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

FDR. He and Louis Howe had written a statement for the press. They wrote it on their own that morning. FDR had left early for Albany.

Farley read the statement slowly so the reporters could get it down word for word.

“I fully expect,” he said, “that the call will come to Governor Roosevelt when the first presidential primary is held, which will be late next year. The Democrats in the nation naturally want as their candidate for president the man who has shown himself capable of carrying the most important state in the country by a record-breaking majority. I do not see how Mr. Roosevelt can escape becoming the next presidential nominee of his party, even if no one should raise a finger to bring it about.”

The reporters ran for the telephones.

Farley said later that he and FDR had never discussed a campaign for president before that day. This was a political superstition: You avoided such talk before the time was right.

When Farley figured his boss had reached his office up in Albany, he called him to report what he had said to the press, not sure what the response might be.

FDR just laughed.

“Whatever you said, Jim, is all right with me.”

Before the month was out, Louis Howe had rented a new office as a base for a national campaign. And Ed Flynn—the party boss of the Bronx who had urged FDR to run for governor, now Roosevelt’s secretary of state, whom FDR believed to be the smartest political organizer in America—was invited up to the governor’s residence for the weekend.

Flynn found himself in the governor’s private quarters facing only Howe and FDR.

“Eddie,” the governor said, “my reason for asking you to stay overnight is that I believe I can be nominated for the Presidency in 1932.”

In 1928, when Herbert Hoover won the White House in a landslide, no one would have bet much on a Democrat’s chances in 1932. FDR had set his sights on the election year after that, 1936. But in just two years the political landscape had been plowed up as if by a string of tornadoes. The next Democratic nomination was looking much more valuable than anyone had expected.

Roosevelt’s crushing majority in 1930 had been bolstered by voters who blamed Republicans for a stock market crash in the fall of 1929 and the economic recession it had triggered—a recession so deep that by the fall of 1930 some people were calling it a depression—a frightening mixture of falling prices and production that puts many people out of their jobs, dries up the credit that businesses need to expand, and threatens to last much longer than the downward loop of the normal business cycle.

But it wasn’t just the struggling economy that had given FDR his landslide. New York Democrats running for Congress in 1930 hadn’t won by nearly such large margins.

It was what he had done in his short time as governor—not so much the laws he had passed, since the Republicans in the state legislature blocked most of his initiatives, but the powerful impression he had made. Even to people who had seen him as no more than a pale shadow of his Rough Rider cousin, a rich boy dabbling in politics, it was clear that “a new Roosevelt” had come fully and forcefully onto the political scene.

This had happened in stages.

First, he had dealt with the problem of Al Smith.

Smith had been devastated by the loss of both his race for the presidency and his hold on power in New York State. In the wake of the Hoover landslide, he declared that he was out of politics for good, at least as a candidate for high office.

But Al’s appetite for influence remained strong. As he watched the man he had practically begged to run for governor prepare to take his place in Albany, he began to ruminate on all the reasons he had harbored doubts about FDR.

So Smith began to think of himself as a kind of powerful coach—on the sidelines, yes, but calling the plays for an inexperienced and spindly freshman quarterback.

He soon learned that the new quarterback intended to call his own plays.

Even before FDR took the oath of office, Al made his bid to be the power behind the throne.

“Well, Frank,” he said, “you won’t have to worry about being governor. You can come to Albany for the inauguration and stay around for a while and get the hang of things, and when you get a chance you can hop back to Warm Springs, and we’ll be here to see that things go all right.”

“Al,” FDR replied, “did you ever leave Albany for an extended stay during a legislative session?”

“No,” Smith conceded.

“Then I won’t either,” FDR said.

Then Smith urged FDR to reappoint two of his own most trusted aides, especially Belle Moskowitz, whose title was secretary but who in fact was Smith’s most powerful behind-the-scenes operator and his most devoted loyalist.

No, the new governor said politely, he needed his own people close to him.

When FDR told Frances Perkins about this exchange, she was struck by his determination to make his own decisions, tempting as it might be to make concessions to Smith just to keep the peace. She had a “very real sense, as I rode home on the train that night, of this man, sick and struggling … just grabbing to keep his will power. He must do it himself. He must think it himself … It must be his.”

Early in 1929, FDR invited Smith to stay overnight at the governor’s residence for a couple of weekends. But the Saturday dinner table was crowded with guests, and FDR went up to bed before Al could take him aside to talk. In the morning, Smith attended mass while FDR slept in. More guests came in and out all afternoon, and then Smith had to catch the train for New York. For a while, Perkins said, Al “didn’t realize he was getting the brush-off.”

Finally he did get it, and he began to get angry.

He