Chris Matthews Complete Library E-book Box Set: Tip and the Gipper, Jack Kennedy, Hardball, Kennedy & Nixon, Now, Let Me Tell You What I Really Think, and American

by Matthews, Chris

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  In March of 1933, a man stood on the steps of the United States Capitol—on the very Jenkin’s Hill that had become the realized vision of Washington and L’Enfant—and declared to a nation staggering from twenty-five percent unemployment and a stock market shrunk to twenty percent its value that the only thing they had “to fear is fear itself.”

  Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the greatest president of the twentieth century, the quintessential leader for prevailing against both the Great Depression and World War II. It was this man’s indomitable optimism that convinced the country it could prevail against the worst economic and military threats in its history.

  On the day of Roosevelt’s inauguration, the economic situation of the country was sliding downhill fast. The industrial sectors were suffering vast unemployment. Farmers were struggling with rock-bottom prices for their crops and also reeling from the effects of the “Dust Bowl,” a drought that destroyed a hundred million acres of topsoil in the Plains states.

  The worst had happened: people had begun to lose faith in their country.

  “On the farms, in the large metropolitan areas, in the smaller cities and in the villages, millions of our citizens cherish the hope that their old standards of living and of thought have not gone forever,” FDR, then the governor of New York, said at the convention that nominated him to run for president. “Those millions cannot and shall not hope in vain.”

  He meant it. Franklin Roosevelt would place his extraordinary mind and spirit behind a bold plan to reverse the nation’s deteriorating condition. “I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people. Let us all here assembled constitute ourselves prophets of a new order of competence and of courage.”

  With his New Deal, FDR told Americans that there was indeed hope around the corner. “Out of every crisis, every tribulation, every disaster,” he optimistically declared, “mankind rises with some share of greater knowledge, of higher decency, of purer purpose.”

  The Great Depression would pass, the country would be stronger for it, but the memory of the hardship would endure.

  Roosevelt had both optimism and hardship in his own life. Polio had caused his most serious setback. When it struck him at the age of thirty-nine, the recent candidate for vice president was on his way to the top. The young politician refused to accept the fact that he was paraplegic and exercised fanatically. Every day, he put on his heavy braces and attempted to walk to the end of his own driveway. Yet, despite this determination, he never made it past the halfway mark. It didn’t stop him.

  This optimism never failed him. And when he stood up, supported only by his leg braces, at the 1924 Democratic Convention to give the “Happy Warrior” nominating speech for New York’s Governor Al Smith, he achieved his goal. The public saw a man who had endured a hideous ordeal and had proved himself up to it. Throughout his 1932 campaign and on through his long presidency, Franklin Roosevelt would be a man who had “conquered” polio.

  If he could do that, he was without question a guy who could take on the Great Depression, the Japanese empire, and Hitler besides.

  FDR knew firsthand what the country needed in the 1930s. Like him, it was yearning to get back on its feet. And thanks to him, it did.

  “It is not enough to clothe and feed the body of this Nation, and instruct and inform its mind,” he said at his third inaugural, “for there is the spirit. And of the three, the greatest is the spirit. Without the body and the mind, as all men know, the Nation could not live. But if the spirit of America were killed, even though the Nation’s body and mind, constricted in an alien world, lived on, the America we know would have perished. That spirit—that faith—speaks to us in our daily lives often unnoticed, because they seem so obvious.”

  His wartime ally, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, said that meeting FDR was “like opening your first bottle of champagne.”

  Ask anyone alive during that extraordinary time if they ever doubted that we would win the great war against Hitler and Tojo, and I wager you’ll find no one who did.

  Yet our thirty-second president’s forward-thinking outlook extended beyond victory on the battlefield. Roosevelt strongly believed in the future of a United Nations that could protect freedom around the world. Before the U.S. entered the war in January of 1941, he declared in his “Four Freedoms” speech that what lay ahead was an end to colonialism and the creation of a new community of free nations. “In the future days which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.”

  Freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear: ensuring them remains our optimistic goal to this day.

  Ronald Reagan

  “I have always believed that this land was placed here between the two great oceans by some divine plan,” Ronald Reagan declared at the end of a 1980 television debate.

  It was placed here to be found by a special kind of people—people who had a special love for freedom and who had the courage to uproot themselves and leave hearth and homeland and come to what in the beginning was the most undeveloped wilderness possible.

  We spoke in a multitude of tongues—landed on this eastern shore and then went out over the mountains and prairies and the deserts and the far western mountains of the Pacific, building cities and towns and farms and schools and churches.

