The Definitive FDR

by James Macgregor Burns

  Never, perhaps, has a candidate had as large and varied a group of advisers as Roosevelt collected for his campaign. They ranged from idealistic college professors to cynical party politicians, and they spoke for almost every political viewpoint of right, left, and center. One or two advisers tried to sort out the ideas in logical form for the candidate, but it was a trying task. Roosevelt loved to juggle ideas, he hated to antagonize people, he was looking for proposals that would appeal to a wide variety of groups, whatever the lack of internal consistency. While the candidate toured the streets and talked from the back platform of trains, fierce fights broke out in speech-drafting sessions between high-tariff and low-tariff men, among advocates of various farm policies, between the budget-balancers and public works advocates.

  What did the candidate say? At this critical juncture of the nation’s affairs, what program did he offer the American people?

  As in past campaigns, Roosevelt devoted each major speech to a major topic. In Topeka he promised to reorganize the Department of Agriculture; he favored the “planned use of land,” lower taxes for farmers through tax reform, federal credit for refinancing farm mortgages, and lower tariffs; and he came out for the barest shadow of a voluntary domestic allotment plan to handle farm surpluses. In Salt Lake City he outlined a comprehensive plan of federal regulation and aid for the floundering railroad industry. In Seattle he let loose a thundering attack on high tariffs. In Portland he demanded full publicity as to the financial activities of public utilities, regulation of holding companies by the Federal Power Commission, regulation of the issuing of stocks and bonds, and use of the prudent-investment principle in rate-making. In Detroit he called for removing the causes of poverty—but he refused to spell out the methods because it was Sunday and he would not talk politics!

  One speech in particular excited observers on the left. At the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco Roosevelt talked eloquently about the need for an economic constitutional order, about the role of government as umpire, with federal regulation as a last resort. Although the implications of these ideas for a specific program were left vague, the speech was studded with phrases about economic oligarchy, the shaping of an economic bill of rights, the need for more purchasing power, and every man’s right to life, which Roosevelt defined as including the right to make a comfortable living. But these ideas seemed to fade away later in the campaign as the candidate turned to other notions, some of them more orthodox than those of Hoover himself.

  It was all very confusing to the close observer. He was sure that Roosevelt was against prohibition, reporter Elmer Davis wrote, but for the rest—“You could not quarrel with a single one of his generalities; you seldom can. But what they mean (if anything) is known only to Franklin D. Roosevelt and his God.”

  Roosevelt found it easier to assail Hoover’s policies than to spell out clear proposals of his own. The administration, he declared, had encouraged speculation and overproduction through its fake economic policies. It had tried to minimize the gravity of the Depression. It had wrongly blamed other nations for causing the crash. It had “refused to recognize and correct the evils at home which had brought it forth; it delayed relief; it forgot reform.” And Roosevelt and a thousand orators painted President Hoover as sitting in the White House inert, unconcerned, withdrawn.

  Hoover launched a vigorous counteroffensive. He concentrated his fire on what he called the radicalism and collectivism in Roosevelt’s proposals. It was perhaps to meet this attack, perhaps for other reasons unknown, that Roosevelt toned down the sweep of his proposals midway in the campaign. He so modified his tariff-reduction stand that his position differed little from that of his adversary in the White House. He hoped that governmental interference to bring about business stabilization could be “kept at a minimum”—perhaps limited simply to publicity. He took a weak stand on unemployment, pledging that no one would starve under the New Deal, that the federal government would set an example on wages and hours, seeking to persuade industry to do likewise, and would set up employment exchanges, leaving unemployment insurance to the states. He promised co-operation with Congress—and with both parties in Congress. And in one of the most sweeping statements of his campaign he berated Hoover for spending and deficits, and he promised—with only the tiniest of escape clauses—to balance the budget.

  Here was no call to action, no summons to a crusade. Roosevelt had no program to offer, only a collection of proposals, some well thought out, like the railroad plan, others vague to the point of meaninglessness. On the whole he was remarkably temperate; there was little passion or pugnacity. Some of his speeches, indeed, had the flavor of academic lectures, as Roosevelt led his audience through the Hoover policies and then described his own. For a nation caught in economic crisis, it was a curious campaign.

