The Golden Age

by Gore Vidal

  Hopkins shrugged. “But they will go, once the war is over. You can’t afford them. We can. There are not enough of you. There are one hundred thirty million of us. Two hundred million, they say, by the end of the century.”

  “So, Harry, power is all, isn’t it?” Foster’s face was blank.

  “Was it ever otherwise?”

  Caroline marveled at how well two rival—even enemy—nations could collaborate so easily until … she could not imagine any ending other than Roosevelt alone astride all the world, seated in a kitchen chair on rollers.

  2

  Peter was taking his second political convention in stride. Blaise had been pleased with the stories that he had filed from Philadelphia. He had been even more pleased when Caroline arranged for Peter to work with Harry Hopkins at the Roosevelt headquarters in Chicago. Peter was kept busy writing press releases and, at Caroline’s insistence, “looking after Harry,” which mainly consisted of reminding him to take his medicine while seeing to it that unwanted visitors did not overstay their nonwelcome in the Blackstone Hotel’s Suite 308–309, which had, twenty years earlier, been the infamous “smoke-filled room” where the Republican bosses had selected Warren G. Harding for president.

  The actual Democratic National Headquarters were across the street in the Stevens Hotel. Here Postmaster General Jim Farley reigned and, it was rumored, fumed because Hopkins, as the President’s man on the spot, appeared to be directing the convention. There was even, in the bathroom off Hopkins’ bedroom, a special line to the White House. Yet there was something distinctly odd about Hopkins’ presence. The President had already said that he himself would not make an appearance at the convention; he also denied that there was a Hopkins-led Roosevelt headquarters. Finally, Hopkins maintained a second suite at the Ambassador East Hotel. Peter wondered why.

  Since Peter was allowed to listen in on all but the most secret meetings, he had been obliged to hear the various evasions that Hopkins used whenever a politician would question his status.

  As he lay on his bed, wearing crumpled shirt and suspenders, he’d point to a badge pinned to a suspender: “Deputy Sergeant at Arms.” He was, he said, just a guest of Mayor Kelly of Chicago.

  Needless to say, everyone knew that in the bathroom there was a special telephone connected directly to the White House; needless to say, no one except Peter knew that it never rang. Nevertheless, Hopkins often visited the bathroom, giving the impression that he was reporting regularly to the President, while Peter answered the telephone that important party leaders used, carefully making notes of what they said they wanted to talk about and when they might come by. Hopkins’ Washington secretaries kept an appointment book in which all was confusion. Peter feared that his father’s endless complaints about the inefficiencies of the New Deal were true if Hopkins, the heart and the soul of the brave new world aborning, was the prototype. But alongside the social workers and those who worked to ameliorate society, there was the true Democratic Party of big-city machines and Southern courthouses each, in its fashion, nostalgic for the happy days of slavery. This was the party’s true majority, and Jim Farley rode herd on it across the street, smoothly preparing the nomination of the President for an unheard-of third term, as he, unsmoothly, tried to keep Henry Wallace from being nominated for vice president despite the President’s wishes, somewhat Delphically expressed.

  Although Lorena Hickok, journalist friend and intimate of Mrs. Roosevelt’s, was working across the street at Democratic headquarters, she visited Hopkins several times a day, usually to confer with him in the bathroom. On Tuesday evening, Lorena joined Hopkins, the president’s sons Frank and Elliott, and a half-dozen of Hopkins’ assistants from the Department of Commerce. They all sat on the dusty floor of the bedroom to listen to the keynote address of Kentucky’s Senator Alben W. Barkley.

  “This will be the only statement the President intends to make to the convention.” Hopkins held up a yellow sheet of paper with three paragraphs written in pencil. “Here it is! In his own handwriting.”

  Peter noticed quite a few erasures and crossings-out. Barkley read the statement to less than rapturous applause. The President declared that as he had no wish to be a candidate for an unprecedented third term, he was releasing any votes pledged to him so that each delegate could vote his own conscience. If it should then prove to be the united will of the party … sacrifice … duty …

  “Pa’s got them over a barrel,” said Frank Roosevelt. Of the sons he most resembled his father. He also, in Peter’s brief glimpses of him, had much of his father’s political cunning: that is, one never really knew what he meant.

