FDR: A Biography (Hardcover)

Which is where this one comes in. I bought it more than 15 years ago, but never really read it until last year. Before then, I was only interested in "proof texting" FDR to basically show what a socialist bad guy he was, a poor comparative reflection of cousin Theodore. In this sense, too-high a view of Theodore dooms FDR to second-best. Then I read Churchill's 6 Vol. history of WW II, and through that lens saw a very compelling FDR, one big enough to "run" Churchill. And Churchill makes it clear in his history why it was utterly impossible for the West to save Eastern and Central Europe from the Russians. Explaining this take on things drops the charges against FDR so long-brought by the John Birchers--that somehow he gave away the world to the communists.

Ted Morgan gets deep into this, but by way of Roosevelt's childhood and familial relations, focusing on Franklin's impossible mother--the root of his famous evasiveness, says Morgan. Then on into minor politics after a little Harvard; a glimpse of some adultery, and then polio. The adultery is interesting, because compared to someone like Bill Clinton, FDR's sounds quite focused, or even traditional--his Lucy Mercer of Pre-Presidency fame stays in the picture, and is in the room with him 4 terms later when he has his stroke after going thru the morning's mail at the resort in Georgia he had purchased (in pale, or maybe non-pale imitation of Teddie's purchase of the badlands ranch--both places of rehabilitation for each Roosevelt).

And although Eleanor may have played house in a cottage behind Franklin's Mom's ancestral property, with a few lesbian friends, she, too is a sympathetic figure, putting up with Franklin, then becoming his functional nurse, and raising their children in the scant time left after working on the ills of the rest of the world. Something like Hillary with more empathy, or substance. How about Hillary minus the switchblade?

Somewhere in all of the polio and then political battle, FDR decided to be great; and this seems to have translated, as the story unfolds through Morgan, into a similar decision to make the United States great, and dominant. Doing this while paralyzed from the waist down, and while taking time to "stick it" to old foes in the New York State government throughout his presidency, induces a kind of involuntary admiration which lets me see how people like Bill Clinton are so drawn to the FDR memory, and how they seek to replay FDR's utter commitment to the moment and the audience. Compared to a Clinton, the multimillionaire Dutchman from upstate New York paradoxically had a lot less to prove, but yet accomplished so much more.

So after a long time admiring Teddy and dumping on Frank, this book makes it clear to me that although an FDR without the preexisting Teddy would not have been possible, FDR very arguably accomplished a great deal more than TR. As recent, more critical biographers of Teddy explain (H.W. Brands, TR: The Last Romantic), Teddy sort of fanatacized-out during his third party phase, maybe paralleling Winston Churchill's father's flame-out--an interesting common point which may have given these two leaders in their wartime phase the ability to compromise and survive, when it would be easier to lecture and purify (and get tossed out).

Thus the connection with the mess of the war, and part of the explanation for us coming out on top (in spite of FDR's child like view of India, and some-said-strange courting of Ibn Saud). If these actions were designed to take adavntage not only of Germany's destruction, but also of England's slide, then FDR succeeded. Maybe Churchill would call him another Marlborough, had he been related, due to this balance of power maneuvering. But maybe FDR didn't intend it that way at all, if he was more a tool of providence mingled in with great effort (kind of an Augustinian view of political success).

In summary, I'm not as hacked off as I used to be when I see FDR's face on our dimes, after reading this book. It's OK with me now if stays right there. He puts a better human face on our money than a stylized Mercury-head yanked from mythology. And that's what this author has also done for me.

One thing I'd like to see a future historian look into: Campobello Island, the family's version of the Kennedy compound, is actually in Canadian territorial water (so I'm told). What relationship did this have to the Roosevelt family import fortune of glass and hardware back in the 1700s and 1800s? Was there a tax avoidance or illegality angle, like the Forbes family, the Bronfmans of Canada (See Peter Newman's book "Bronfman Dynasty" on that), and the Kennedys? That would complete the economic substrate of our knowledge of this family, long since passed, it seems, into fashionable senescense. And sure, all families seem to decline; but few leave behind such great men.

Which gets us back to the pack of FDR authors. They're everywhere, some of their books skinny, some quite fat. But this one really stands out. I highly recommend it.

It also puts to rest the idea that FDR knew about the Pearl Harbor attach in advance.

For these reasons, I recommend it.