Jean Edward Smith

by FDR

  Until Acheson’s letter appeared, no one at the upper levels of the administration contemplated bypassing Congress. But Frankfurter supported the idea, and on August 15 Stimson called FDR. “He said he felt very, very much encouraged,” the secretary recorded in his diary. Roosevelt told Stimson he “would talk it over with the Attorney General tomorrow morning and is evidently ready to push it ahead.”69

  Negotiations with Willkie were not going as well. While White and members of the Century Group urged the GOP nominee to speak out forthrightly, Herbert Hoover and other figures in the party advised him to avoid any commitment. The upshot was that Willkie remained silent. “It’s not as bad as it seems,” White telegraphed FDR. “I have talked with both of you on this subject and I know there is not two bits worth of difference between the two of you.”70 When Willkie officially announced his candidacy on August 17, he came tantalizingly close to backing the swap without explicitly endorsing it. He proclaimed his “wholehearted support for the president in whatever action he might take to give the opponents of force the material resources of the nation,” adding that “the loss of the British fleet would greatly weaken our defense.”71

  Armed with Acheson’s letter to the Times, Jackson provided FDR with an official Opinion of the Attorney General supporting the president’s authority to trade the destroyers for bases under his authority as commander in chief.72 Jackson said the intervening statutes, such as the Espionage Act of 1917, were not intended to apply to such transactions.* With the green light from the Justice Department, the details fell into place. The United States agreed to deliver the fifty destroyers in parcels of eight to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where British crews would be waiting to take possession. In return, Great Britain would provide the United States with ninety-nine-year leases to bases in Newfoundland, Bermuda, the Bahamas, Jamaica, Antigua, Saint Lucia, Trinidad, and British Guiana—a total of eight. To satisfy British pride (Churchill had also to consider public opinion) and to avoid any appearance that His Majesty’s Government had been outbargained, it was agreed that the bases in Newfoundland and Bermuda would be a free gift to the United States from Great Britain, the other six provided in return for the destroyers.73 General Marshall and Admiral Stark had no trouble signing off—the bases provided far more security than fifty World War I destroyers—and on August 30, 1940, Stark ordered the Commander Destroyers Atlantic Squadron to proceed to Boston with the first eight destroyers. D-Day for the transfer would be September 6.74

  Roosevelt announced the deal while on a war plant inspection tour in Charleston, West Virginia. “This is the most important action in the reinforcement of our national defense since the Louisiana Purchase,” he said to newsmen traveling with him.75 Churchill told Parliament that the affairs of the United States and Great Britain henceforth would be “somewhat mixed up together. I do not view the process with any misgiving. I could not stop it if I wished; no one can stop it. Like the Mississippi, it just keeps rolling along.”76 Willkie said “the country will undoubtedly approve,” but regretted “the President did not deem it necessary to secure the approval of Congress.”77

  Public reaction was overwhelmingly favorable. On Capitol Hill criticism was muted. The transaction was so manifestly to America’s advantage that even the most ardent isolationists found it difficult to find footing. Litigation brought by individual citizens to challenge the constitutionality of FDR’s action was routinely dismissed by federal district courts because the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue.78

  The destroyer deal jump-started Roosevelt’s reelection campaign. A Gallup Poll in late August showed FDR and Willkie in a virtual dead heat, the president leading 51 to 49 percent. By mid-September Roosevelt had opened a ten-point gap.79 Willkie had failed to find a winning issue or to breach the New Deal coalition. Despite his endorsement by John L. Lewis, American workers remained staunchly Democratic. Willkie was booed from factory windows in Detroit, he was egged in Pontiac, and a rock was hurled through his train window in Grand Rapids.80 Stories circulated about his German ancestry, about signs in his Indiana hometown reading “Nigger, don’t let the sun go down on you.”81 Willkie’s unpolished campaign style was both an asset and a liability. Voters responded favorably to his openness and unaffected sincerity, but his inexperience on the stump led to more than the usual number of foot-in-mouth encounters. Speaking to a labor audience in Pittsburgh he announced he would appoint a secretary of labor directly from the ranks of organized labor—a slam at Frances Perkins that drew raucous cheers. Hoping to get another big hand he added gratuitously, “And it will not be a woman either.”

  “Why didn’t he have sense enough to leave well enough alone?” FDR asked Frances Perkins. “He was going good. Why did he have to insult every woman in the United States? It will make them mad, it will lose him votes.” Which apparently it did.82

  The campaign bristled with the customary ad hominem, but it was directed at the candidates’ stance on public issues. The private lives of public figures were strictly private in 1940. The press respected that, politicians were more tolerant, and neither party sought to exploit personal lapses on the other side. The Democrats had two potential problems: Henry Wallace’s mysticism and Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles’s homosexuality. In late August the Republican National Committee obtained a packet of letters Wallace had written in 1933 and 1934 to a White Russian émigré and cult leader, Nicholas Roerich. Wallace had engaged Roerich in 1933 to undertake an analysis of drought-resistant grasses in Mongolia and had evidently fallen under his spell. The letters, addressed “Dear Guru,” resonated with occult speculation sufficient to call into question Wallace’s emotional stability. At Willkie’s specific direction the Republicans did not make use of the material.83 Similarly, Welles’s sexual orientation did not enter the campaign even though senior executives of the Southern Railroad possessed affidavits from Pullman car porters attesting to the undersecretary’s overtures. Returning to Washington from Speaker Bankhead’s Alabama funeral on September 22, 1940,* Welles, who had been drinking heavily, propositioned each of the porters working in his car for oral sex. They refused and afterward reported the incident to their employers. The affair became a matter of Washington gossip but attracted no public notice.84

