As conservatives saw it, the CIO-PAC seemed closer to the president than the machine bosses and raised the specter of labor dominance within the party. Moreover, Hillman espoused a Popular Front liberalism that accepted Communists as coworkers in a common cause, leaving the administration open to charges of Red influence. The Communist Political Association (formerly the Communist Party of the USA) also endorsed Roosevelt. The Republicans, Dewey included, pounded the Communist issue, but it was a simple matter for Roosevelt to disavow Communist backing, which he did in a radio address on October 4. The CIO-PAC nonetheless was an organizational juggernaut that delivered a big vote for the president and the Democratic ticket. The possibility that the Democratic Party might become a labor party seemed real.28
In the end the election was all about Franklin D. Roosevelt. The president had just underscored his credentials as a war leader with his travels to Hawaii and the Aleutians, followed by his meeting with Churchill in Quebec. He still had to deal with Republican charges that he was tired, in dire health, and incapable of governing for another four years. However great the degree of personal denial, he knew all too well that the assertions carried a substantial degree of truth and that his efforts needed to be both limited and effective.
He formally opened his campaign on the evening of September 23, as he had four years earlier, with a nationally broadcast speech delivered at Washington’s Statler Hotel to delegates at the annual convention of the Teamsters union. For Roosevelt, it mattered a great deal that the Statler was a convenient local venue with a parking garage elevator that greatly simplified the problems of entry and departure. His choice of audience also revealed much about the polarized politics of 1944. The decision to speak to a union gathering reinforced the class appeal symbolized by the CIO-PAC. It also meant lending presidential imprimatur to a labor organization that in many localities had semiopen ties to gangsters, a situation that outraged Republicans but that most Democrats accepted as a fact of life or simply ignored.
However he felt about the Teamsters, the president expressed his delight at being in their presence once again. He started his speech by recognizing their president, Dan Tobin: “Mr. Tobin . . . I should say ‘Dan.’ I always have.” The talk, studded with sarcastic jabs, was tough and masterful. “WELL, here we are together again—after four years. . . . You know I am actually four years older, which is a fact that seems to annoy some people. . . . [T]here are millions of Americans who are more than eleven years older than when we started in to clear up the mess that was dumped in our laps in 1933.”29
Roosevelt smacked down Republican claims to solicitude for labor and support for social progress. “We have all seen many marvelous stunts in the circus but no performing elephant could turn a handspring without falling flat on his back.” He accused the opposition of resorting to the Hitlerite tactic of the Big Lie, indulging in labor baiting, and harboring isolationist tendencies. He professed his dedication to winning the coming peace, globally through the establishment of international machinery, at home through an economic policy that would provide jobs for all.
This was strong stuff, but a single paragraph responding to an improbable story vented on the floor of the House of Representatives by Harold Knutson, an undistinguished Republican congressman from Minnesota, ultimately overshadowed it. Asserting that during FDR’s inspection tour of the Aleutians Fala had been left behind on a remote island and a destroyer dispatched at prohibitive cost to retrieve him, the story was of a piece with various complaints and innuendos about the president and his family. Charging that “Republican leaders” had spread this latest attack, Roosevelt ridiculed it: “I don’t resent attacks, and my family doesn’t resent attacks, but Fala does resent them! . . . He has not been the same dog since. I am accustomed to hearing malicious falsehoods about myself. . . . But I think I have a right to resent . . . libelous statements about my dog.” The riposte successfully trivialized the Republican campaign. It also underscored the empathy gap between a challenger who could offer cold executive efficiency and an incumbent who, after reminding his audience of the Depression miseries the Republicans had inflicted upon them, lightheartedly proclaimed his affection for his dog.30
Roosevelt spent the next four weeks at the White House, gathering his strength for the final push of the campaign. On October 20, he boarded his train for an overnight trip to New York. The next day, he rode in an open car through the four contiguous boroughs of the city, receiving the acclaim of perhaps 3 million residents who lined fifty-one miles of streets, enduring a steady rain and forty-degree temperatures, wearing only his navy cape over his business suit for protection against the elements, and stopping at Ebbets Field to speak at a rally for Senator Robert Wagner. Eleanor and Fala rode alongside him.
