by FDR
It was in the context of the derelict Wilson administration that FDR began to look to his political future. But he did so discreetly. “I sometimes think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not the bad luck of the early worm,” he wrote an impetuous supporter in late 1919.51
Already FDR had been mentioned as a possible candidate for the U.S. Senate or the governorship should Al Smith choose not to run for reelection. But the possibility of the latter was slight, and the chance of defeating a popular Republican incumbent in the Senate, his good friend James Wadsworth of Geneseo, appeared equally remote. “I am not running for Senator or Governor or dog catcher,” Franklin told a friend shortly after Christmas. “I do not personally intend to make an early Christian martyr of myself this fall if it is going to be a strongly Republican year.”52
The idea of seeking the vice presidency, just as the possibility of running for the New York State Senate in 1910, came to Roosevelt largely by chance. On January 10, 1920, FDR received a visit from an old friend, Louis B. Wehle, a Kentucky attorney and member of the War Industries Board who had admired Franklin since their days together on The Harvard Crimson. The Democrats’ presidential prospects looked bleak, said Wehle, but after talking to a number of party leaders he had hit upon a ticket that might win: Herbert Hoover for president, Roosevelt for vice president. Hoover was from California, FDR from New York: two states the Democrats must carry if they were to succeed. Hoover enjoyed a sterling reputation as wartime food administrator, he supported the Treaty of Versailles with minor reservations, and he was especially popular among American women, who in 1920 would be voting for the first time.53 Like Hoover’s, Franklin’s wartime service as assistant secretary of the Navy had been exemplary, and he would add the luster of the Roosevelt name to the ticket. “Whether you win or lose,” said Wehle, “you would make a number of key acquaintances in every state … that would probably lead you eventually to the presidency.”54
Roosevelt needed no convincing. “Hoover is certainly a wonder,” he allowed. “I wish we could make him President of the United States. There could not be a better one.”55 Franklin, who thus far had patterned his career on TR’s, was well aware that the vice presidency had been Cousin Theodore’s stepping-stone to the White House. “You can go to it as far as I’m concerned,” he told Wehle. “Good luck.”56
The following day Wehle called on Democratic kingmaker Colonel Edward House at his New York apartment. House was on the outs with Wilson but still wielded considerable influence in the party. “It’s a wonderful idea,” he told Wehle. “A Hoover-Roosevelt ticket is probably the only chance the Democrats have in November.”57
Was Hoover a Democrat? Wehle called on the food administrator at his office on lower Broadway and found him noncommittal. So too did House. Like Dwight Eisenhower after World War II, Hoover was being courted by both parties and kept his own counsel. On March 6 Franklin and Eleanor dined with the would-be nominee but could not smoke him out. “Mr. Hoover talked a great deal,” Eleanor wrote Sara. “He has an extraordinary knowledge and grasp of present-day problems.” Evidently he did not reveal his allegiance.58 At the end of March 1920, Hoover broke his long silence and proclaimed himself a progressive Republican: he had been registered as a Republican in California since 1898, and he had supported TR in 1912.59 There would be no Hoover-Roosevelt ticket.
But FDR had been bitten by the vice presidential bug. Alben Barkley, Harry Truman’s vice president in 1949, was fond of telling of the woman who had two sons: one became a sailor and went to sea; the other became vice president of the United States. “Neither has been heard from since.”60 “Cactus Jack” Garner of Uvalde, Texas, FDR’s crusty vice president, later told newsmen the job “wasn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.”*61 For Roosevelt, it was a ticket to be punched, a way station on the road to the White House, and Wehle was correct: the nomination would bring Franklin into contact with Democrats across the country.
A successful vice presidential aspirant plays his cards close to his chest, waiting for lightning to strike. The choice of a running mate is traditionally the prerogative of the presidential nominee, and one scarcely runs for the post. But Hoover or no Hoover, FDR’s credentials would have placed him on any nominee’s short list: young, attractive, high-profile wartime service in Washington, liberal but not populist, probably wet but acceptable to the drys on Prohibition,† and above all a Roosevelt from New York, by far the most populous state in the Union, with forty-five electoral votes, roughly one fifth of the number required for election.