  For the Republicans the problem involved Willkie’s long-standing extramarital relationship with Irita Van Doren, editor of the book review section of the Herald Tribune, the former wife of Columbia’s renowned historian Carl Van Doren, and one of the nation’s most influential literary figures. The granddaughter of a Confederate general and one year older than Willkie, she and the GOP standard-bearer had become companions in the late thirties. Irita introduced Willkie to New York’s literary world and became his cultural mentor. Among those who gathered under her roof were Carl Sandburg, Rebecca West, Virginia Woolf, André Maurois, James Thurber, Sinclair Lewis, Dorothy Thompson, John Gunther, and William L. Shirer. Irita helped write Willkie’s speeches and articles and, as one of Wendell’s friends observed, was largely responsible for his “acceptance of himself as a political leader with original and important ideas.”85

  Irita was tall and slender, with dark eyes and a mass of pretty curls. “She was not pretty, but she was beautiful,” said Shirer. “The kind of woman I like to look at,” wrote Harold Ickes. “Physically well set up, but intelligent.”86 Hiram Hayden of the American Scholar thought “her graciousness was innate. It came from a sweetness deep within her.”87 FDR, who thrived on such gossip, said he understood she was “an awful nice gal.”88 During the campaign Irita remained in the background and Edith Willkie, the candidate’s wife, traveled with her husband. “Politics makes strange bedfellows,” Edith joked to reporters.89 Like FDR’s relationship with Eleanor, the Willkie marriage was one of residual affection and political expediency. “At the time I felt like [my mother] might be getting the short end of the stick,” recalled Irita’s daughter Barbara, “but that wasn’t the case. She was wise enough to know that she had everything except the title. They
were endlessly and happily in love.”90 The Democrats made no issue of the arrangement and did nothing to spread stories even by word of mouth.* It was their ace-in-the-hole should the Republicans go after Wallace.

  Willkie campaigned tenaciously. The candidate, his staff, and seventy-five reporters spent seven weeks on a campaign train crisscrossing America. Willkie traveled 18,785 miles, visited 31 states, and delivered 560 speeches.91 Roosevelt stayed close to the White House, making the occasional visit to a war plant or defense installation, all the while retaining the pose of commander in chief, the statesman above the fray. And with marked success. The more Willkie campaigned, the farther he fell behind. A Gallup Poll taken in late September indicated that Roosevelt’s lead had increased to twelve points. When voters were asked who they thought would win in November, 68 percent said FDR.92

  Willkie found himself without a cause. The third-term issue fizzled. “I would rather have FDR with all his known faults than Willkie with his unknown qualities,” said New York’s independent mayor Fiorello La Guardia.93 On domestic matters Willkie supported the accomplishments of the New Deal. Unemployment provided a talking point, but the war boom had begun, workers were streaming back to factories, steel mills were humming with new orders, and the construction industry was working at full capacity. On foreign policy Willkie supported aid to Britain, selective service, and rearmament. It was a “me too” campaign which except for Willkie’s winning personality provided the voter few reasons to change. Roosevelt was “not a perfect man,” Carl Sandburg told a national radio audience, yet he was “more precious than fine gold.”94

  With his campaign in danger of imploding, Willkie shifted gears. Pressed by his Republican handlers to become more aggressive, Willkie reversed course on foreign policy. At first he moved cautiously. In Boston on October 11 he promised an enormous crowd, including many traditional Democrats of Irish and Italian extraction, “We shall not undertake to fight anybody else’s war. Our boys shall stay out of European wars.”95 As Willkie’s poll numbers crept up, he intensified his attack. He became the peace candidate and FDR the warmonger. “If [Roosevelt’s] promise to keep our boys out of foreign wars is no better than his promise to balance the budget, they’re already almost on the transports.”96 Excess begat excess. Willkie hinted that secret agreements were in place to take the United States to war. “On the basis of [Roosevelt’s] past performance, you may expect war by April, 1941, if he is elected,” he told an audience in Baltimore.97

  By mid-October Willkie’s attacks were sending tremors through Democratic ranks. Ed Flynn, who had succeeded Farley as national chairman, sent dire warnings of the defection of Italian voters in the Bronx and of Germans, who could turn the tide in the Midwest. The Irish vote in Massachusetts was in play, and Senator Walsh, up for reelection, was campaigning on an anti-Roosevelt, isolationist platform.98 A Gallup Poll taken the second week in October showed that if there were no war in Europe, Willkie would defeat Roosevelt 53 to 47 percent.99

  Roosevelt surveyed the damage and decided it was time to respond. “I’m fighting mad,” he told Harold Ickes on October 17.100 The following day the White House announced that the president would make five campaign speeches in the final two weeks leading up to the election, ostensibly to correct Republican misstatements.101

  FDR opened the campaign at a mass rally in Philadelphia the night of October 23. “I consider it a public duty to answer falsifications with facts,” he told the cheering crowd. “I will not pretend that I find this an unpleasant duty. I am an old campaigner, and I love a good fight.”102 Roosevelt had never been better. His timing was flawless. “He’s all the Barrymores rolled into one,” a reporter exclaimed.103

  Roosevelt said the Republicans (he never mentioned Willkie by name) charged that there were secret agreements to take the country to war.