  As the speech ended, Hopkins said to Peter, “Tell the staff to get ready with the vice presidential stuff.”

  This startled even the President’s sons. “Pa’s made his mind up already?” Elliott frowned. “I thought he was still open to having Vice President Garner again.”

  “He’s completely shut to that.” Hopkins was coldly dismissive. “But he does want a lot of candidates out there.” Hopkins bared false teeth in a smile. “The Boss wants a real horse race, he says. A Democratic horse race.”

  “Didn’t I tell you?” Frank was always pleased to be one step ahead of his somewhat slow-witted brother.

  But there was nothing for Hopkins to smile about the next day. Word was spreading throughout the convention that if Roosevelt did not get Wallace as a running mate, he himself would not be a candidate. Since a majority of the convention disliked the allegedly mystical Wallace, who was, worse for the South, a true-blue New Dealer, there was a growing rebellion in the big-city machines which Hopkins affected to disregard. “After all, a machine’s a machine. It’s there to drive when you’re ready.”

  A parade of Democratic powers filed through the Blackstone suite. The secretary of labor, Miss Frances Perkins, said, “I’ve never experienced so poisonous an atmosphere.” Then the bedroom door was closed after her, to Peter’s regret because the crisis was upon them and Hopkins was now obliged to meet each of the magnates alone. There could be no witnesses to the deals that he was making as he lay back, in his suspenders, listening carefully and talking very little until he gave the signal that a deal was done.

  Later, as Hopkins escorted Miss Perkins to the door to the suite, she suddenly turned on him and said, “Eleanor must come to Chicago before the vote.”

  “She says she won’t.”

  “If Farley and Garner succeed in blocking Henry Wallace, the President is really going to go home to Hyde Park.”

  Hopkins, known as the President’s other self, stared hard at Perkins. “You believe that?”

  “Yes, Harry, I do. He’s afraid he won’t live out a third term and he knows perfectly well that neither of those two idiots could get us through a war, much less maintain his policies—our policies—which they’ve always been against. Anyway, send for Eleanor. Now!”

  Miss Perkins left as a harassed-looking Joe Alsop arrived. “Harry, you’ve got to call the President. They’ve come up with a foreign policy plank that’s isolationist …”

  “Don’t worry, Joe. It’s also interventionist. I’ve seen to that. Anyway, who ever stands on the platform?”

  “Harry, it says …” Joe looked at a sheet of paper: “ ‘We will not participate in foreign wars and we will not send our army.’ ”

  “Well, print it in very small type except for the part about ‘except in case of attack.’ Hopkins always treated Joe as if he were an uncommonly neurasthenic dowager. “At the moment, we’ve got to cut the length of the convention by at least one day. The longer it goes on, the more trouble for everybody …”

  “I think …” Joe began; but Hopkins was now in his bedroom, getting dressed. Peter was so used to him in disarray that he had failed to notice that he had, all morning, been wearing pajamas, with a raincoat for dressing gown.

  “He’s eager for advice.” Joe was sour. “Oh, it’s you,” he said, now aware of Peter’s presence. “Where did you come from?”r />
  “Only from Washington.”

  “Is Cousin Eleanor coming?” News was traveling very fast now.

  “No one knows.”

  “If he really wants Wallace, she’s the only one who can keep these worms in their can.”

  That evening Peter, wearing his press credentials, sat at the back of the platform, staring into the white smoky lights trained upon the stage. So far, he had not seen Tim Farrell, who was, Aunt Caroline had told him, now cutting his film—but without Roosevelt? “United We Stand” was MGM’s latest title, shrewdly calculated, in Peter’s view, to put off everyone. But Tim had been excited by the title, as well as by his film. Was there a surprise of any kind left in the land? And if so, had he filmed it?

  Peter stared at what was said to be fifty thousand people. How could anyone ever have sufficient nerve to get up in front of so many people and speak through microphones to those in the hall, not to mention the millions listening to the radio? At the thought, Peter suffered from acute stage fright. Yet these freakish-looking political types floated like tropical fish through the warm white-lit sea all about them, expanding contentedly whenever microphones picked up their words and cameras recorded their movements. Over the stage, a huge gray photograph of Roosevelt looked down upon them.

