The Highest Calling, page 19
He was aware that the U.S. had to be competitive, that another currency could take away our newfound advantage. Sterling in those days could become dominant, as it had been. He knew that our advantage was tenuous, and that we must pay attention to what happened in Europe with the economies there, and that money can move around the globe.
DR: Finally, Calvin Coolidge was happily married his entire life to somebody he’d met as a young man. Did they have children?
AS: Oh, absolutely. If you want to study a marriage, the Coolidge marriage is amusing and compelling. Being a First Lady is tough, and Mrs. Coolidge wrote about that. But they stuck together. She played the extrovert to his introvert. I say played, because again, politics is theater. They had two sons, John and Calvin. The great tragedy, one he shares with Lincoln, is that one of his sons, Calvin Junior, died while he was in the White House.
This is the story some of us were told, that Calvin Junior died because of a blister he got playing tennis. He was a boy who grew fast. Probably his old sneakers did not fit. This was just before we got antibiotics. There are schools of thought that say President Coolidge was depressed ever after and was incapacitated by that grief. Calvin Junior was a very likable boy too. He worked in a tobacco field in Massachusetts. Someone said, “If my father was president, I would never work in a tobacco field.” And Calvin said, “If my father were your father, you would.” Coolidge insisted his sons work. It was such a loss for that family.
9 JONATHAN DARMAN
on Franklin Delano Roosevelt
(1882–1945; president from 1933 to 1945)
A perfect illustration of the difficulty of predicting successes at the outset of one’s career is Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
FDR was born and raised in the idyllic setting of the Hudson Valley area, the wealthy and somewhat pampered only child of his strong-willed mother, Sara, and his father, James, a wealthy businessman who had another child from an earlier marriage.
In his youth and early adulthood, Franklin was not considered all that brilliant or athletic, or frankly even much of a leader—more of a follower and a loner. But, in time, he grew intellectually and as a leader to become the twentieth century’s most consequential president, not only serving longer than any other president (a little more than 12 years) but also winning two of the most significant fights America faced in that century—the Great Depression and World War II.
So what happened? Historians have still not reached a consensus on the transformation of Franklin Roosevelt from an aristocratic, not overly successful lawyer who was a bit of a mama’s boy (his mother seemed to have the most influence over him, in part because she controlled the family purse strings). A cousin, Theodore Roosevelt, lent some political allure to his last name, even though Teddy was a Republican and Franklin was a Democrat, and thus he was a bit less likely to benefit from the storied name.
Jonathan Darman, the son of the former Reagan/Bush official Richard Darman (and a former Carlyle colleague of mine), offers one theory in his book on Roosevelt, Becoming FDR.
In Darman’s view, the polio that Roosevelt contracted at age 39 in 1921 completely transformed him. He had to learn how to function in society again after the debilitating disease struck him. It was misdiagnosed for at least a month, making a restoration of the use of his legs all but impossible. When Roosevelt realized that his life had changed permanently, he developed a stronger character as he fought to reenter the business and political worlds. He did not pity himself, but rather tried to provide a cheerful outlook to others, even though he had to struggle to get from one place to another. He tried hard to give the appearance that he could walk, with some assistance, but he was never really able to move his legs again.
Initially, Roosevelt, his family, and advisors saw little chance for him to regain a political base or opportunity. He had already been a New York state senator, Woodrow Wilson’s assistant secretary of the Navy during World War I, and James Cox’s running mate in the 1920 presidential election, in which they lost to Warren Harding. But after polio, a chance arose to run for governor of New York. At first he thought such a race was not practical, especially if the public realized just how debilitating the polio was for him. (The press largely chose not to cover the extent of his physical problems, and rarely showed him in a wheelchair or struggling to walk.)
Aided by the strong support of outgoing governor Al Smith, Roosevelt not only won the Democratic nomination for governor of New York in 1928 but also won the general election and returned to public life. Four years later he won the Democratic nomination for president, easily beating Herbert Hoover, who seemed unable to deal with the Great Depression and its effects on the country.
Could any of this had happened had Roosevelt never been afflicted with polio? No one can know for certain, but Jonathan Darman, whom I had a chance to interview at the New-York Historical Society on March 28, 2023, makes a compelling case that the grit and determination needed to recover from the loss of his ability to walk remade Roosevelt’s personality and character, making his presidency possible.
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DAVID M. RUBENSTEIN (DR): What prompted you to think that the world needed another book on FDR?
JONATHAN DARMAN (JD): I was wrestling with a question that felt urgent, which is, how does a president bring hope to the country?
Franklin Roosevelt, with his leadership of the country through the Depression and World War II, is probably the best example we have of a president who comes into office and is able to convince people not only that the future is going to be okay in a time of challenge but that together they can do big things. I wanted to look at his life with fresh eyes and see what there was to say about how he did that.