  I give to you and to the people of this country this most solemn assurance:

  There is no secret treaty, no secret obligation, no secret commitment, no secret understanding in any shape or form, direct or indirect, with any other Government, to involve this nation in any war or for any other purpose.104

  Five nights later, after a fourteen-hour day touring New York City’s five boroughs in an open car—the crowds estimated at more than 2 million—Roosevelt gave another bang-up speech at Madison Square Garden. Mussolini had invaded Greece hours before, and the president expressed his sorrow. No “stab-in-the-back” accusation, simply his concern for “the Italian people and the Grecian people, that they should have been involved together in conflict.”

  The speech was a slashing attack on the Republican leadership, everyone but Willkie, whom the president again did not mention. FDR was in a rhetorical groove, and the crowd roared its approval—especially after the tag line “Martin, Barton, and Fish” rolled off his tongue in rhythmic cadence. “Great Britain and a lot of other nations would never have received one ounce of help from us—if the decision had been left to Martin, Barton, and Fish.”* Several paragraphs later Roosevelt repeated the refrain, and the audience chanted it with him fortissimo.105

  Roosevelt’s assault stunned the Republicans. With two speeches FDR had regained the initiative. Willkie responded with increased invective, and Roosevelt reciprocated. Two days later in Boston he ended the debate with a blockbuster: “I have said before, but I shall say it again and again and again. Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.”106

  “That hypocritical son of a bitch,” said Willkie, who was listening to the speech with his brother. “This is going to beat me.”107

  On the train to Boston, Roosevelt had put the finishing touches on the speech. In past talks he had always added the words “except in case of attack,” just as the Democratic platform put it. When Sam Rosenman pointed that out, FDR dismissed it. “It’s not necessary. If we’re attacked it’s no longer a foreign war.”108 When all is said and done, Franklin Roosevelt was the most unforgiving of politicians. When the stakes were highest he was at his most ruthless. Farley and Bankhead learned that in Chicago. Willkie learned it when FDR spoke in Boston.

  Roosevelt closed the campaign with a speech in Cleveland on November 2. Rosenman, who heard FDR deliver speeches for seventeen years, thought the 1940 Cleveland speech was his finest.

  Although it was a campaign speech, it was pitched on a level far above the political battle. It expressed the President’s hopes, philosophy and aspirations; it laid out a blueprint for the America of the future. As an example of what the President could do in preparing a speech under great pressure of time and circumstance it was unequaled.

  His delivery in this speech was better than in any other speech I have ever heard him make. It is difficult to analyze the oratory of a speaker to see what it is that makes his delivery of speeches effective and moving. Over the years I watched Roosevelt with ever-growing wonderment and admiration as he made speeches of all kinds with exactly the right effect. There were the homey fireside chats, the stirring campaign speeches of attack, the argumentative and persuasive addresses to the Congress, the extemporaneous informal remarks on the rear platform of a train, at a Thanksgiving dinner in Warm Springs, to a group of newspaper editors calling on him at the White House. Each speech seemed perfectly attuned to the audience and to the occasion.

  Though FDR had a team of speechwriters, including Rosenman and the playwright Robert Sherwood, he did the final drafts himself, always in longhand. One of Roosevelt’s great advantages, said Rosenman, was that he knew the speech thoroughly from beginning to end. “He had worked so hard and continuously on it that he knew it almost by heart. He knew the development of the theme, he knew always what was coming next, and the result was that his delivery progressed in solid logical fashion from one point to another, making it easy to follow and understand him. He could look away from the manuscript so much that many people did not even know he was reading.”109

  The most moving passages of the Cleveland speech painted FDR’s vision of what lay ahead:

>   I see an America where factory workers are not discarded after they reach their prime, where there is no endless chain of poverty from generation to generation, where impoverished farmers and farm hands do not become homeless wanderers, where monopoly does not make youth a beggar for a job.

  I see an America whose rivers and valleys and lakes—hills and streams and plains—the mountains over our land and nature’s wealth deep under the earth—are protected as the rightful heritage of all the people.

  I see an America where small business really has a chance to flourish and grow.

  I see an America of great cultural and educational opportunity for all its people.

  I see an America where the income from the land shall be implemented and protected by a Government determined to guarantee to those who hoe it a fair share in the national income.

  An America where the wheels of trade and private industry continue to turn to make the goods for America.

  I see an America with peace in the ranks of labor.

  An America where the workers are really free. Where the dignity and security of the working man and woman are guaranteed by their own strength and fortified by the safeguards of law.