  What was Roosevelt up to? He was trying to win an election, not lay out a coherent philosophy of government. He had no such philosophy; but he knew how to pick up votes, how to capture group support, how to change pace and policy. “Weave the two together,” he said to an astonished Raymond Moley when the academic man presented Roosevelt with two utterly different drafts on tariff policy. “I think that you will agree,” he wrote to Floyd Olson about his Topeka farm speech, “that it is sufficiently far to the left to prevent any further suggestion that I am leaning to the right.”

  “A chameleon on plaid,” Hoover growled. With his orderly engineer’s mind he could not come to grips with this antagonist who fenced all around him, now on the left, now on the right, now in attack, and now in sudden retreat. Nor could Norman Thomas, the Socialist candidate for President, with his elaborate, eloquent, detailed platform. It was not 1896, or 1912, or even 1928. In the gravest economic crisis of their history the American people, still benumbed and bewildered, seemed only to stir lethargically amid the tempests of the politicians.

  On election eve Roosevelt gave a last talk to his neighbors in Poughkeepsie. He spoke of the “vivid flashes” of the campaign—the great crowd under the lights before the capitol in Jefferson City, the Kansans listening patiently under the hot sun in Topeka, the “strong, direct kindness” of the people in Wyoming who had come hundreds of miles to see him, the sunset in McCook, Nebraska, the children in wheel chairs at Warm Springs, the stirring trip north through New England.

  “A man comes to wisdom in many years of public life. He knows well that when the light of favor shines upon him, it comes not, of necessity, that he himself is important. Favor comes because for a brief moment in the great space of human change and progress some general human purpose finds in him a satisfactory embodiment.”

  The light of favor shone brightly. Election night Roosevelt sat happily among his friends at campaign headquarters in New York City as the returns poured in. He won 22,815,539 votes to Hoover’s 15,759,930, carrying 42 states and 472 electoral votes. It was almost a nationwide sweep; only Pennsylvania, Delaware, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine went Republican. It was, in part, a personal victory for the Democratic candidate: outside the South and New England Roosevelt’s percentage topped that of the Democratic candidates for Representative in four-fifths of the states. But it was a party victory too. The new Senate would be Democratic by 59 to 37, the new House Democratic by 312 to 123.

  During the night a telegram of congratulation arrived from Hoover. The next morning, sitting in bed in the 65th Street house, Roosevelt scribbled a reply on the back of Hoover’s wire:

  “I appreciate your generous telegram. I want to assure you that subject to my necessary executive duties as Governor, I hold myself in readiness to cooperate with you in our—”

  Roosevelt stopped and crossed out the last eight words.

  “—ready to further in every way the common purpose to help our country.”

  THE STAGE IS SET

  The place that a great man holds in history, it has been said, is largely determined by the manner in which he makes his exit from the stage. The same could be said for his entrance. �
�No cosmic dramatist,” Robert Sherwood said, “could possibly devise a better entrance for a new President—or a new Dictator, or a new Messiah—than that accorded to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.”

  The President-elect enjoyed all the advantages, Sherwood noted, of having a good act to follow. Hoover was meeting the fate of defeated presidents—his popularity ebbed even more after the election. Roosevelt’s cardinal object was to keep clear of the wrecked Hoover administration. The four months between election and inauguration saw a dogged, undercover duel between the two politicians as Hoover sought to salvage his reputation in the face of mounting economic crisis, while Roosevelt warily shied off from any involvement.

  The issue was precipitated shortly after the election when the foreign debt situation suddenly came to a head. On November 12, 1932, Hoover had notified Roosevelt that Britain had asked for a suspension of payments due the United States and for a review of the whole debt situation. Would the President-elect meet with him on the matter? Roosevelt saw treacherous ground ahead. Hoover viewed the war debt problem in terms of his basic assumption that the Depression was foreign-made and could be met best by international action—an assumption his opponent had assailed during the campaign. Roosevelt, moreover, had no firsthand acquaintance with the problem. During the 1920’s he had asked for a constructive over-all Democratic party position on the matter, and he had scoffed at Coolidge’s remark, “Well, they hired the money, didn’t they?” But he had gone little beyond this.