DR: The premise of your book is that, absent polio, Roosevelt might not have developed the empathy and resilience that he later showed, and his wife might not have developed some of the unique qualities that enabled them both to go to the White House and to be effective as president and First Lady. Is that right?
JD: That’s right. Franklin Roosevelt had a whole career in politics before he got polio at the age of 39. You look at that person who was a young, charismatic, attractive politician and say, “What if this person had never gotten polio? Might he, if everything had gone his way, have ended up in the White House someday?” Potentially yes, but I don’t think that person would have been a great president, because he needed to experience what real suffering and setback is like and come to understand how it is that you can find your way out of that.
DR: Others have written about his polio, and some people have said that had it been diagnosed properly right away, he might have been able to recover much better than he did. He didn’t really get diagnosed properly for a month or so?
JD: That’s right. He gets sick in early August 1921 but isn’t properly diagnosed until the end of August. What if he had gotten the best medical attention right away? It’s quite possible that he would have still been disabled in some way from polio, but it’s also possible that his paralysis wouldn’t have been as extensive, because he would have been prescribed a period of long bedrest where he was moving as little as possible, and then gotten excellent physical therapy. That might have meant less severe consequences from the infection than those he ultimately experienced.
DR: I always had thought that the country really didn’t know the extent of his illness. You point out that most people who read newspapers knew he had polio. It was well described. They may not have realized how incapacitated he was. Did he try to not be photographed in a wheelchair or walking with his cane?
JD: We all have this idea that there was this code of silence and ignorance in the public about his disability. Particularly when you’re talking about his life in the 1920s, in the years when he’s on his rise to the presidency, there’s a key distinction to be made between his being okay, essentially, with people understanding that he had a disability and his not wanting to be seen in any circumstance where he would appear weak or helpless.
That’s why he was sensitive about being seen in a wheelchair or ever being in a situation where he might fall in public. There were a lot of times where he came close to that. His main concern was controlling the optics of it. He was carried by other people all the time, but he didn’t want to be seen in public being carried.
DR: What about Eleanor Roosevelt? We’ll talk later about their relationship. What was the result on her of his getting polio?
JD: Eleanor’s transformation in these years is in a lot of ways more dramatic than her husband’s. If you look at the summer of 1920, a year before FDR gets polio, he’s the vice presidential nominee. A reporter finds Eleanor and asks her what she thinks about women’s suffrage. Women’s suffrage is a big issue in 1920. Eleanor Roosevelt’s response is, “I don’t have a strong feeling either way. Personally, I’m content with my husband and my children.” And within just a few years, she’s not only going to have an opinion about women’s suffrage, she will support it. She herself is going to be one of the most significant women in either of the two political parties, and in a lot of ways Franklin’s polio brings that about, because she steps forward as the representative of the family on the public stage.
DR: After he contracted polio, FDR had many different doctors talk to him, who advised this and that. What he seemed to like most was going to Warm Springs in Georgia. Why did he go there so much, and did it help?
JD: He hears about Warm Springs for the first time about three years after he gets polio. He hears that it’s a miraculous place in Georgia where there are spa waters that have cured other paralysis victims. He’s looking for a miracle. The conventional wisdom was that muscle recovery that wasn’t coming back after one to two years probably was never going to come back. He wasn’t walking, and he wasn’t willing to accept that. So he was immediately drawn to Warm Springs.
I think he had imagined that it would be this big spa resort. He had spent some time in those kinds of places as a child. It’s not that. It’s very run-down. But he gets in the water, and he has two thoughts right away: “This does feel like magic water,” and “It’s a shame that it’s only for me.” The real miracle of Warm Springs is it unlocks this tremendous capacity for empathy in Franklin Roosevelt. It acquaints him with his own ability to help other people, which will be so essential for him going forward.
DR: But is there any evidence that the many years he spent there—and later he bought Warm Springs—improved his physical health?
JD: It was good for him because he was in warm water. In the wintertime, he was able to swim, which was good exercise. But no, he never regained the ability to walk there in the way that other polio patients did.
DR: When was FDR born?
JD: FDR was born in 1882 at his family estate in Hyde Park, New York.
DR: And who was his father?
JD: His father was James Roosevelt, who was a member of this illustrious Roosevelt family. He was an older man at the time that FDR was born, around 53 years old. It was actually his second marriage and his second family. He had had another son from his first marriage before his first wife died.
Franklin and James had this close relationship in Franklin’s childhood where they’re spending time together on the Hyde Park estate. That develops what’s going to be a real key attribute of Franklin Roosevelt’s, which is the ability to connect with people who are of an older generation from his.
DR: Who was his mother?
JD: Sara Delano Roosevelt. I think of her as the 1880s equivalent of a helicopter parent. She was involved in every single aspect of Franklin Roosevelt’s upbringing, which explains a lot about what he became.
