Roosevelt came to the City by the Bay as the most notable member of the New York delegation. He established headquarters on the battleship New York, anchored in the harbor, and entertained various VIPs there. Although his relations with Tammany had become relatively cordial, he ostentatiously demonstrated his independence, leading a successful fight against the organization’s attempt to impose a unit rule on the New York delegates. When the convention erupted into a demonstration after the unveiling of a huge portrait of President Wilson, the anti-Wilson Tammanyites who dominated the New York delegation remained glued to their seats. In an altercation newspapers described as a “near fist fight,” Roosevelt seized the New York standard and joined the pro-Wilson marchers. When the proceedings reached the nominating stage, however, he seconded Bourke Cockran’s oration in favor of Al Smith.13
Smith, just finishing his first term as governor of New York, was one of many contenders for the nomination. Wilson, out of touch with political reality, refused to take himself out of contention. By rule of the Democratic Party since 1836, a nomination required a two-thirds majority. William Gibbs McAdoo quickly stalled out. Governor James Cox of Ohio, a popular chief executive in the critical swing state that already had given the Republicans Senator Warren G. Harding as their nominee, emerged as a favorite of bosses and party leaders. The voting continued through July 3 and, after a recess for Independence Day, went on through July 5. Roosevelt, after Smith withdrew, cast votes for McAdoo until he too quit the race. Then he voted for John W. Davis, ambassador to Great Britain and a family friend; Davis’s backers in turn mentioned Roosevelt as a probable vice presidential selection. At 1:39 a.m. on July 6, the forty-fourth ballot gave Cox the nomination. The convention recessed with a vote on the vice presidential choice scheduled for early afternoon.14
Roosevelt had come to San Francisco with his eye on a race for the US Senate in the fall, but friends and admirers talked him up for the vice presidential nomination. Perhaps sensing the political tide in his home state and by no means certain of full-hearted Tammany support in a Senate contest, he did not call them off. That both regular machine elements and self-described progressives widely deemed him acceptable was a tribute to his carefully crafted persona. Cox’s floor manager, Edmund Moore, telephoned his chief in Ohio, suggested Roosevelt, and found the governor amenable if Tammany boss Murphy signed off. Murphy told Moore that he did not like Roosevelt but appreciated the courtesy of being asked for his assent and declared that he would vote for the devil if Cox requested it.
Ohio Judge Timothy Ansberry was delegated to make the nominating speech. It suddenly occurred to him that Roosevelt just might be under the constitutional age requirement of thirty-five. He found his man on the convention floor and recalled their conversation a few days later:
“How old are you?”
“Thirty-eight. Why do you want to know?”
“I’m going to nominate you.”
“Do you think I ought to be around when you do?”
“No, I’d leave the hall.”15
Roosevelt became the party’s vice presidential choice by acclamation.
Cox, a strong and capable governor, was a good selection, but Roosevelt was even more popular. “When parties can pick a man like Frank Roosevelt there is a decent future in politics,” Walter Lippmann told the nominee. Herbert Hoover declared, “I consider it a contribution to the good of the country that you have been nominated.” The New York Times called Roosevelt a man who had united “unusual intelligence with sterling character” and who, if called upon to assume the presidency, could do so “without causing the country a tremor of apprehension.”16
On his trip back east, Roosevelt stopped in Columbus, Ohio, to meet with Governor Cox. They quickly agreed to make the League of Nations the dominant issue in the campaign. Roosevelt, clearly determined to be an activist vice president, also suggested that he should participate in cabinet meetings. Cox, probably correctly smelling a bid to be copresident, brushed the idea off.17
On July 16, they met again at the White House to pay their respects to President Wilson. Wilson’s spectral appearance and inability to engage in a sustained conversation stunned both men. Cox fought back tears and assured Wilson they would be “a million per cent with [him].” Roosevelt, apparently unaware that Wilson continued to nurse an intense resentment of him, described the event to Eleanor as a “very wonderful experience.”18
Franklin tendered his resignation as assistant secretary of the navy on August 6. Secretary Daniels presented him with a silver loving cup on behalf of the department employees. A vice president of the master mechanics union described him as “a fellow worker and friend, a man who has endeared himself to every one connected with the great naval establishment.” Roosevelt sent a wireless message to all officers, sailors, and civilian employees, expressing his pride in them and their work. He gave Daniels (“My dear Chief”) an affectionate handwritten letter that belied the very real conflicts and tensions of their relationship. Daniels would send him an equally fulsome response. In his diary later that day, the secretary wrote of the letter, “[It] made me glad I had never acted upon my impulse when he seemed to take sides with my critics.”19
In those days, candidates received official notification of party nominations and delivered acceptance speeches at their homes. Roosevelt attended the ceremony for Cox at Dayton the day after he left the Navy Department. On August 9, he accepted the vice presidential nomination on the front porch of his home at Hyde Park and spoke to a crowd of 5,000 people spread out across the large lawn. The event, the New York Times declared, “resembled that of an admiring but not overawed community being addressed by a super-valedictorian at commencement exercises in a local school.”20
The speech, mostly written by Roosevelt himself, laid out the themes of the campaign. Effective and well delivered, it revealed that he had substantially mastered the art of crafting a political appeal, developed a sense of timing, and understood that the moment required more than old-fashioned partisan oratory. The united efforts of Democrats and Republicans, he declared, had won the war, but the Democrats had the broadest vision for a postwar world that required internationalism and “organized progress at home.”
