Wisdom but also bats
John Zametica
FDR by Ted Morgan
Grafton, f20
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the polio- stricken American president, is still re- garded with innocent esteem. His record as a politician and statesman, however, is in many ways unimpressive. The New Deal, his truly great achievement in domestic affairs, lay almost shattered by 1938 be- cause of his stubborn insistence on balanc- ing the budget, and was only saved by the approach of war. In his artless attempt to manipulate the Supreme Court, which had declared much of the New Deal legislation unconstitutional, he descended to the lowest depths of political intrigue. Charges of dictatorship were frequent. In foreign policy Roosevelt combined Cynicism, ignorance and prejudice on an unbelievable scale. His first excursion into that area on becoming president was in 1933 when he torpedoed the London Eco- nomic Conference simply because the Un- ited States economy had begun to show signs of improvement. His internationalism -- and he liked to think of himself as a Wilsonian in that connection — was thus suspect. When Henry Morgenthau, the Treasury Secretary, suggested in 1937 that E tirope looked to him, Roosevelt replied, `I feel like throwing either a cup and saucer at you, or the coffee pot.' His famous Chicago 'quarantine' speech delivered later that year left everyone baffled; even today historians puzzle over his tentative Proposal to isolate the aggressor nations. Despite his marked preference for domes- tic issues, Roosevelt made several peace initiatives in the late 1930s. Some of these Were patently ridiculous, such as the 1938 Plan for the convening in Washington of the entire diplomatic corps for a presiden- tial lecture on world peace. The problems of Roosevelt's foreign policy were in part of his own making. Cordell Hull, his Secretary of State, was at best unimagina- tive. Moreover, Roosevelt was for a long time quite indifferent to the damaging feud between Hull and Sumner Welles, the Under Secretary of State whose Monumental incompetence was only matched by his passion for young black Males. Roosevelt's other advisers also left much to be desired. James Farley, a possible nominee for the presidency in 1940, in all seriousness defined a Nazi as 'a person who hated a Jew more than was necessary.'
Dragged in to the war by the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States at least had a president determined to deal with the dictators. Sometimes, however, the military methods which he contemplated were a little strange. He actually took the trouble on one occasion to transmit to William Donovan, the head of the Office of Strategic Services, a suggestion for using bats in surprise attacks on the Japanese. But to his credit he rejected Mrs Roosevelt's idea of using bees and wasps against the Germans. On the political side, the United States involvement in the war created major headaches for Churchill and the Foreign Office. For Roosevelt was hell-bent on breaking up Britain's colonial empire. His frequent agitation for Indian independence showed appalling insensitiv- ity to a wartime ally. He also believed, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that Britain was extraordinarily rich. He remarked as late as 1944: 'This is interest- ing. I had no idea England was broke.' In his approach to the Soviet Union he was guided by a fundamentally mistaken confi- dence in his own ability to manage and influence Stalin, an ability which he thought far superior to that of Churchill. Yet he achieved little on that most impor- tant front. Roosevelt's vision of the post- war world was that of four big policemen keeping order: the United States as the leader, the Soviet Union, Britain and China. But with an enfeebled Britain and a bleeding China only the first two really had the strength to wield the truncheon. Roosevelt's internationalism had thus progressed to the stage of a blueprint for peace, but a blueprint optimistically de- pendent on a permanently cooperative Soviet Union.
Ted Morgan is merciless in detailing Roosevelt's weaknesses and dotty ideas his is no sycophantic biography, and the subject is always treated from a healthy distance. The style of writing is light, almost chatty, and succeeds in holding the reader's attention throughout a forbidding 774 pages. But his biography of Roosevelt is not as 'definitive' as the publisher's blurb would have us believe: it is a vast collection of well-connected short stories well told, rather than an integrated and academic assessment of his career. Indeed, the biog- raphical element recedes into the back- ground after 1933 when Roosevelt began his first term. We are in fact told much more about the personal lives of the coterie around the president. Such attention may be irrelevant, but it is for example amusing to read Mrs Roosevelt's passionate letters to one Lorena Hickok, a lesbian: 'My dear, if you meet me may I forget there are other people present or must I behave? I shall want to hug you to death. I can hardly wait.'
Morgan is impressed by Roosevelt's self-control and his 'instinctive wisdom', which he believes had something to do with his physical condition. He emphasises Roosevelt's polymathism — his interests ranged from naval engineering to num- ismatics. But he identifies also a lack of frankness, a passion for manipulation and a streak of vindictiveness. He shows Roosevelt at every stage as a man depen- dent on others for ideas. The United States of today, Morgan concludes, is very much of Roosevelt's making. The existing international order, too, is more or less how Roosevelt had intended it — except, that is, that the Americans and the Rus- sians are at loggerheads.
Previous page