Almost everyone realized that the whole point of the excursion was to convince the public that he remained strong and vigorous. Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, who traveled the distance with him, declared that the president had managed the trip better than he. Democratic state chairman Paul Fitzpatrick asserted that Roosevelt had seemed better than four years earlier when campaigning in Buffalo. They were not just reciting expected lines. The president seemed genuinely invigorated by the adulation of the crowds. After about five hours, the motorcade terminated at Washington Square, where the presidential party went to Eleanor’s apartment for a late lunch. Roosevelt, whether out of a search for warmth or sheer elation, tossed down two bourbons and napped. He then fortified himself for a major speech with another bourbon and some martinis.31
That evening, he delivered a major address to the Foreign Policy Association. Ad-libbing effectively, he was in fine form as he affirmed his commitment to a postwar United Nations association with power to act swiftly against aggressor nations, pledged to preserve the US-British-Soviet alliance, and—in an all but explicit disavowal of the Morgenthau Plan—declared that the Nazi leaders would be punished but the German people would receive fair treatment.32
On October 27, after a weekend at Hyde Park and three days back at the White House, he took to the campaign train again for a rear-platform appearance in Wilmington, Delaware, then another cold and rainy motorcade through Philadelphia and Camden past perhaps 1 million people. That evening, he delivered an address to an estimated 50,000 spectators at Shibe Park. Just three days earlier, he reminded the crowd, American forces had fought the largest naval engagement in history, the Battle of Leyte Gulf; his administration, which had begun rebuilding the US Navy a decade earlier in the face of Republican indifference, had made the resulting annihilation of the Japanese fleet possible. Above all, he sent the message that he was the successful commander in chief of a winning war effort.33
Then it was on to Chicago, with a rear-platform appearance in Fort Wayne and waves to crowds that had gathered in Gary. On the evening of October 28, Roosevelt’s car drove into Soldier Field, where a crowd of 110,000 awaited him, and up a ramp onto a platform in the vicinity of what would have been the fifty-yard line if a football game had been scheduled. From there, he lampooned the Republican assertion that the incompetent, quarrelsome, tired old men in Washington, who somehow were winning the greatest war in history and laying the foundations of a lasting peace, had to go. Rejecting any idea that the New Deal was over, he pledged a continuance of liberal governance, from the Fair Employment Practices Committee to an ongoing farm-support program. Reminding the audience of his economic bill of rights, he promised to “provide America with close to sixty million productive jobs.”34
One more weekend remained before the election. Roosevelt spent it making appearances in New England, with a final speech in Boston in which he entertained his audience by noting that “a Republican candidate” had in separate speeches on the same day accused him of communism and monarchy. “Which is it?” he asked. “Communism or monarchy? I do not think we could have both in this country.”35
As usual, he voted in Hyde Park on Election Day, November 7, waited at home for the r
eturns, and received a Democratic torchlight parade. When it arrived at 11:25 p.m., the national trend was already established. “We have partial returns, and they seem to be partial to Hyde Park,” he told the crowd. Less than a half hour later, Democratic chairman Hannegan claimed victory. Dewey held out until shortly after 3:00 a.m. before conceding defeat. Roosevelt sent him a telegram of thanks, then, as he was being wheeled to his bedroom, remarked to his aide Bill Hassett, “I still think he is a son of a bitch.”36
Roosevelt’s popular vote margin of more than 3.5 million was the closest of his four presidential elections. The Democrats lost two seats in the Senate but picked up twenty-four in the House. The numbers held little promise for a major legislative program.
A graphic published in the New York Times two and a half weeks before the election explained the victory. It displayed responses to three polling questions:
Which man is likely to get the war over in the shortest time? Roosevelt, 44%; Dewey, 22%.