In line with the promise he and Cox had made to President Wilson, the speech emphasized the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations. America had a choice: to live in hermit-like isolation, armed to the teeth against possible aggression, or to join the international order. At home, progress meant better management in government, “a systematized and intensified development of our resources and a progressive betterment of our citizenship.” Cox, the “engineer-statesman,” not the bumbling Harding, was the man for the task.
The campaign proceeded with a strenuousness that Cousin Ted would have appreciated. Roosevelt assembled a first-rate team, two members of which would later serve him in the White House. Former navy public relations man Marvin McIntyre traveled with the candidate as a publicity and speech-writing aide. Stephen Early, a tough, shrewd newsman who had covered the navy beat for the Associated Press, acted as advance man, making arrangements with local party leaders, sending back intelligence on themes to stress in speeches, and warning of local rivalries and sensitivities.21
Roosevelt left New York on August 10 to undertake a speaking tour that began in Chicago and took him to the West Coast and back, spanning eighteen days, covering twenty states, and averaging seven talks a day. He spent most of September campaigning in New York and New England. A foray into the West and Midwest, followed by a final swing through the northeastern states, consumed much of October. During all this time, he took just three days off, one of them for the funeral of his uncle, Warren Delano III. He made a strong personal impression at every stop.22
The Republicans assigned Theodore Roosevelt Jr. to follow FDR through his initial western tour and contest his implicit claim to the TR mantle. Determined to duplicate his father’s path all
the way to the White House, Ted did so with gusto, telling audiences that the maverick Franklin did not wear the family brand. Thus began a rivalry—relatively good-natured at first, but less so with each passing year.23
Franklin’s one conspicuous gaffe came at Butte, Montana, on August 18. He defended the League of Nations against the Republican charge that Britain and her semi-independent dominions would have six votes against one for the United States. The Caribbean and Central American nations, which regarded the United States as a guardian, totaled twelve; Franklin asserted they would invariably vote with the United States. Then, referring to the marine presence in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, he went on to say that he had controlled two of them himself. Piling fantasy on top of indiscretion, he continued, “The facts are that I wrote Haiti’s Constitution myself, and if I do say it, I think it a pretty good Constitution.”24
This was not much of an issue, but the Republicans jumped on it. Roosevelt, having let his inner imperialism show, claimed he was misquoted. Harding actually apologized. Later, after stenographic evidence confirmed the story, FDR took refuge in the politician’s last resort: categorical outright denial for the remainder of the campaign and his life.25
The three months of constant movement and frenetic speech making all came back, time and again, to the League of Nations, which by late 1920 was a fading issue. One wonders if Roosevelt really believed his assertions that membership in the League would bring a world of lasting peace. Republicans depicted it as a threat to American sovereignty and independence. Harding posters carried the slogan “America First.” Voters were receptive to the charge that membership would bring more unwelcome foreign entanglements.
The Democrats had nothing else. The economy was deteriorating in the worst possible way. Crashing agricultural commodity prices alienated much of the farm vote; urban consumers still complained about the wartime high cost of living. President Wilson might remain a hero to many Democrats, but much of the nation saw him as sick and ineffective and simply wanted to be rid of him. German Americans, who had mostly been against the war, and Irish Americans, who saw England as a hated oppressor, held special grudges. Ethnic Democratic constituencies in general resented Prohibition.
The Democratic leadership had blocked out western itineraries for Roosevelt in the hope that he would appeal to Republican and independent progressives, an important force in the region’s politics. But many western progressives were also anti-League. Roosevelt tried to assure audiences in California that Cox was “the Hiram Johnson of the East.” Johnson—their former governor, running mate of Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, and by 1920 one of their senators—was irreconcilably opposed to the League. Charges that the Republicans had amassed a huge and somehow illegitimate campaign fund had no impact. Neither did Roosevelt’s persistent efforts to remind the electorate that a senatorial cabal had selected Harding in a smoke-filled room at two o’clock in the morning.26
On Tuesday, November 2, Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge buried the Democratic ticket, polling 61 percent of the vote in, to that date, the most impressive landslide in post–Civil War American political history. Never again a candidate for public office, Cox spent the rest of his life expanding his newspaper business into a major media empire. Roosevelt was a long-run winner. He, at least as much as Cox, was the star of the campaign on the Democratic side. His name had attracted attention. His articulateness, vigor, and good humor had won him friends just about everywhere he campaigned.