When the Democratic convention met in San Francisco on June 28, FDR had positioned himself for the nomination. The support of the New York delegation was critical, and Franklin had taken every precaution. He traveled cross-country on the Knickerbocker Express with his fellow delegates, entertained them lavishly on the battleship New York, anchored off Treasure Island, and volunteered to second the nomination of Al Smith, a favorite-son candidate whom Charles Murphy was using as a stalking horse until the decisive moment to shift the Empire State’s ninety votes behind the winner. Franklin’s entourage included his Dutchess County allies John Mack and Tom Lynch; his old Harvard roommate, former congressman Lathrop Brown; his law partner Grenville Emmett; and his personal secretary from the Navy Department—all of whom began to work the hotel corridors and lobbies on FDR’s behalf.
Franklin took advantage of every opportunity. When a huge floodlit portrait of Wilson was unveiled during opening ceremonies, the convention erupted with a sentimental display of affection. Delegation after delegation flooded the aisles, parading around the hall, state standards held aloft. All, that is, except New York, whose delegates conspicuously kept their seats to illustrate the organization’s distaste for the president. When the demonstration reached its height, FDR seized the New York standard—Murphy nodded his approval—and joined the parade, to the cheers of hundreds of delegates.*62
Al Smith was nominated by Tammany’s Bourke Cockran, one of the most gifted orators of the day. FDR’s seconding speech was brief and well received. Poised, confident, standing at a convention podium for the first time in his career, he was effusive in his praise of Smith: “I love him as a friend; I look up to him as a man; I am with him as a Democrat; and we all know his record throughout the nation as a great servant of the public.”63
Grenville Emmett thought FDR’s speech “could not have been better.” Frances Perkins said Franklin was “one of the stars of the show. I recall how he displayed his athletic ability by vaulting over a row of chairs to get to the platform in a hurry. Al [Smith] always thought of this as the beginning of his friendship with Roosevelt and often referred to it as Roosevelt’s real start in important public life. And so it was.”64
Smith remained in contention for seven ballots. On the eighth, Murphy switched the bulk of New York’s vote to three-term Ohio governor James Cox, a competent but colorless public servant, moderate, wet, untainted by any link to the Wilson administration, and uncommitted on the League. FDR and some nineteen upstate delegates voted for William Gibbs McAdoo, Wilson’s son-in-law and onetime secretary of the Treasury. For the next four days the convention wavered among McAdoo, Cox, and the nation’s Red-chasing attorney general, A. Mitchell Palmer. Cox gained the lead on the thirty-ninth ballot and went over the top on the forty-fourth shortly after midnight on Monday, July 6. The convention then adjourned until noon the next day, when it would meet to choose the party’s vice presidential nominee.
Early Tuesday morning Cox’s campaign manager, Edmund H. Moore, called the governor at his home in Dayton. Whom did he wish as a running mate? “I’ve been thinking about this a good deal,” Cox replied, “and my choice is young Roosevelt. His name is good, he’s right geographically, and he’s anti-Tammany. But since we need a united front, go to see Charlie Murphy and say we won’t nominate Roosevelt if he objects.”65
Moore followed instructions. “I don’t like Roosevelt,” said Murphy. “He is not well known in the country,
but, Ed, this is the first time a Democratic nominee for the presidency has shown me courtesy. That’s why I’d vote for the devil himself if Cox wanted me to. Tell him we will nominate Roosevelt on the first ballot as soon as we assemble.”66
When the Democrats reconvened at noon, the early roll call of the states placed several favorite sons in nomination. As the roll call continued, Florida yielded to Ohio, at which point Judge Timothy T. Ansberry, leader of the Buckeye delegation, made his way to the platform. “The young man whose name I am going to suggest,” said Ansberry, “is but three years over the age of thirty-five prescribed by the Constitution … but he has crowded into that short period a very large experience as a public official. His name is a name to conjure with in American politics: Franklin D. Roosevelt.” Indiana and Kansas seconded the nomination, the favorite sons withdrew, the rules were suspended, and FDR was nominated by acclamation.67