Which man would you rather have represent the United States at the peace conference? Roosevelt, 63%; Dewey, 26%.
Which man do you think would do the best job of running our affairs here in this country? Roosevelt, 46%; Dewey, 43%.37
A public almost evenly divided on domestic issues might have opted for a change. On issues of war and peace, the people voted for the commander in chief. At the end of July, Ernest K. Lindley had written a column asking whether the president was indispensable. Roosevelt, he concluded, “is not only experienced but is the repository of information and skills which no other single person has or could have.” A majority of Americans agreed.38
The champion had won another round. Americans, however, seemed more divided than ever about whether the New Deal remained an attractive foundation for postwar domestic policy, and the new Congress was likely to reflect the view of the skeptics. Roosevelt could look forward to presiding over victory in a war that was almost won, but securing the peace was another matter. Hard tests lay ahead.
Chapter 26
The Quest for a New World Order
November 8, 1944–April 15, 1945
At noon on January 20, 1945, a thin blanket of snow covered Washington. The temperature was thirty-four degrees. Franklin Roosevelt’s fourth inauguration took place not at the Capitol but at the White House. Supposedly reflecting wartime austerity, the choice of venue actually minimized the president’s physical effort. A crowd of a few thousand, ranging from foreign diplomats in formal morning dress to ordinary citizens bundled up against the cold, stood on the south lawn. Eleanor, Jimmy, and Anna were among the dignitaries; Elliott, Franklin Jr., and John were away at war. All thirteen of the Roosevelt grandchildren watched from the south portico steps, as did Eleanor’s three nieces, the three children of Norway’s Princess Martha, and Harry Hopkins’s daughter, Diana. Outgoing vice president Henry Wallace administered the oath of office to his successor, Harry Truman. The president then doffed his navy cape, stood, bareheaded, with Jimmy in marine uniform next to him, and took the oath, his hand on the family Dutch Bible, from Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone.1
Although not without eloquence, FDR’s fourth inaugural address was notable primarily for its six-minute brevity. Perfection might not be achievable, he declared, but America could neither live alone nor gain a lasting peace if it harbored an attitude of suspicion and mistrust toward the rest of the world. Americans had to be “members of the human community.” Perhaps the most memorable line was the one he had used in 1926, addressing the Milton Academy: quoting Endicott Peabody, he declared, “The great fact to remember is that the trend of civilization itself is ever upward.” The president remained standing through a brief benediction delivered by eminent Catholic social reformer Monseigneur John A. Ryan, followed by the playing of the national anthem. Then, as the band struck up “Hail to the Chief,” he waved to the crowd and retreated to the warmth of the White House, where he presided over a buffet luncheon for 250 guests.
Thus began a fourth term in which a tired and sick president would strive to conclude a global war and establish a new world order animated by the liberal values of his old chief, Woodrow Wilson, and underwritten by the military power so valued by his revered cousin Theodore Roosevelt.
The scene promoted an optimism about the future that seemed amply justified by events. In Europe, American and British counterattacks had flattened out the “bulge” lost to a stunning German offensive in the Ardennes a month earlier. On the eastern front, Soviet armies were moving toward Berlin. The war in Europe was almost over. The Pacific conflict would take perhaps another year, but US advances were steady. American troops were just seventy-six miles from Manila. B-29 Superfortress bombers were making devastating strikes on Japan itself.2
Roosevelt experienced some chest pain during the ceremony, but he concealed it well. Rumors about his health seemed much overblown after his apparently sturdy appearance in the cold. Briefing reporters, Dr. Ross T. McIntire assured them that aside from perhaps slightly diminished hearing in one ear, “everything’s fine. . . . He’s carrying a thunder of a lot of work and getting away with it in grand style.” Journalists were a bit less ebullient but detected little more than normal ageing. Citing the president’s wit and ability to relax, New York Times reporter John Crider concluded, “Mr. Roosevelt, even at 63, would be better able to plot an intelligible and constructive course through the wilderness of great problems confronting the country than many men much younger than himself.”3
Such optimism obscured great uncertainties. The coming end of the world war would be fraught with crises and reconfigurations of power over much of the globe. Maintenance of the Grand Alliance was not a given. The establishment of the world security organization foreshadowed at Dumbarton Oaks would require a new conceptualization of the global order and perhaps a rethinking of traditional notions of national sovereignty.