  If wind, water and fire destroyed them, we built them again. And in so doing at the same time we built a new breed of human called an American—a proud, an independent and a most compassionate individual for the most part. Two hundred years ago Tom Paine, when the thirteen tiny colonies were trying to become a nation, said we have it in our power to begin the world over again. Together we can begin the world over again. We can meet our destiny and that destiny can build a land here that will be for all mankind a shining city on a hill. I think we ought to get at it.

  He had personal reasons for that optimism. A kid from the Midwest, son of an alcoholic father, he got himself through college, then became a regional celebrity as a radio sports announcer. More ambitious than that, he went to Hollywood, wangled a screen test, and joined the list of contract movie stars.

  When the film roles stopped coming, he moved over to television and became an even bigger national personality as host of General Electric Theater. Next came politics, which saw him winning two terms as California governor and, finally, two terms in the White House. He remains, along with John F. Kennedy, the most popular of recent American presidents.

  Just a few months into his presidency, Reagan was shot as he was leaving a Washington hotel. One of the bullets lodged within inches of his heart. Had it not been for the courage and quick thinking of the Secret Service who got him to George Washington University Hospital in just over ten minutes, he would not have made it.

  Yet one reason the country never realized just how close he had come to dying was Reagan’s attitude in those most ghastly of circumstances. “I hope you’re a Republican,” he kidded the surgeon about to operate. Then, later: “Honey, I forgot to duck,” he told his wife Nancy.

  “The grace and humor Reagan showed after the attempt to assassinate him in 1981 had, more than any other single event, added a mythical quality to his leadership, revealing his character in a way that made it impossible to dislike him,” wrote his biographer Garry Wills.

  Reagan also showed amazing grace when he learned he’d been struck by Alzheimer’s disease. Knowing that from then on he’d be gradually losing his grasp on everyday life, the former president sat down and wrote a letter to his country:

  Nov. 5, 1994

  My Fellow Americans,

  I have recently been told that I am one of the millions of Americans who will be afflicted with Alzheimer’s Disease.

  Upon learning this news, Nancy and I had to decide whether as private citizens we would keep this a private matter or whether we would make this news known in a public way.

  In
the past Nancy suffered from breast cancer and I had my cancer surgeries. We found through our open disclosures we were able to raise public awareness. We were happy that as a result many more people underwent testing.

  They were treated in early stages and able to return to normal, healthy lives.

  So now, we feel it is important to share it with you. In opening our hearts, we hope this might promote greater awareness of this condition. Perhaps it will encourage a clearer understanding of the individuals and families who are affected by it.

  At the moment I feel just fine. I intend to live the remainder of the years God gives me on this earth doing the things I have always done. I will continue to share life’s journey with my beloved Nancy and my family. I plan to enjoy the great outdoors and stay in touch with my friends and supporters.

  Unfortunately, as Alzheimer’s Disease progresses, the family often bears a heavy burden. I only wish there was some way I could spare Nancy from this painful experience. When the time comes I am confident that with your help she will face it with faith and courage.

  In closing let me thank you, the American people, for giving me the great honor of allowing me to serve as your President. When the Lord calls me home, whenever that may be, I will leave with the greatest love for this country of ours and eternal optimism for its future.

  I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life. I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead. Thank you, my friends.

  May God always bless you.

  Sincerely,

  Ronald Reagan

  Like George Washington, Reagan understood the value of reputation. An American president needs to act nobly, display a certain selfless disregard. Just as the first president earned his country’s honor with his willingness to surrender his power, so Reagan showed his by his willingness to leave the public stage.

  President George W. Bush paid tribute to his predecessor when he awarded Ronald Reagan the Medal of Freedom after the September 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. “He would look at the spirit and sacrifice of the firefighters, police officers, men and women of our military, average Americans, and he’d be proud. He wouldn’t be surprised. He knew the courage and decency and generosity at the heart of this country because he shared it and he embodied it.”

  Yanks

  Yanks is a British-made movie about American GIs training in England in the months before D-Day. There’s a terrific scene that takes place between a young American mess sergeant, played by Richard Gere, and his English girlfriend. She’s asking him about his plans after the war, assuming that he’ll do what every working-class English lad does, that is, follow in his father’s footsteps.

  JEAN: After the war, are you going back to work for your dad?

  MATT: Not a chance. I haven’t told anybody this before. You know what a motel is, kind of like a hotel on the highway. You know, stop off and you, you got your own little cabin and bathroom. Springin’ up all over the states, and I’m gonna build me one of them. I got a place all picked out too. Canyon, the top of a canyon kinda flattens out. I’m gonna build right there. It’s beautiful. . . . When that one gets goin’, I’m gonna build another one, and another one, and another one . . .

