dripping mustache had become a cartoonist’s delight. Missouri pledged its thirty-six delegates to prickly Senator James Reed, the old anti-Wilson isolationist. Maryland plumped for Ritchie, who rivaled Roosevelt in bearing, background, and eloquence, and who had won the Maryland governorship four times by ever-increasing majorities. Illinois with its fifty-eight votes went to Senator J. Hamilton Lewis, the old Populist spellbinder, whose wig, pink whiskers, and gay attire had won him the name the “Aurora Borealis of Illinois.”

  Late in April 1932 the Roosevelt machine seemed to stall. Smith carried the Massachusetts primary by a popular vote of three to one; he would have the entire delegation with its thirty-six votes. Pennsylvania gave a majority of its votes to Roosevelt, but Smith showed unexpected strength, especially in the wet districts. Early in May came the worst blow of all. In a three-way contest for California’s forty-four votes with Smith and Speaker John N. Garner of the House of Representatives, Roosevelt unexpectedly ran second after Garner, although ahead of Smith. Prospects of a first-ballot victory began to look slim. What had happened?

  The Massachusetts situation was badly bungled. Early in the game Mayor James M. Curley of Boston had suddenly jumped on the Roosevelt bandwagon. Long the bully boy of Boston politics, Curley had often been counted out, but he always bounced back, soothing the crowds with his honey-sweet voice, thwacking the old-line, respectable Democrats hip and thigh. Curley’s motives were simple: he saw Roosevelt as a political comer whom he could use in advancing his own ambitions to win the governorship over the opposition of Senator David I. Walsh, Governor Joseph B. Ely, and the state organization. Curley had some luck, too. Roosevelt’s oldest son, James, had gone into the insurance business in Boston and he was eager to dabble in politics. Curley established a solid alliance with him. The father in Albany was touched and pleased at his son’s interest in politics. Like many another political leader in history, he may have allowed a family situation to spoil his good judgment.

  Curley simply ran away with Roosevelt’s campaign in Massachusetts. But aside from his own faction he made little headway. “No attention was paid to the country districts where our strength lay, nor was the slightest attempt made to get out the rural vote,” Howe wrote later in an angry account of Curley’s “wretched” management of the campaign. “Curley insisted on making it a city fight throughout the state with all the organization and voting officials under the control of Walsh and Ely. This is on a par with his early agreement with me to have the campaign run by a committee of six mayors with himself only responsible for Boston—a promise which he failed utterly to carry out and which left at least four [of] the mayors somewhat lukewarm to Roosevelt’s cause.…” The main effect of Curley’s campaign was to goad the opposition into a strenuous counteraction, and the availability of Smith, who was idolized by Massachusetts Democrats, fell in perfectly with their needs.

  Sensing defeat, Roosevelt at the eleventh hour tried to compromise. A peace conference in Boston that excluded Curley made some progress until news came in that Curley had chosen that afternoon to lash out at Smith for deceiving the people and wrecking the party; the meeting broke up. Curley himself tried to work out a deal where Smith would have the whole delegation on early ballots if Roosevelt could have it intact later. But Walsh and Ely saw no need to compromise. The campaign ended in a typical “Curley-Burley” in which Roosevelt was lost in a storm of personal and factional invective.

  Part of Roosevelt’s difficulty in Massachusetts lay in some uncertainty whether Smith actually hoped to win for himself or planned to throw his strength at some point to someone else. In this sense, too, Roosevelt’s early start was a disadvantage; his opponents knew that he was out for himself, but he could never know who would emerge as his real opponent out of the makeshift combinations that the “Stop Roosevelt” forces were piecing together. He encountered the same difficulty in California.

  In the beginning the Roosevelt forces had been optimistic about this state, partly because they discounted both Garner’s interest and availability. A small-town banker and realtor from western Texas—the “goat country,” he liked to call it—Garner had risen to be the shrewd and militant leader of the Democratic forces in the House. Considered an extreme wet and hostile to Eastern business interests, he lacked national appeal, but two factors
gave him strength in California: a huge “Texas California” association that loved any son of the mother state, and backing from Hearst. Garner ran far ahead in Los Angeles, as did Smith in San Francisco.

  Seeking nationwide support in the party, Roosevelt was at a disadvantage facing candidates who could take a position that had local appeal. On many matters, such as liquor and Tammany, he treaded carefully, or remained silent. But failure to take a position also could be politically dangerous. “Do you wish to win for yourself the undesirable title of the 4-P’s Candidate: Pusillanimously-Pussyfooting-Pious-Platitudinous Roosevelt,” a fellow Harvard alumnus wrote him angrily. Oswald Garrison Villard, editor of the liberal Nation, in an open letter addressed to Roosevelt fourteen flat questions such as “Are you a protectionist or not? Yes or no?” “Are you for repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment? Yes or no?” The governor refused to answer; these were “Have-you-stopped-beating-your-wife?” questions, he wrote to Villard indignantly—and privately.

  On general economic questions, however, Roosevelt took a militant stand. “These unhappy times,” he said in a radio speech in April 1932, “call for the building of plans that rest upon the forgotten, the unorganized but the indispensable units of economic power, for plans … that build from the bottom up and not from the top down, that put their faith once more in the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid.” The Forgotten Man became one of his most remembered phrases. “The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation,” he told a graduating class at Oglethorpe University. Almost a year before March 1933 he was proclaiming that America was facing an emergency at least equal to war itself.