An anecdote brings out both his broad, inventive intellect and his insatiable curiosity. After Yalta, FDR was headed to Saudi Arabia. Flying low over the sandy desert, he asked an aide why no one had ever irrigated that land to create farms. There is no water, the aide replied. None at all, Roosevelt asked? Just in oases and some wells. Wells mean there is a water table, the president surmised; how far down is it? About fifty feet, replied his aide. The president wondered: We can give them good pumps to bring it out, can’t we? Yes, but the water would evaporate in the desert heat, said the aide. Why not irrigate at night, then, asked FDR? The questions never ended. A few days later, Roosevelt made the same inquiry with King Ibn Saud. “I am an old man,” the king protested. “Agriculture is not for me.” FDR was not satisfied; he later said privately that after his retirement he wanted to go to the Middle East and teach them to grow their own food (“an operation like the Tennessee Valley system”), the lack of which he saw as the main cause for the “explosiveness” of that region.
Roosevelt’s intellectual openness was evident in his invention of the concept of a “brain trust” during the 1932 campaign, a reliance on academic expertise that has since become commonplace but at the time was quite unusual. Though he might or might not eventually agree with them, Roosevelt always sought out a wide range of ideas. He once said, “You sometimes find something pretty good in the lunatic fringe. In fact, we have got as part of our social and economic government today a whole lot of things which in my boyhood were considered lunatic fringe, and yet they are now part of everyday life.” Roosevelt thought ahead, once writing a memorandum addressed to whoever would be president in 1956. “That fellow in the White House,” his 1944 presidential opponent, Wendell Willkie, once remarked, “is just too smart to live.”
FDR’s intellect was not of the academic variety, as Justice Holmes perhaps realized. Roosevelt read hardly any philosophy or poetry, preferring history. When pressed to engage in intellectual discussion, he demurred. Once, a young reporter asked somewhat peremptorily, “Mr. President, are you a Communist?” “No.” “Are you a capitalist?” “No.” “Are you a Socialist?” “No,” [FDR] said with a look of surprise. “Well, what is your philosophy then?” “Philosophy?” asked the president, puzzled. “Philosophy? I am a Christian and a Democrat—that’s all.”
Though not well versed in philosophy per se, Roosevelt was curious about human nature. In 1944, he invited a young Washington theologian to a private White House dinner. The conversation veered toward theology, and the visitor mentioned the nineteenth-century existentialist philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. Roosevelt admitted that he’d never heard of that name. The theologian explained that Kierkegaard was becoming popular, especially for his insights about the inherent sinfulness of humanity. Faced with Nazism, Roosevelt was intrigued, read some of Kierkegaard’s works, and thereafter recommended reading the philosopher as a way to understand the Nazi evil.
Roosevelt’s special expertise was geography, a skill developed when, confined to bed by polio and no longer able to play his beloved golf, he became a philatelic fanatic. With each new country’s stamp, FDR read books and articles about its geography, eventually acquiring expertise on even the remotest lands. Once, in a meeting about Japan’s attacking China’s coast, while advisers searched for a map, FDR scribbled on a piece of paper China’s coastal contours, cities, and ports. When the advisers produced a map, it matched his depiction.
FAMILY HISTORY PROVIDES some evidence, though not definitive, for FDR’s hyperthymic personality. Theodore, probably manic-depressive and famously superenergetic, was a fifth cousin. Closer relations also displayed unusual temperaments. One neighbor called FDR’s grandfather, Isaac Roosevelt, who trained as a physician but never practiced, “a queer duck.” His father, James Roosevelt, was something of an adventurer: he left New York to fight alongside Giuseppe Garibaldi in the unification of nineteenth-century Italy. This brief family history obviously does not demonstrate frank insanity, such as psychosis, mania, or severe depression. But it does suggest that FDR’s relatives had personalities abnormal enough to arouse the attention of average people. Hyperthymic personality is inherited not just in families where full-blown mania or depression occurs but also in those where there is a lot of hyperthymic personality. In fact, in some genetic studies of bipolar disorder, the most common condition seen in relatives is hyperthymic personality or low-level manic symptoms (hypomania). Full mania and severe depression, though present more than in the general population, are less common than hyperthymic personality.