Josephus Daniels, by now the grand old man of the party, beloved by populists, Wilsonians, and big-city bosses alike, concluded the proceedings:
I wish to say that to me, and to five hundred thousand men in the American Navy, and to five million men in the Army, it is a matter of particular gratification that this Convention unanimously has chosen as a candidate for Vice President that clear-headed and able executive and patriotic citizen of New York, the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Franklin D. Roosevelt.68
Pleased with the ticket of Cox and Roosevelt, and a trifle more optimistic than the circumstances warranted, the convention adjourned sine die at 1:42 P.M. FDR’s friends were overjoyed. Walter Lippmann of The New Republic wired his congratulations: “Your nomination is the best news in many a long day.” Herbert Hoover wrote, “the fact that I do not belong to your political tribe does not deter me from offering my personal congratulations to an old friend. I am glad to see you in the game in such a prominent place, and, although I will not be charged with traitorship by wishing you success, I nevertheless consider it a contribution to the good of the country that you have been nominated and it will bring the merit of a great public servant to the front.” Franklin K. Lane offered his advice: “Get plenty of sleep. Do not give yourself to the handshakers. Be wise! Don’t be brilliant.”69
On August 6, 1920, FDR resigned as assistant secretary of the Navy and headed west.70 In the next three months he would crisscross the country twice, delivering nearly one thousand speeches and countless impromptu addresses—the most extensive campaign ever conducted by a candidate for national office.71 Franklin wrapped himself in TR’s mantle, peppering his speeches with “bully,” “strenuous,” and all manner of verbal tics associated with the former president. “I do not profess to know what Theodore Roosevelt would say if he were alive today, but I cannot help think that the man who invented the word ‘pussy-footer’ could not have resisted the temptation to apply it to Mr. Harding.”72
Colonel Robert R. McCormick, a sometime Bull Moose and Franklin’s classmate at Groton, immediately protested. On August 13 the Chicago Tribune called FDR “the one-half of one percent Roosevelt. Franklin is as much like Theodore as a clam is like a bear-cat.… If he is Theodore Roosevelt, Elihu Root is [Socialist leader] Gene Debs, and Bryan is a brewer.”73 Edith Roosevelt, TR’s widow, said, “Franklin is nine-tenths mush and one-tenth Eleanor.” Nicholas Longworth, Alice’s husband and a man who knew something about alcohol, called FDR “a denatured Roosevelt.”74
Franklin’s advance man during the campaign was Steve Early, a blunt-spoken southern journalist who would remain at FDR’s side throughout his career. His press aide was Marvin McIntyre, who had handled that job at the Navy Department and who would become another permanent fixture. Louis Howe was there, of course, as were Tom Lynch from Hyde Park and FDR’s faithful personal secretary, Renah Camalier. When the campaign ran short of money, Franklin wrote a check for $5,000; Sara wrote another for $3,000. (In today’s currency, that would be $50,000 and $30,000, respectively.) Roosevelt was not yet the polished campaigner he would become. But he was tireless and confident, and Louis Howe thought he was becoming increasingly eloquent. Unfortunately, he was often unfocused and prone to exaggerate his personal achievements. Early complained, “he couldn’t be made to prepare speeches in advance, preferring to play cards instead.”75
Franklin’s casual approach caused a passel of trouble. On August 18, in Deer Lodge, Montana, he became carried away by his own rhetoric and claimed to have written the Haitian constitution, much as Al Gore once claimed to have invented the Internet. A week later in San Francisco, he boasted of “running Haiti and Santo Domingo for the past seven years.”76 The Associated Press picked up the stories, and Republicans had a field day. Harding said that when he became president, “I will not empower the Assistant Secretary of the Navy to draft a constitution for helpless neighbors in the West Indies and jam it down their throats at the point of bayonets carried by United States Marines.”77 John Barrett, director of the Pan-American Union, declared that Roosevelt had made a dreadful mistake. The New York Telegraph called him “a spoiled child to be spanked.”78 FDR denied having made the statements, but there were too many witnesses to make the denial credible.
