THE PRESIDENCY: Prelude to History

• Share

(3 of 5)

The Mystery. Last week Franklin Delano Roosevelt. 58 years old, seven generations removed from a Dutch settler of 1644, son of a country gentleman and the belle of the Hudson River valley, was head of the last great democracy still at peace, with 33 weeks left of his second term. Yet, although he was in his eighth year as President, although he had moved, worked, eaten, laughed, exhorted, prayed in the intensest glare of public scrutiny; although his every facial grimace, the tone of his voice, each mannerism, the dark mole over his left eyebrow, the mole on his right cheek—although all these were public property, intimate to every U. S. citizen, still there was no man in the U. S. who could answer the question: Who is Franklin Roosevelt?

Many were the snap answers: he is a great man, he is a menace, he is a phony. But no one knew; to his closest intimates he remained an upper-case X in an equation of variables. This in spite of the fact that the U. S. has a vast, sure talent for knowing its leaders.

To hillmen and lowlanders in the farthest reaches of the U. S., to the nearest of his friends this week in the damp June heat of Washington, the name Franklin Roosevelt meant many things—interesting, exciting, even dangerous things—but no one thing they could all agree on or put a name to.

Those men who have worked with him at close range, who know that a deep, almost bottomless patience controls his every action, have two theories about him:

1) that, serenely sure of his own judgment, he meets any given situation with impulsively quick action, does all that can be done, then relaxes with a clear conscience:

2) a complex belief, expressed by Newshawk Marquis W. Childs, St. Louis Post-Dispatch correspondent, that "in his heart of hearts he is a sad man, having seen through the illusions and futilities of his time. Nevertheless, he has the courage to be cheerful and to do good in the sight of God. This theory endows Mr. Roosevelt with the humility of true greatness. . . ."

Theory I explains Franklin Roosevelt as the Great Improviser, impetuously patching up the irremediable, a dextrous three-shell manipulator, now-you-see-it, now-you-don't man. Theory II makes him a sitting Lincoln, streamlined for 1940, wearing a club tie instead of a shawl.

Solution. Perhaps not this week, not this month, but soon—in six weeks, almost certainly—the U. S. will know who Franklin Roosevelt is. The answer will come piecemeal, in reactions to his words, movements, decisions. To a U. S. gnawed by anxiety at the overwhelming, catastrophic fulfillment of Spenglerian prophecies, to a nation wondering whether its morale, mind, muscles have been too much enfeebled (by years of cynicism, of tolerance without discrimination) to fight now for the things democracy holds dear; to such a worrying, mistrustful, anxious country the answer will come clear only if Franklin Roosevelt acts boldly to forfend the crisis piled on crisis, if he boldly, surely chooses among the variety of desperate choices, if he strongly decides, and strongly acts.