We don’t have much documentary evidence of others in Roosevelt’s family who may have had full-blown severe mania or depression, but what limited evidence we have is consistent with hyperthymic personality. Even if this is not the case, the other sources of evidence (symptoms and course in particular) are consistent with hyperthymic personality. (In diagnosing mental illness, all four diagnostic validators don’t have to be present; it is the preponderance of the evidence that counts. The more positive evidence there is, the more confident one can be in the diagnosis.)
Married at age fifty-two, James died in 1900 when FDR was eighteen, leaving Franklin alone with his famously imperious mother, Sara Delano. Sara, the strongest presence in FDR’s life, later engaged in a long twilight struggle with his wife, Eleanor; as with most of his relationships, FDR refused to choose sides or let either one go.
Coming from such a prominent family, FDR grew up close to power. When he was four or five, his father took him to the White House, where President Grover Cleveland, beset by troubles, offered this advice: “I have one wish for you, little man, that you will never be President of the United States.” When he married Eleanor, Theodore’s niece, in 1905, President Teddy gave the bride away amid much Manhattan society. Great things were expected of him.
UNTIL 1921, Franklin Roosevelt had led a charmed life. Thirty-nine years old, with five children, a recent vice presidential nominee, a member of the presidential cabinet only three years earlier, he seemed ready to follow his cousin Teddy to the White House. Then fate intervened. After a summer swim in a pond, he got a chill, then a high fever. His legs felt numb and tingly; then they stopped moving. His frantic family called the best doctors, who quickly recognized the terrible reality: he had contracted “infantile paralysis,” or polio.
Roosevelt and his family were devastated. All his political plans were put on hold. He just wanted to walk again, to play and run and swim with his children, to resume golfing with his college chums. For three years, he focused only on halting the advance of his disease and rehabilitating his legs. He spent many months at various mineral spas—his favorite being Hot Springs, Georgia—where he exercised his legs. Though he ultimately recovered some strength, he remained highly disabled, and struggled emotionally. “It’s ridiculous to tell me that a grown man cannot conquer a child’s disease,” he complained.
If his progress was to continue, he still needed to focus on physical rehabilitation, so he refused calls from old New York friends in 1924 to return to the political arena. But New York governor Al Smith, who was then running for president, could wait no longer; he intensified efforts to draft FDR for governor. Smith phoned Hot Springs over and over again; FDR kept avoiding the calls. The governor then lobbied Eleanor, the children, and Roosevelt’s friends. Eleanor came around; so did FDR’s daughter. Despite knowing that his physical recovery would stall, Roosevelt reluctantly agreed to run for the office Smith now held.
He returned to public life. But the man who came back was not the same one who swam in that pond in 1921.
ONE MAJOR CHANGE in FDR’s life was that now almost all physical activity involved great effort. When he gave a speech, he was wheeled to the platform, then lifted on braces to the podium, on which he leaned his whole weight to avoid falling. His aides made certain that each podium was anchored securely to withstand his weight. Even so, he fell, or almost fell, about five times over twenty years of political speechmaking. Roosevelt was c
hallenged and humbled by his paralysis. At one campaign event in New York in 1928, when no one had noticed that Roosevelt could only enter the crowded auditorium by way of a high fire escape, he had no choice but to accept, in Frances Perkins’s words, the “ultimate humility which comes from being helped physically.” He had to allow himself to be carried in front of the crowd in the arms of other men. Then “he got up on his braces, adjusted them, straightened himself, smoothed his hair, linked his arm to his son Jim’s, and walked out on the platform as if this were nothing unusual.”
The sheer physical effort of trying to live an active life despite his paralysis was immense. His daughter told a similar story that illustrates the courage and resilience that so endeared him to his supporters. Roosevelt was going to speak in a huge hall in Brooklyn, but the only way inside was through the main entrance, with many broad steps and no railing. Not wanting to make a labored entrance in front of the audience, FDR chose to go up a steep iron fire escape to the stage. He climbed slowly, using his arms and shoulders to swing each leg up. Recalled his daughter, “When he reached the top, his face was streaming with perspiration, and his white shirt was soaked. He paused just long enough to mop his face and catch his breath. Then he walked out on to the stage and faced the audience with a humorous remark about the fact that it was quite warm in the hall.”
