Have been slogging through my own Xmas present, HW Brands's new FDR bio, _Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life & Radical Presidency of FDR_, which must be the one to go (Chapter 35 deals with JM Keynes for those interested). It is also a very good antidote to the Amity Shlaes-esque revision of the New Deal, though it does not hesitate to show FDR's failings where they in fact did exist (aloofness from radical labor, cheating on Elanor, that sort of stuff). The guy did get increasingly embittered about the business community as his presidency wore on, though.
To wit: "In my Inaugural I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. It seems to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country." -B.]
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http://www.buffalonews.com/185/story/534092.html
12/28/08 06:11 AM
A nation in turmoil looks to a new leader for help — but it’s FDR By Edward Cuddihy
NEWS BOOK REVIEWER
History does not repeat itself, at least not in the popular sense of a giant carousel with a hundred or so figures bobbing up and down and coming around once each generation with a fresh coat of paint.
There never has been another Julius Caesar or Napoleon Bonaparte. Never have the likes the Hitler and Mussolini teamed up to murder and terrorize the Western World.
The human spirit is too complex to support such a charade. It is we, the professional overanalyzers, who discern the patterns, draw the parallels, and proclaim that Barack Obama is the new Franklin Roosevelt, when in fact he is — and is happy to be — Barack Obama.
Both men set their sights on the White House as early as their Ivy League days, although their roads to the Ivy League could not have been more diverse. Both men were unlikely candidates for the presidency, again for entirely different reasons.
Both eschewed ideology for pragmatic action, both were renowned for their oratory, and both turned out the ruling party in Washington at a time when the world economy was in mortal danger and when our nation faced threats from around the globe.
Here, the parallels hit a wall for we know what Franklin Roosevelt did, while the Obama story is yet to be played out. What we can only pray is that their stories don’t take the same turn.
Franklin Roosevelt was born to be president, or at least he was raised to be president much like the old European aristocracy trained the first son from the cradle to assume the crown.
He attended his first White House party as a Harvard undergraduate at the invitation of his distant relative, President Theodore Roosevelt. The occasion was the extravagant coming-out party of the president’s daughter, Alice, who became fabled in her own right. Of course, Franklin would marry Alice’s cousin Eleanor a few years down the road.
Thus, historian H. W. Brands sets the stage for “Traitor to His Class,” the biography of the Hudson Valley patrician who would battle big business, attempt to tax the highest income bracket beyond anything we can imagine today, champion the common man and pave the way for the American labor movement.
This huge biography is the first major Roosevelt work written by a historian who did not live through the Roosevelt years or feel the direct influence of the politics of the New Deal. Finally we have a biography of the man often called the most influential president of the 20th century, written by an author who does not carry on his shoulders the weight of the Great Depression or the first-hand memories of World War II.
Brands reminds us that Roosevelt lost his first bid for national office. At the age of 38, in what some call FDR’s first life, or life before polio, he had captured the vice presidential spot on the Democratic ticket led by James Cox. Cox and Roosevelt were trounced in 1920 by Republicans Harding and Coolidge. It was at this point in the future president’s life that we are introduced to Louie Howe and Steve Early, two characters who would shape Roosevelt in the years to come.
Brands builds supporting characters with the deftness of a novelist. Whether it be the hard-drinking Howe, or years later, the harder-drinking Winston Churchill, we find Roosevelt surrounded by fully developed characters. And of course, there always was the indubitable presence of Eleanor.
Each of these characters, along with others like Harry Stimson, Lucy Mercer and George Marshall have been written about extensively elsewhere, but Brands never strays from his point. Even the devastating bout with polio that left Roosevelt unable to walk, or even stand on his own, is portrayed as part of the preparation for his 12 years-plus in the White House.
It is notable in this inaugural year that at the time of Roosevelt’s inauguration, famed newspaper columnist Walter Lippman described him as a man “without a firm grasp on public affairs and without strong convictions . . . brave words rather than bold deeds.”
Of course, FDR’s first 100 days at the helm would change all that. It was as if he had been planning his presidency for years. He did so much so fast that today it often is overlooked in the flurry of initial legislation that he gave birth to Social Security. If nothing else had been accomplished in his presidency, that one piece of legislation, like the health care issue today, would have been a fitting legacy.
Here in the White House years is where author Brands shows his deep and complete understanding of the nation and the world of the ’30s. He describes a nation in the throes of the Great Depression, hanging on every word of its new president, and a world looking to the United States to pull it out of economic morass.
We know now that for all of FDR’s deftness, it was not to be. It would take a world war and millions of lives lost on three continents and in three oceans before Roosevelt’s image of the United States as the stalwart of world democracy would emerge.
But this is a story of domestic politics. Brands uses private notes and meeting minutes, diaries and personal letters, and especially off-the-record presidential briefings and “background” references from Roosevelt’s press conferences, which of course were not broadcast live. Even World War II is seen through the prism of domestic politics, with a president, way out ahead of his nation, nudging a reluctant United States toward its “rendezvous with destiny.”
This book is must reading for a new generation of educated Americans, especially the enlightened generation that just recently has discovered the fascination of American politics. It is told not with the blind loyalty of their grandfathers’ generation nor with the biases of their fathers’ generation.
It is, at last, a look at the 20th century’s greatest U. S. president without all the smoke and dust and noise that so often has shrouded the view of the Roosevelt era.
Edward Cuddihy is a retired Buffalo News managingeditor.