  “These things are addictive, aren’t they?” Joe Alsop was in better mood; had Hopkins said something to make him happy?

  “Well, you’re part Roosevelt. I’m not. I’m suffering now. From stage fright. How can anybody stand up there and have all those people watch you?”

  “How can anybody, given the chance, not want to be up there? Anyway, I’m not that much of a Roosevelt, unlike Uncle T, who would start wasting away if there was no crowd to cheer him. The T should have been not for Theodore but for Barrie’s Tinkerbell. Look!” Joe pointed to a strange-looking camera at the edge of the stage. “Television.”

  “Does it actually work?”

  “So they tell me, but there aren’t enough cables yet.” Joe gave his nasal chuckle. “Someone at the Trib watched the Willkie convention on a television set and came to the conclusion that we’ll need a whole new set of politicians, just the way we did when radio came in.”

  “New in what way?”

  “Well, radio meant you didn’t have to shout to be heard, and that was the making of Cousin Franklin, whose croon is like that of a mongoose hypnotizing a cobra …”

  “I don’t think the mongoose croons …”

  “Whatever it does, Cousin Franklin does, too. Great voices, or interesting voices like Willkie’s, are now the thing. But television will mean faces and God help the ugly.”

  “Depends on how ugly …”

  “I’m not speaking of my sainted Cousin Eleanor, whose chinless toothy face is that of everyone’s favorite aunt or every child’s gym teacher. You can be plain as can be and get by with charm, but it’s the tics my friend noted on his television set. The speakers are used to being miles away from the audience so they indulge in donkey grins, sinister winks of the eyes, mad furrowed brows. He said that that convention looked like a Mack Sennett silent comedy.”

  With unusual speed, the party’s platform was adopted by the convention. Then Hopkins’ hand was revealed: the chairman announced that instead of adjourning, they would proceed to the nominations for president. This energized the convention.

  “Splendid move.” Joe was approving. “The sooner we wrap this up the better.”

  “There’s still tomorrow and the vice presidency.”

  “I’m sure Harry’s got something up his sleeve.”

  The roll call of the states began alphabetically. From the hall came the voice of Senator Lester Hill, chairman of the Alabama delegation. He cast the state’s votes for Franklin Delano Roosevelt. A band played “Happy Days Are Here Again” and a demonstration on the floor began; it lasted—Peter timed it—half an hour. On the stage the political magnates were conferring while their supporters engaged in ecstatic rites beneath them in the hall. The pale gnomelike Carter Glass, a senator from Virginia, would, presently, put in nomination James Farley, who modestly stayed out of view at the back of the stage, where the two conferred as the various states gave or withheld their votes for Roosevelt.

  Peter was particularly amused by the young pockmarked senator from Florida, Claude Pepper, who gave an emotional speech not unlike the howling of some mating cat by moonlight. He also tore at the audience’s heartstrings. Apparently, at the battle of Antietam, Robert E. Lee, seeing his son covered with blood on the ground, sternly ordered the lad back into battle, just as the United States would now order their weary president back into the fray.

  “Gorgeous,” said Joe Alsop.

  “It would be better on television,” Peter observed. “Pepper’s scarlet face, shark’s mouth …”

  “Of course Robert E. Lee had no son. But one cannot rule out a bastard son, perhaps from the slave cabins.”

  At one o’clock in the morning of Thursday, July 18, 1940, Roosevelt had 950 votes; and was declared the third-term nominee of the Democratic Party.

  3

  The next day the convention was in a foul mood. From the stage, the fifty thousand people had begun to anthropomorphize for Peter, into a deranged giant apt to run amok.

  Advised by Hopkins, Peter had stationed himself at the back of the crowded stage, shortly before the balloting for vice president was to begin. The conservative majority favored the Southern Speaker of the House; only labor truly wanted Wallace. But on orders from Roosevelt, Southern operatives were now on the floor, going from delegation to delegation, threatening and soothing their fellow Southerners.