He could never be left alone, except when he slept. This complete absence of privacy, he once said, was the worst aspect of his disability.
POLIO CHANGED FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT in ways that went well beyond the physical. He remained energetic and motivated, but he carried a different attitude. Pre-polio FDR was “an untried rather flippant young man,” according to one political friend. Roosevelt was disciplined by his illness, future Supreme Court justice Robert Jackson remarked. Frances Perkins had known Roosevelt since 1910, and was close to him throughout his presidency until his last days. She was well positioned to know him before and after polio, and she was convinced there was a huge change: “Roosevelt underwent a spiritual transformation during the years of his illness. I noticed when he came back that the years of pain and suffering had purged the slightly arrogant attitude he had displayed on occasion before he was stricken. The man emerged completely warmhearted, with humility of spirit and with a deeper philosophy. . . . I saw Roosevelt only once between 1921 and 1924, and I was instantly struck by his growth. He was young, he was crippled, he was physically weak, but he had a firmer grip on life and on himself than ever before.”
Before polio, he was a successful patrician: secretary of the navy in Wilson’s administration, vice presidential candidate in 1920, poised to run for senator or governor. After three years of seclusion, he returned to the national limelight at the 1924 Democratic convention, leaner, older, wheelchair-bound, speaking not as a candidate, as many had expected pre-polio, but as Smith’s campaign manager. After hours of mediocre, self-serving speechifying, interspersed with tepid applause, Roosevelt held the delegates spellbound for seventeen minutes with an address that would become famous as the “Happy Warrior” speech. Describing Smith, Roosevelt cited lines from Wordsworth: “This is the Happy Warrior; this is he that every man in arms should wish to be.” The delegates gave him a twelve-minute standing ovation, followed by an hour of singing, cheering, and clapping.
Four years later, running against the New York City Democratic machine of Tammany Hall, Roosevelt won the New York governorship, and four years after that, the presidency. FDR’s hyperthymic personality steeled him for the challenges that his polio and later his presidency would make him face. And his polio seems to have given him a degree of empathy that we’ve seen in other leaders who endured depression. This combination of nature and circumstance made him unusually fit for the unprecedented series of crises that would mark his years in the White House.
Without hiding his disability, Roosevelt never used it to garner sympathy. It was, if anything, a political handicap. Some wondered, when he first ran for governor, whether a paralyzed man was fit to govern. (Al Smith responded, “A governor does not have to be an acrobat. We do not elect him for his ability to do a double back flip or a handspring.”) In 1932, a rumor spread that polio eventually would affect the brain, making Roosevelt insane. FDR responded by authorizing three physicians to fully examine him and his medical records. Their report was frank in describing his physical disability, and his psychological strength: “Ten years ago, Governor Roosevelt suffered an attack of acute infantile paralysis, the entire effect of which was expended on the muscles of his lower extremities. There has been progressive recovery of power in the legs since that date; this restoration continues and will continue.”
IN SUM, hyperthymic personality is key to Roosevelt’s psychology. It made him open to new ideas, and charismatic, but also, in the face of polio, hyperthymia helped him to be resilient, to rise above and better understand human suffering. This psychological evolution may have helped him handle the huge crises of economic depression and world war. His mind was agile and he did not recoil from the most terrible of decisions. He had imbibed the pragmatic philosophy that Justice Holmes had helped invent—the view, as Perkins put it, that “nothing in human judgment is final. One may courageously take the step that seems right today because it can be modified tomorrow if it does not work well.” She thought this attitude freed Roosevelt to act. Indeed it did. But it was not just a philosophical judgment that FDR made; rather, this approach was part of his hyperthymic temperament, the always active mind that would never have given him the option of standing still. (In contrast, normal, mentally healthy leaders like George W. Bush make decisions, but refuse to modify them when they do not work well. This inflexibility, I hold, is a feature of not being hyperthymic, that is, of not being mentally abnormal, as we’ll see.)