For the most part, Cox and Roosevelt tied themselves to Wilson and the League. But the electorate was tired of both. Harding pledged “a return to normalcy,” and that pledge struck a responsive chord. The November results were devastating. Harding polled 61 percent of the popular vote and trounced Cox in the electoral college 404–127. The Democrats failed to carry a single state outside the Solid South—the party’s worst showing since the Civil War. The Republicans won a record 301 seats in the House of Representatives and picked up 10 additional seats in the Senate. Nowhere were the results worse than in New York, where Cox and FDR polled just 27 percent of the vote, taking Smith and the rest of the ticket down with them. Outside New York City, the Democrats did not carry a single county or elect anyone to statewide office.79
FDR took the defeat in stride. He telegraphed congratulations to Calvin Coolidge, Harding’s running mate, and headed off to the marshes of Louisiana for two weeks of hunting and loafing. Looking back on the campaign years later, FDR told Supreme Court associate justice Robert H. Jackson that if he had not run for vice president in 1920, he would not have been nominated for president in 1932. “He created a sense of indebtedness on the part of the Democrats and made personal friends who remembered him later when his campaign manager, James Farley, went out looking for delegates,” said Jackson. “Roosevelt’s sense of security was such that he did not fear defeat.”80
The 1920 campaign saw Eleanor emerge into public life. She joined the campaign train in September and for the next four weeks accompanied Franklin as he barnstormed the country—the only woman in the entourage. Unlike the Republicans, the Democrats initially made little effort to appeal to women voters.* Eleanor was relegated to playing the dutiful wife, appearing at whistle-stops to look gracious and smile adoringly while Franklin delivered the same speech over and over.81 It was Louis Howe, not Franklin, who recognized Eleanor’s potential. And it was Howe who worked her into the campaign. Repeatedly Howe would knock on her compartment door and ask her to review speeches and help plan press conferences. “I was flattered,” Eleanor recalled, “and before long I found myself discussing a wide range of topics.”82
Howe taught Eleanor about national politics, just as he had taught Franklin, and he helped her understand the importance of the press. “The newspaper fraternity was not so familiar to me at that time, and I was a little afraid of it. Largely because of Louis Howe’s early interpretations of the standards and ethics of the newspaper business, I came to look with interest and confidence on the writing fraternity and gained a liking for it which I have never lost.”83
Even more important, Eleanor and Howe developed a deep and lasting friendship. Before, she had resented his intimacy with FDR and was jealous of the role he played in her husband’s life. Now she understood Howe’s position and felt treated as an equal partner. Howe encour
aged her political talents and helped her express them. He understood her moods and dedicated himself to bridging the distance between her and Franklin. Eleanor, for her part, discovered that Howe had many talents. Aside from an encyclopedic knowledge of the nation’s politics, he had the temperament of an artist. He painted landscapes and portraits, sang in the choir at St. Thomas’ Church, wrote poetry, and was an avid theater buff, directing and acting for the Drama League Players in Washington. Howe loved the seashore, and, most endearingly, he knew when to be silent and when to speak up. As Blanche Wiesen Cook observed, “Louis Howe was the first of many intimate friends that ER grew to trust and love, with a warmth and generosity both spontaneous and unlimited.”84
At Christmas Franklin sent each of the men who had campaigned with him a pair of gold cuff links engraved with his initials on one link and his own on the other. This was the beginning of the famous Cuff Links Club, which would meet annually on FDR’s birthday to eat, drink, and reminisce about their first campaign together. The men in turn presented Eleanor with a suitably engraved gold pin as a souvenir of the campaign, a gift she treasured.85
FDR had no illusions about the political future. The Democrats, he told Cox, were unlikely to return to the White House until economic catastrophe drove the Republicans out. “Every war brings after it a period of materialism and conservatism. People tire quickly of ideals.” To Steve Early he joked, “Thank the Lord we are both comparatively youthful.”86