  Whatever the pitfalls, Roosevelt knew that he had to respond to the popular demand that he co-operate with the outgoing Chief Executive for the sake of national unity. His tactic was to observe all the formalities of co-operation—to meet with Hoover, to exchange letters and telegrams with him—but to refuse to take joint action that would imply joint responsibility. His official position was that President Hoover had the power to act if action was needed, that it was not necessary for the President-elect to appoint interim representatives, that he would make no commitments before March 4. Unofficially, he told reporters that “it was not his baby.” After a month of futile sparring Hoover released the whole correspondence to the press with the cold comment: “Governor Roosevelt considers that it is undesirable for him to assent to my suggestions for cooperative action on the foreign proposals outlined in my recent message to Congress. I will respect his wishes.”

  The state of the nation in January 1933 formed a fitting backdrop to these fruitless negotiations. Farm prices had slid badly since summer; factory production, retail trade, stocks and bonds were all down. Unemployment rose by one or two million to around fifteen million. Farmers were using shotguns to keep homes from being foreclosed. In the cities, unemployed white-collar people were suddenly on every corner, selling apples. Through financial circles trickled underground reports of serious trouble in leading Detroit banks.

  Congress, meanwhile, fribbled and dawdled. Weighted down by 158 members who had been handed their walking papers by the voters in November, divided in party control, surly toward the President, unsure of the President-elect, the legislators could find no basis for action. Roosevelt made his views known on a few matters through Democratic leaders, but he did not emulate Wilson’s example in 1912-13 of mobilizing his leaders and drafting legislation weeks before he took office. Where does the President-elect stand? asked a Republican representative. “He is here today and there tomorrow.” Wearily congressmen squabbled over beer, deadlocked over relief, put off action on banking, farm mortgage relief, bank deposit legislation. Lacking presidential leadership they could not act.

  Across the seas crisis glowed and flickered. On January 30, 1933—Roosevelt’s fifty-first birthday—a befuddled President Hindenburg dismissed the chancellor and put in his place Adolf Hitler, who promptly dissolved the Reichstag, ordered an election, arrested opposition leaders, and terrorized the voters with a manufactured panic. Censured by the League of Nations for its aggression in Manchuria, Japan truculently withdrew its representatives from the Assembly. Mussolini’s Italy, it was disclosed, was shipping arms into Austria to arm the fascists there. Latin-American countries were seething with discontent.

  During these long weeks Roosevelt remained buoyant and imperturbable. He cleaned up his gubernatorial affairs, shuffled and reshuffled appointment lists, conferred on foreign affairs with Secretary of State Stimson and his own advisers, spent several weeks in Warm Springs and on Vincent Astor’s yacht, kept in touch with congressional leaders, and found time to tour the Tennessee River area with Senator George W. Norris. But all his actions were in slow waltz time. Despite the pleadings of reporters, despite the strictures of editorial writers, he refused to issue statements on the sharpening economic crisis or to announce his plans. He merely waited.

  If anything more was needed to heighten the tension of the pre-inauguration weeks, it was supplied in mid-February by a short, dark man who stood in a crowd around Roosevelt’s car in Miami. Shouting that “too many people are starving to death,” Zangara fired shot after shot at the President-elect; knocked upward by a woman’s quick move, his gun missed Roosevelt but hit several bystanders and mortally wounded Mayor Cermak of Chicago. Moley, who was near the scene, was not surprised that Roosevelt’s nerve held in front of the crowd. But he was amazed to see no letdown later on when the President-elect was among his friends. There was nothing, Moley said, “not so much as the twitching of a muscle, the mopping of a brow, or even the hint of a false gaiety” to indicate that anything unusual had happened.