  For so tall a woman, Eleanor Roosevelt looked unobtrusive as, head down, she slipped from the back of the stage onto the stage itself, the stout sweating Lorena Hickok at her side. They quickly found seats in a corner, out of view of the delegates or, indeed, anyone else except those in their immediate vicinity, who were now entirely distracted by the boos, the jeers, the rebel yells that had begun at the mention of the hated name of Henry A. Wallace.

  Peter had never properly met Mrs. Roosevelt, but as she had been in the White House most of his life, he felt, as did the rest of the population, that he knew her. Unlike at least half the population, he quite liked her. Endlessly polite, apparently shy, she had come to Chicago to master the giant in the hall. She looked uncommonly elegant, all in blue with a blue straw hat, as she sat, head cocked to one side, listening to the excited Lorena until the arrival of Ed Flynn, the boss of the Bronx, a machine politician that the Roosevelts, despite their declared passion for free and absolutely open democratic elections, relied upon to turn out large manufactured majorities for them in New York City. Mrs. Roosevelt rose to greet Flynn. Then, as if by magic, the beefy red-haired Mayor Kelly of Chicago and lugubrious Mayor Hague of Jersey City, two of the most lawless machine politicians in the land, had placed themselves protectively on either side of her. Peter was awed by the millions of votes that these three men represented; and he watched, again with awe, as Mrs. Roosevelt put her lions through their paces. She spoke to them in a low voice; they listened closely. This was brute power and she was now exerting it in order to bring the giant back of the white glare to its knees; her sons, Frank and Elliott, stood at the periphery of the power center. Peter strained but failed to hear what Mrs. Roosevelt was saying but the three bosses heard every word and were nodding, something no boss ever bestowed upon a mere mortal, since a nod was often a concession and always a commitment; yet, in the presence of absolute power, with the empress herself, they were obedient.

  Finally Senator Barkley shouted at the roaring giant: “I shall now begin the roll call for the nomination for vice president.” Shouts and boos while anti-Wallace slogans on sticks were held high down front.

  Eleanor nodded to her liege men. An understanding had been arrived at.

  Peter heard Lorena, voice cracking: “Don’t you dare go up there! For God’s sake! All hell’s breaking loose.”

  “
Don’t worry about me, dear.” Eleanor was calm. Someone had alerted Senator Barkley, who now left the podium and hurried to greet Mrs. Roosevelt; he too whispered in her ear, no doubt telling her not to speak. But she simply kept smiling as she moved onto the podium. As the tall blue figure came into view, towering above the lectern and dominating the hall, there was an absolute silence, far more unnerving in its way than the animal noises that had so abruptly stopped.

  Peter again experienced stage fright as if he were the one facing the mad giant in the dark. But Eleanor Roosevelt merely smiled as she looked out across the sea of faces and waited until her presence had been fully noted. Then, by a slow count to three, there began what sounded like thunder rolling toward the stage from the balconies. The cheering had begun. She remained motionless during the ovation. Peter noticed that she had no written speech or even notes.

  Finally, total authority established, there was silence and she began to speak, her high fluting voice kept very much under control. She spoke of the President and of the presidency; of how little her husband had wanted a third term but how he felt that now that men were being drafted into the Army he had a duty to go on as long as possible, even though “the strain of a third term might be too much for any man.” There was an odd sound of exhalation from the audience as if, to a man, all fifty thousand had been holding their collective breath, each quite aware that the invalid in the White House was a fragile aging man.

  “You must realize that whoever is our next president, he will bear a heavier responsibility, perhaps, than any man has ever faced before. So you cannot treat it as you would an ordinary nomination in an ordinary time. So each and every one of you who give him this responsibility, in giving it to him, assume for yourselves a very grave responsibility because you will have to rise above considerations which are narrow and partisan. This is a time when it is the United States we fight for.

  “Whoever you now nominate for vice president is … very apt …” She paused; took a deep breath. “… to become himself the president and I am sure you will want that president to be the man my husband has chosen to get us through a perilous time and to a safe shore. No man who is a candidate or who is president can carry this situation alone. This is only carried by a united people who love their country.”