Issues at home were also pressing. Military mobilization and the industrial economy it created had absorbed the unemployed and brought 6 million women into the workforce. What would happen when peace broke out and defense plants shut down? Would the overheated full employment of the war revert to the mass joblessness and despair of the Depression? What had Roosevelt intended with his campaign pledge of 60 million jobs? Was another New Deal in the offing? It was almost impossible to find a liberal or progressive who thought that the economy could take care of itself. Conservatives—most Republicans and a sizeable number of Democrats, mostly from the South—recoiled at the thought of yet another New Deal.
Roosevelt’s campaign pledge to continue the Fair Employment Practices Committee after the war lent urgency to the issue of race, a secondary concern during the Depression. This reinforced the tendency of Dixie Democrats to ally with GOP conservatives, who might not share their ingrained racism but instinctively distrusted federal intrusions into workplace hiring decisions. Furthermore, the wartime elections had hardened the conservative coalition on Capitol Hill. Domestic economic and racial issues had primarily generated the conservative bloc, which also recoiled from anything smacking of world government and harbored deep suspicion of the Soviet Union.
In this difficult environment, Roosevelt coupled an ambitious domestic agenda with the priority of finding a prominent place for Henry Wallace.
At his press conference on December 19, 1944, Roosevelt had said he would maintain a domestic course “a little to the left of center.” On January 6, 1945, he had sent his annual State of the Union message to Congress. Mostly devoted to the war and emerging foreign policy issues, the document concluded with an expansive and unabashedly New Dealish vision of the future. Citing the Economic Bill of Rights enunciated in his 1944 State of the Union address, it called for a full-employment economy, fueled by massive federal funding that would supplement private enterprise in developing “a decent home for every family,” a prosperous agricultural sector, urban reconstruction, new TVA-style river valley authorities, a network of
airports, and large-scale highway construction. It also advocated a stronger Social Security system, along with “adequate health and education programs.” Accompanied by requests for authority to draft nurses for military hospitals and industrial workers for war industries, the message envisioned a statist agenda that went well beyond the New Deal. It also telegraphed to alarmed conservatives that Henry Wallace would have a high profile in the implementation of the president’s agenda.4
Wallace retained a fervent following among liberal Democrats. Shortly after the 1944 convention, Roosevelt had sent him a telegram, instructing him to tell his wife that she should not plan on leaving Washington. The president, as a matter of both political calculation and genuine ideological sympathy, wanted to keep him in the administration.
They had met on August 29 for lunch under the White House magnolia tree. As Wallace remembered it, he said just enough to register a sense of grievance even as he reaffirmed his support for the president. Roosevelt responded that he would give Wallace any cabinet post he wanted other than secretary of state; Cordell Hull was “an old dear” and dismissal would break his heart. But he wanted to get rid of some others. First on the list was “Jesus H. Jones.” Wallace jumped at the opportunity for revenge against his old antagonist, Secretary of Commerce Jesse Jones. The understanding was reached then and there: Wallace would succeed Jones as secretary of commerce and also inherit Jones’s powerful position as head of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and its subsidiary lending agencies.5
Wallace may well have had memories of how Herbert Hoover had used the commerce post to propel himself into the presidency and likely saw himself as a kingpin of postwar economic development. That fall, he had campaigned intensively for Roosevelt. When he rode with the president and Harry Truman in the celebratory procession that marked FDR’s return to Washington on November 10, his presence seemed to demonstrate that he would remain an important figure in the administration.
Man of Destiny: FDR and the Making of the American Century Page 56