Master of His Fate James Tobin (free e books to read online .txt) 📖

How about Herbert Lehman, a New York City banker and Democratic activist who could pay for his own campaign? As a Jew, he would be an especially strong choice to oppose Ottinger.

No, said the upstaters—no one outside the city had ever heard of Lehman.

What about Townsend Scudder, a respected justice of the New York State Supreme Court and Al’s personal favorite for the nomination?

No, said the city men—Scudder was out of touch, a poor candidate.

Owen D. Young, the president of General Electric? He would be a long shot, and he didn’t want to run.

U.S. Senator Robert Wagner? No, he liked the Senate and wanted to stay there.

It was Roosevelt or disaster.

It’s tempting to think FDR was secretly hoping the Democrats would force him to run by nominating him against his stated wishes. Then his campaign would appear to be a noble gesture for the good of the party. But FDR calculated every step with an eye toward the long run. If he ran for governor now and lost, his hopes for the presidency would take a terrible hit. A race for governor in 1928 was just too risky—both he and Howe were convinced of it. In a private note to his mother, FDR wrote: “I have had a difficult time turning down the Governorship—letters and telegrams by the dozen begging me to save the situation by running. But I have been perfectly firm—I only hope they don’t try to stampede the Convention—nominate me and then adjourn!”

It wasn’t just the idea of losing that was keeping him from running. There was something happening with his legs. We don’t know exactly what it was. The only evidence comes to us thirdhand from a friend of Missy LeHand’s, Grace Tully, who would become another of FDR’s assistants. Many years later, Tully wrote of a conversation she had with Missy about what happened at Warm Springs that weekend. Missy told Tully that while FDR was practicing his walking in the presence of Missy, Dr. Hubbard, and Helena Mahoney, he had taken a few steps on his own across the living room of his cottage—without canes or crutches. If true, that was extraordinary. But it is very hard to believe, given everything we know about the state of FDR’s legs in 1928. He just didn’t have the strength in his lower body to keep his balance without support. But even if Tully was wrong about the details, the mere fact that Missy told Tully this story suggests that something significant happened—something that may have given FDR new hope that he might be able to walk on his own, if only he could give enough time to more exercise.

Monday, October 1, was the day there had to be a decision on the nomination for governor.

In Rochester, Smith and his team arrived by train and went directly into meetings at the Seneca Hotel.

Meanwhile, down in Georgia, FDR sorted through the latest pile of telegrams urging him to accept the nomination. One was one from his daughter: “GO AHEAD AND TAKE IT! MUCH LOVE. ANNA.” (He wired back: “YOU OUGHT TO BE SPANKED. MUCH LOVE. PA.”)

Missy was against it. She glared at FDR and said: “Don’t … you … dare!”

FDR asked for a car to be brought up to the cottage. At the wheel was Egbert Curtis, the young manager of the Meriwether Inn, a favorite of FDR’s whom he called by the nickname Curt. FDR, Missy, and Irvin McDuffie got in. FDR was scheduled to give a speech in Manchester, the next town to the southeast, down State Route 41. He wasn’t supposed to speak until evening, but he wanted to get out of Warm Springs early, just to make sure he couldn’t be called to the telephone.

At the convention in Rochester, Eleanor was going from meeting to meeting as head of the women’s division of the Democratic State Committee. But she was due to catch an evening train back to New York so she could teach the next morning.

Then she saw one of Al Smith’s men trying to get her attention.

Would she mind coming up to speak to the governor for a moment?

It’s hard to be sure how Eleanor felt about the idea of her husband running for governor. Later she told her son Jimmy that she had not opposed it. She still believed Franklin was overcommitted to Warm Springs, moneywise and timewise, and she thought a race for governor, win or lose, might help pull him away from Georgia. She was deeply committed to Al Smith’s campaign for president, and she thought FDR could help Smith win.

But she and FDR had agreed that he would make his own decisions about whether and when he would run for office.

When Smith and his lieutenants brought her in, she said straight off that she would not urge Franklin to take the nomination.

That was fine, they said. What they wanted to know was this: What was the real truth about his health? Would it actually endanger his well-being if he made the race? Was that why he was saying no?

She recalled later: “I had to say I didn’t think it would hurt Franklin’s health, but Franklin believed that he might go further in his ability to [walk] and therefore he wanted to keep himself free to go on with his Warm Springs treatment.”

She was just repeating what FDR had said. But at least Smith now had reason to think a race for governor wouldn’t actually cause Roosevelt harm.

Ed Flynn, the Bronx Democratic boss, had been saying he thought FDR was refusing to run because he had to safeguard his investment in Warm Springs. So Smith pulled the multimillionaire John Raskob into the conversation with Eleanor. What if Raskob promised to take over FDR’s obligation for Warm Springs? Would that change his mind?

As Eleanor recalled this part of the conversation, she said, “No, I don’t think so.”

Raskob didn’t hear it that way. He thought Eleanor was saying—or implying, at