  The English girl is taken aback by the young American’s speech. No one has ever spoken to her with such optimism, such disregard of possible obstacles, such pure confidence.

  “I’m sure you will,” she tells him.

  In the spring of 1945, with the war in its last months, Franklin Roosevelt received the seventeen-year-old son of his Secretary of the Navy James V. Forrestal in the Oval Office. The boy was about to ship out. An Arctic convoy was awaiting him. Like most young Americans he had no real knowledge of FDR’s physical condition, which had deteriorated considerably by that time. He began to mumble something to his host about the war.

  “Don’t talk to me about the war,” FDR exploded with delight, “Tell me what you’re going to do after we’ve won!”

  CHAPTER 10

  American Exceptionalism

  Let us reject the blinders of isolationism, just as we have refused the crown of an empire. Let us not dominate others with our power or betray them with our indifference. And let us have an American foreign policy that reflects American character. The modesty of true strength. The humility of real greatness.

  PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE GEORGE W. BUSH,

  NOVEMBER 19, 1999, AT THE RONALD REAGAN PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY

  We are both reluctant warriors and people of action. We lionize heroic loners and champion the underdog. We are lured by the undiscovered, exalt the potential of the average American, and cherish the right to be who or what we dream of being. Through it all, we remain the most optimistic people on the planet.

  As you have seen, the iconic figures in this book—from Washington to Jack Kennedy—exemplify a number of these notions. The reason is obvious. One classic American notion—a rebellious spirit, for example—feeds naturally into another—rooting for the underdog—and into another still—an optimistic heart. The desire to avoid foreign entanglements fits with the desire to avoid entangling government here at home.

  It’s the combination of all the notions, plus one we haven’t mentioned, that gives us what might be called an American character. This missing notion, often referred to as American exceptionalism, is that this country may have come into being by God or history for a special purpose.

  From our beginnings, Americans have counted this country special, even blessed. In the early seventeenth century, Puritans arriving in Massachusetts agreed that their coming to the New World charged them with a spiritual and political destiny. They were to build a society that would be the model for the world.

  It was while still at sea on the Arabella that John Winthrop gave his famous sermon. In it, he said:

  Now the only way to avoid this shipwreck and to provide for our posterity is to follow the counsel of Micah, to do Justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. . . . That we shall be as a City upon a Hill, the eyes of all people are upon us; so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world, we shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God and all professors for God’s sake . . .

  Nearly four centuries later, this notion of America as an exceptional country carries potent force. The notion that this country was founded as much more than merely a place to dwell and prosper drives our dealings with other countries, elevating both our morality and our morale here at home. It is a spring that has fed our history, including the American Revolution and its assertion of individual liberty, the abolitionists’ condemnation of slavery, and the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

  The Power to Begin the World Over Again

  By 1776, the notion of an American mission, as invoked by Winthrop, had come to sound a more secular note. In January of that year Thomas Paine published Common Sense. As we have seen, this widely circulated pamphlet called for a revolution not just against England but against the tide of human history. The new American republic would be independent of Europe but also of the past. “We have every opportunity and every encouragement before us to form the noblest purest constitution on the face of the earth,” Paine wrote, “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.”

  That meant designing a new type of government, wholly distinct from the European monarchies. It would include the “self-evident” truth that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

  In all the world, in all of history, this would be the exceptional country that upheld those God-given rights.

  America is “the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed,” G.K. Chesterton wrote a century and a half later. “That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucid
ity in the Declaration of Independence.”

  That a country could be founded on a commitment to rights never before recognized, that it would offer itself as a model for self-government, is a grand notion indeed. Yet American history could not have begun without it.

  Benjamin Franklin and Secular Exceptionalism

  While Winthrop and Jefferson based their notion of American exceptionalism to differing degrees on theology, Ben Franklin saw a secular mission for the country. “I never doubted . . . the existence of the Deity, that he made the world and governed it by his Providence; (but) the most acceptable service of God was the doing good to man.”

  To Franklin the mission of America was to be a country where a person could fully become who he or she wished to be. According to scholar Deborah Madsen, Franklin’s Autobiography “represents Franklin’s life as enacting the newly formed American myth of individual self-realization in a land of opportunity. It is the secular America that will be a model of democratic government and the envy of all the nations of the earth.” Franklin’s account of his personal rise from “poverty and obscurity” to wealth and international fame has long been seen as an American primer.

  To the great Franklin, the unique promise of American life was that an Archie Leach might become a Cary Grant. Or that Harry Truman, a haberdasher from a little town in Missouri, could one day become president, with the fate of the world in his hands.