Master of His Fate by James Tobin (free ebooks for android txt) 📗

“I must give principal consideration for at least 2 years more to getting back the use of my legs,” he told Wehle. “Up to now I have been able to walk only with great difficulty with steel braces and crutches, having to be carried up and down steps, in and out of cars, etc., etc. Such a situation is, of course, impossible in a candidate.

“I am, however, gaining greatly and hope, within a year, to be walking without the braces, with the further hope of then discarding the crutches in favor of canes and eventually possibly getting rid of the latter also. The above are necessarily only hopes, as no human being can tell whether the steady improvement will keep up.”

Those few sentences perfectly summed up the strategy that FDR and Louis appear to have chosen—the best strategy to secure a position of strength on that complicated chessboard.

In one sense, FDR meant just what he said. He hoped before too long to be walking with only a cane, and if he accomplished that, he could run for office. He wasn’t ready now, but he could be soon.

This was the plain truth. But the truth served his deeper purposes, too.

He hoped that this not-now-but-later strategy would prevent Democratic friends like Wehle from pressuring him to mount a direct challenge to Smith for the party’s next presidential nomination. It would also repel any pressure to run for the U.S. Senate. Howe reminded him of that on the eve of the New York Democratic Party’s 1926 convention. FDR had agreed to nominate Smith for another two-year term as governor. Then the party would choose its Senate nominee.

“I hope your spine is still sufficiently strong to assure them that you are still nigh to death’s door for the next two years,” Howe warned FDR. “Please try and look pallid and worn and weary when you address the convention so it will not be too exceedingly difficult to get by with the statement that your health will not permit you to run for anything for 2 years more.”

But it was risky to look too “worn and weary.” If that was how he appeared, Democratic leaders in New York might just write Roosevelt off for good. That was why he had to hold out the tantalizing promise of a full comeback.

FDR and Howe were saying to each other: Just stay in the game … Don’t let their attention wander too far, or other men may pass you by … Meanwhile, pursue recovery by every available method.

That consideration—the delicate business of timing his return to politics at just the right moment—seems to be the final reason he kept telling people that he expected to be so much better … soon.

Did he mean it? Good question.

Of course, sometimes he didn’t tell the truth at all.

“I honestly have no desire either to run for the presidency or to be president,” he remarked to a reporter about this time. “I have seen much of presidents and administrations. Even though it may sound selfish, I would rather do my bit as a private in the ranks.”

On an overcast day in June 1926, Anna Roosevelt, who had just turned twenty, was married to Curtis Dall, her senior by nine years, at St. James Episcopal Church, a lovely stone sanctuary under Hyde Park’s towering trees.

She was not a very happy bride. “I got married when I did because I wanted to get out,” she admitted later—out of the tense circle of her family, that is, where there was seldom a thaw in the cold war between her mother and grandmother.

Sara Roosevelt had been offering her usual disapproving remarks and adding new ones—about Eleanor’s political activities; about Franklin’s long absences from New York; and about Eleanor’s recent decision, with FDR’s approval and help, to build a stone cottage, called Val-Kill, two miles from the “big house,” where she and two close women friends would stay whenever they were in Hyde Park. Eleanor steamed. If she wrote Franklin about his mother’s latest needling, he would return support and sympathy, then remind Eleanor that after all, she knew what Sara was like.

Still, on the wedding day, the family went through all the motions of a big, happy family celebration. They offered smiling welcomes to guests arriving from New York City on special train cars—associates of Franklin’s from politics, the business world, and Harvard; friends of Eleanor’s from her private school in New York and her comrades in feminist circles; people like Sara from upper-crust families in the wealthy enclaves of Newport, Rhode Island, Tuxedo Park, New York, and Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

After the wedding service, the bridal party and guests were transported to the Roosevelt estate, where they spread across the lawn for refreshments and wedding cake. On such occasions, a friend said, FDR, seated in a centrally placed chair, would be “talking to everybody, bantering with his children, teasing them and they him. The youngsters would tell preposterous stories to dignified visitors to see if they could get away with them, and would burst into gales of laughter regardless of whether the visitor fell for the story or saw through them.” Sara glided gracefully from one group of guests to another—“such an indomitable and exciting personality,” as a friend said—while Eleanor tended to minor emergencies and looked after guests’ special needs.

The guests chattered about mutual friends and social connections, of plans for travel and recreation in the coming summer—all casual, pleasant, and far removed from serious public affairs. But anyone watching closely would have seen that political calculations were not far from the mind of the bride’s father, even on his daughter’s wedding day.

The evidence turned up when formal photographs were taken. These photos wouldn’t be just keepsakes for family albums. When the daughter of such a famous man was married, it was news, so a press photographer was on the scene, and his pictures would be sent all over the country for publication