In 1936, Steve Early would remember the Roosevelt of 1920 as a “playboy” who let others write his speeches and spent his spare time at card games. Playboys, however, do not spend three exhausting months making six to eight speeches a day, seven days a week. Early’s memory is a tribute to how effortless his chief made the grinding tedium of the campaign seem. As never before, Roosevelt absorbed the political geography of the northern and western states, made hundreds of face-to-face contacts, and brought back a card file of names for future use. Only the then Solid Democratic South remained mostly unknown territory for him. In all, he had won a victory in defeat.27
On November 3, however, he could do nothing but send a telegram of congratulations to Coolidge. He returned to the New York law partnership he and two associates had begun in 1911. He also accepted a lucrative offer to become a vice president and head of the Manhattan office of the Fidelity and Deposit Company of Maryland, a surety bonding company interested in enlarging its New York business. Its chief executive officer and controlling shareholder, Van Lear Black, also owner of the Baltimore Sun, admired Roosevelt and envisioned him as a client-attracting acquisition. No informed observer expected these jobs to monopolize his time. At the end of 1920, he and Eleanor moved back to their New York residence on East Sixty-Fifth Street, both understanding that their ultimate objective was the White House.
Chapter 8
Paralysis and Philanthropy
1921–1928
Franklin Roosevelt returned to New York at the beginning of 1921 solidly established as a coming force in the Democratic Party. He planned to make a little money, wait for the right political opportunity, win election as governor or senator, and then make a dash for the presidency. The design was plausible until tragedy struck that summer. For most politicians of the day, paralysis from the waist down would have been a career-ending event. Roosevelt was a man of means with a supportive family, generous friends, and devoted helpers. He was also a person of Nietzschean will and determination, capable of turning a devastating handicap into an asset.
He divided his time between the Fidelity and Deposit (F&D) office in lower Manhattan and his law practice. In both enterprises, he probably saw his role primarily as attracting clients. He was successful at “good old F& D”; after all, meeting people and making a sales pitch was not much different from political campaigning. His friend and boss, Van Lear Black, valued his name on the firm’s letterhead, admired him greatly, and hoped to become a political backer. F&D paid Roosevelt a generous $25,000 a year, the rough equivalent of at least $500,000 in early-twenty-first-century dollars.
His enthusiasm did not extend to his law office, in which he had been inactive since before going to Washington. To the distress of his partners, Langdon Marvin and Grenville Emmett, he brought in little business and spent most of his time there engaged in an extensive correspondence with Democratic Party contacts.1
Roosevelt also devoted a lot of time to uncompensated charitable and public service activities, including the Harvard Board of Overseers, the Boy Scouts, the National Civic Federation, the Lighthouse for the Blind, the Manhattan Navy Club, the New York State Forestry Association, and the Netherlands-America Foundation. He was especially prominent in the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, a nonprofit organization established to honor the legacy of the former president and a nearly mandatory affiliation for Democratic politicians with national aspirations. All these activities involved business meetings, rallies, fund-raisers, and dinners.2
His ventures and political aspirations required a full-time staff. As Roosevelt’s administrative assistant at F&D, Louis Howe aided in his boss’s rainmaking endeavors while continuing as an indefatigable political operative. Unable to afford suitable accommodations in Manhattan, Howe settled his wife and son in Poughkeepsie, where his daughter was a student at Vassar. Howe himself became a member of the Roosevelt household, rendering his relationship with his family a matter of weekend visits—when possible.3
Roosevelt also acquired a personal secretary, Marguerite LeHand. The type that people of the time described as a “nice-looking, perky girl,” LeHand came from a modest Boston-area family. Twenty-two years old in 1920, she had landed a job on Roosevelt’s vice presidential campaign staff. Capable, discreet, and skilled beyond her years in human relations, she quickly established herself as indispensable. Promised that she would not work as a legal aide, she accepted Roosevelt’s offer to stay on with him after the election. Soon she was also an honora
ry member of the family. Finding it difficult to say “Miss LeHand,” the younger Roosevelt boys inadvertently nicknamed her “Missy.”
Clever, pleasant, and flirtatious, Missy became unconditionally devoted to Roosevelt. He would increasingly depend on her emotionally as on no other woman. Eleanor surely realized the developing closeness but would never feel the resentment she had felt for Lucy Mercer—perhaps because Missy came from a different social class, perhaps because Franklin never complained about Eleanor’s own developing and intense relationships.4
Roosevelt’s schedule was strenuous, but he enjoyed his various activities and doubtless valued the attention they garnered. On July 10, 1921, he joined Eleanor and the children at Campobello, hoping for a restful two months there. Instead he found himself called back to Washington to prepare a response to Republican charges that he was responsible for the Newport homosexual “morals scandal.”5
He returned to New York and stayed there several days to catch up with correspondence and other business. On July 28, acting in his capacity as president of the Boy Scout Foundation of Greater New York, he and some fifty other officials steamed up the Hudson to Bear Mountain to visit summer Scout encampments. He clearly found the day long and satisfying, joking with his fellow dignitaries, relishing his role as benefactor to the mostly earnest boys he met, giving short speeches, and enjoying a campfire dinner. Someone took a photo of him and two fellow Scout officials marching in front of an American flag. Despite the heat, he wore a dark jacket and tie. Sporting a beribboned badge and taller than his comrades, he looked every inch the dashing, important man he was.6
Man of Destiny: FDR and the Making of the American Century Page 13