Roosevelt never sought an overarching ideology to guide his decisions. He made each decision step by step, backing off where things did not work, forging ahead when they did. After a while, he was building a new approach to government, though he probably had not foreseen it clearly. In 1929, he saw that the Great Depression was “the end of an era” and that “recovery was not enough.” He had declared something entirely new, a philosophy that remains controversial in American politics—the notion that government had a duty to create jobs and take care of its citizens, for a government “that cannot take care of its old, that cannot provide work for the strong and willing, that lets the black shadow of insecurity rest on every home is not a government that can or should endure.”
Of all his programs, Roosevelt took the most pride in Social Security, though even there he refused to take an ideological approach. When the program was being prepared, one proposal would have covered everyone at the time, but it would have left a deficit to be handled by the U.S. government in 1980. “We can’t sell the United States short in 1980 any more than in 1935,” Roosevelt objected. Still, he faced critics who assumed there must be an ulterior motive. Frances Perkins, then secretary of labor, recalled appearing before a Senate committee, where Senator Thomas Gore from Oklahoma, blind and elderly, a former progressive Democrat, asked sarcastically, “Isn’t this Socialism?” “Oh, no,” Perkins replied. “Then, smiling, leaning forward and talking to me as though I were a child, he said, ‘Isn’t this a teeny-weeny bit of Socialism?’ ”
Franklin Roosevelt wasn’t worried about any accusation, nor even of bringing about piecemeal socialism in the United States. He knew only that people were hurting; he knew what it was like to hurt; and his personality would not allow him to sit still. He tried whatever worked, and with that method he achieved astounding success. This wasn’t just because of an intellectual pragmatism, as many presume. Though he studied at Harvard from 1900 to 1904 when the influential founder of philosophical pragmatism, William James, taught there, FDR did not take a class with James, and, as previously noted, he hardly read philosophy. His pragmatism was not intellectual; it was temperamental. (James had the view anyway that one’s philosophy is determined by one’s person
ality.) It was not an overstatement when, long after Justice Holmes, another elderly American statesman, John Kenneth Galbraith—a member of FDR’s administration, and a later confidant of Kennedy and Johnson—could conclude that FDR was “the greatest political personality of the century.”
All this would not have happened had his hyperthymic temperament been different, as Holmes rightly saw. Nor would it have happened had he not been tried by the adversity of illness and, with his hyperthymic energy and spirit, grown from the experience. Frances Perkins saw this ability to grow, this “viability,” as the hallmark of Roosevelt’s personality. So too did the president’s wife. Asked years later whether FDR’s polio affected his politics, Eleanor summed it up well: “He would certainly have been President,” she remarked, “but a president of a different kind.”
CHAPTER 11
SICKNESS IN CAMELOT
KENNEDY
John F. Kennedy should never have survived into his thirties, much less become a great president. His success in becoming America’s youngest president is in itself more remarkable than many realize. He overcame great adversity, like FDR, because of his hyperthymic personality.
Psychologically, young John Kennedy was a highly energetic, charming, hypersexual rebel—marked all over by traits of hyperthymic personality. At prestigious Choate Academy, where his brother Joe had been a star student-athlete, John posted middling grades and belonged to a misfit gang called the “Muckers,” whose rebellious antics led to his temporary expulsion, reversed after a conference between the headmaster, George St. John, and Joseph Kennedy Sr. (After getting young John to promise Mr. St. John that he would behave, Joe Sr., himself a rebel, admonished the boy privately, “If that crazy Muckers club had been mine, you can be sure it wouldn’t have started with an M!”) Years later, when Choate planned a book about his school years, President Kennedy responded laconically, “I do not think it particularly helpful to go through the monthly reports, etc. It might have an adverse effect on the work of students who might think it necessary to work hard and do well at school in order to become President.” The book did not advertise that headmaster St. John had been concerned enough about the mental state of the future president that he had arranged for a psychological evaluation of the seventeen-year-old, which, besides documenting an IQ of 119, concluded that Kennedy was “a very able boy, but definitely in a trap, psychologically speaking. He has established a reputation in the family for thoughtlessness, sloppiness, and inefficiency, and he feels entirely at home in the role.”
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