  By mid-February the banking situation was approaching crisis. On February 17, the day Roosevelt returned from his yacht trip, Hoover wrote him an anxious letter in longhand. Confidence was steadily degenerating, the President said. He urged Roosevelt to assure the country that there would be no “tampering or inflation of the currency,” that the budget would be balanced even if it meant more taxes, that government credit would be maintained. The President-elect answered that mere statements would not avail. Doubtless Roosevelt suspected—as Hoover privately admitted—that by making such statements he would be approving the Hoover policies that he had attacked during the campaign. The President-elect kept silent; he had two weeks to wait.

  At the end of February Hoover launched a last despairing effort. He wanted to issue an executive order controlling bank withdrawals, but he was not sure of his power to do so, and he feared that a Democratic Congress might repudiate such action. Would the President-elect approve such action? Roosevelt would not. The President, he said, had the authority to act on his own. Matters were now coming to a head. Frantic bankers, sitting late in their offices totaling withdrawals, wondered whether their banks would pull through. In the Treasury Department the night before the inaugural, officials were pleading with the governors of New York and Illinois to close the banks to prevent fatal runs on the banks the next morning.

  Roosevelt did not foresee that the banking situation would reach a dramatic climax on Inauguration Day. No man could have. But he played his cards perfectly. Despite the pleadings of the administration and the fervent advice of his friends, he refused to tip his hand. No untimely action marred his entrance on the great stage.

  Cabinet appointments, too, Roosevelt held off announcing until near the end of the interregnum. Their revelation only served to throw the figure of the new chief executive into sharper relief.

  His selections comprised a mixed collection that gave little hint of Roosevelt’s program. Cordell Hull, a spare, graying man of sixty-one, was an obvious choice for Secretary of State. Hull’s downcast eyes, stooped shoulders, and soft voice masked a strength and tenacity that had marked his long career as a representative and later senator from Tennessee, and as chairman of the Democratic National Committee. A Cleveland Democrat and conservative in his economic viewpoints, Hull for years had led the fight for lower tariffs, clearing the legislative halls with his statistic-studded speeches on foreign trade. He would serve as a useful liaison between the President and conservative members of Congre
ss.

  Roosevelt’s first choice for Secretary of the Treasury was Carter Glass, who had served in this post under Wilson. The peppery Virginian shied away, partly because of an ailing wife, partly because he feared that Roosevelt might try out unorthodox fiscal policies. Instead the President-elect picked William Woodin, an industrialist who had provided an invaluable combination of ideas and money in the presidential campaign. A little man with a heart-shaped face and an artless, almost elfin manner, Woodin was head of the American Car and Foundry Company. His economic views, while not hidebound, were as orthodox as those of Glass; clearly Roosevelt was not looking for radicals for the Treasury Department.

  Roosevelt’s candidate for Attorney General from the beginning had been Senator Thomas J. Walsh of Montana. The skillful and relentless exposer of the Teapot Dome scandals, Walsh had ably served the Roosevelt campaign as a prominent Rocky Mountain politician and as chairman of the 1932 Democratic convention. But shortly before the inauguration Walsh married a widow from Cuba, and he died suddenly en route to Washington from his honeymoon. In his place Roosevelt hurriedly chose Homer S. Cummings of Connecticut, who had been slated for Governor General of the Philippines. The replacement of Walsh by Cummings, a seasoned, middle-of-the-road Democratic politico, gave a more easterly cast to his cabinet than Roosevelt had originally planned.

  The President-elect filled his two military posts in an almost cavalier fashion. He had come to like personally Governor George H. Dern of Utah, who had been a pillar of strength in the West, and he simply wanted Dern somewhere in his cabinet. Roosevelt’s first place for Dern was Secretary of the Interior, but Dern had local antagonisms in Utah, and Secretary of War seemed to be a convenient slot. In the navy post Roosevelt installed Senator Claude Swanson, a benign old Virginian who wore high, wing collars and a frock coat. Swanson’s appointment indicated that Roosevelt would be his own Secretary of the Navy; it had the advantage, too, of enabling Roosevelt’s old friend, Harry F. Byrd, to be appointed Swanson’s successor in the Senate.