DR: When he went to Harvard, did she not rent a place there as well?
JD: Yes. She wants to be there in his life at all moments. I was reminded the other day of a moment later in his career when Franklin and Eleanor move to Washington when he’s assistant secretary of the Navy, and Sara goes to visit them at their house. She writes in her diary, “Arrived in Washington, moved some tables and chairs around and beginning to feel at home.”
DR: She also bought Franklin and Eleanor a home in New York, then she bought a home next door and carved little doors in between. Isn’t that right?
JD: Yes. The idea was that each of them would have their separate space, but that was an illusion. Sara was the mistress of all of that.
DR: Franklin grows up in Hyde Park, and mostly he cares about the outdoors. Was he a reasonable athlete or not that good?
JD: He was not a great athlete. He goes to Groton School late, and he still is a pretty scrawny young guy. Groton School is this Episcopal academy in Massachusetts where the sons of the Protestant elite went, and everything there was about your physical prowess as an athlete. He’s middling at best, so he doesn’t stick out at all. In fact, he gets bullied. It’s partly because of his size, but it’s also partly because he spent so much time in the company of his parents. He doesn’t really know how to get along with other kids yet.
DR: He has no siblings. He has stepbrothers?
JD: He has a half brother who was basically a generation older.
DR: Speaking of the word bully, that is a word often used by Teddy Roosevelt. How was Franklin Roosevelt related to Teddy Roosevelt?
JD: Teddy was Franklin’s 5th cousin.
DR: They were distant cousins but they didn’t really know each other that well?
JD: No. Franklin’s parents were close to Teddy Roosevelt’s siblings, but because of the circumstances of life, I don’t think there was a particularly close connection between the Hyde Park Roosevelts and Teddy’s branch of the family.
DR: At Harvard, he does become the head of the Crimson, the student newspaper. How did he do that if people didn’t think he was so wonderful?
JD: He’s been raised to think of himself as this special, wonderful person because he’s a Roosevelt, but the problem is the rest of the world doesn’t seem to agree. Then, in his sophomore year, his cousin Teddy is catapulted into the presidency after the assassination of William McKinley. All of a sudden, having the last name Roosevelt is a really big deal. That elevates Franklin’s status on campus in that moment, but more importantly, it focuses Franklin Roosevelt’s attention on politics as an arena where he can distinguish himself.
DR: When he graduates, what does he do?
JD: He goes to law school, because that’s what Teddy had done. You hear these accounts of him as a young lawyer doing trust-and-estate work. He was bored all the time.
There’s a story where he’s with the other clerks, and they’re talking about what they want to do with their careers. Some of them want to work in firms. He says he wants to run for the New York State Legislature, then he wants to become assistant secretary of the Navy, and then he wants to become governor of New York, and then he wants to become president of the United States. That’s the path that Teddy Roosevelt had had, and I think that’s not a coincidence.
DR: Franklin did run for the state legislature?
JD: He did run, and won. By that point he’s basically determined that he’s going to do a really good Teddy Roosevelt impersonation. He’s going to be the Roosevelt in the Democratic Party for the next generation. Teddy had distinguished himself as an opponent of Tammany Hall. That’s what Franklin Roosevelt does early in his political career there. It doesn’t work out as well for Franklin, in part because he’s in the Democratic Party where Tammany was influential, and in part because he doesn’t yet have this great ability to connect that we will see in later years.
DR: So after serving in the state legislature, does he run for another office?
JD: He runs for the state legislature twice. He then gets plucked to be in the Wilson administration.
DR: How did he come to their attention?
JD: He goes to the 1912 Democratic nominating convention, in Baltimore, and he makes a lot of noise there about his connection to Teddy Roosevelt. That’s something that people pay attention to, because, of course, Teddy Roosevelt is running for president that year. So to have this Democrat who’s dropping Teddy’s name liberally and he supports Wilson at the convention, that makes a good impression on the Wilson people. Then, when Woodrow Wilson ultimately wins and they’re thinking about who to put in the administration, they think, “We’ve got this Democratic Roosevelt, let’s put him in the Navy Department.” Which is where Teddy had been.
DR: So he had the same job as Teddy Roosevelt—assistant secretary of the Navy.
JD: Yes. I think it’s the first time in Franklin Roosevelt’s life where his image of himself starts getting mirrored back to him by the rest of the world. He does very well in Washington in those years. He takes to the fact that it’s a small town. People there like having a charming Roosevelt around, they like the proximity to power, and he likes the attention that he’s getting.
DR: How did he meet Eleanor Roosevelt?
JD: A lot of people say, “We’ve known each other longer than we can remember.” With Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, that’s literally true. They met for the first time as small children. They don’t actually form their close bond and, ultimately, their romantic connection until a number of years later, when he’s a student at Harvard and she’s 18 years old, returning from Europe.
