For many years after I first took an interest in politics, I had a relatively hostile view of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Although my high-school history textbooks portrayed him as the architect of the New Deal and America's leader during World War II, I was equally aware of his foibles, including his infidelities, deceptiveness regarding his health, and my skepticism of the current administrative state in America that emerged out of the Great Depression. It wasn't until I read Conrad Black's biography of him that I finally developed a more nuanced understanding of the man and saw the many wavelengths he operated on as a political leader.
Conrad Black has developed a reputation of redeeming unexpected characters. Starting with the Quebecois leader Maurice Duplessis and later Richard Nixon, the only American president to resign from office, he approaches his subjects from unexpected, often sympathetic angles, and throws at the reader huge amounts of archival research. In the case of this book, Black spent millions on the purchase of original documents from FDR and his administration, which likely cost far more than he could ever expect returned in the profits of book sales.
The biography itself is relatively traditional as it advances in chronological order, but Black writes in a quirky, refreshing style and posits a few unexpected revisions to the traditional narrative of FDR's presidency. For example, Black argues that rather than a single or bifurcated New Deal, in reality there were multiple eras in his attempt to pull America out of the Great Depression. Despite being portrayed by modern progressives as a traitor to his class and hostile to business, FDR actually felt quite the opposite. It was large corporate interests had backed the fascist takeovers of Germany, Italy, and other European countries, and he viewed the Soviet Union's attempts at building a communist society as equally inimical to a free government controlled by the people. In managing the New Deal, FDR wanted to soften the worst excesses of a cyclical economy, but still preserve free enterprise by the average American. In addition, Black notes that certain programs of FDR, such as Social Security, were intended as temporary measures, rather than lifetime sinecures.
Some of the weakest areas of the book are in covering World War II. Black is more forgiving of FDR's relations with Stalin than I am, but a bigger weakness to me is in describing the managing of the war's operations. Leading figures on the field of battle are often judged by resources (or lack thereof), rather than independently off their character, and I wish we received more insight into FDR's views as a war leader.
The area Black writes most convincingly, however, and which caused me to soften my view of the man, was in describing FDR's struggle with polio. He went from a vigorous young man who seemed on the cusp of supreme power when nominated for the vice presidency, and then was stricken with a disease which would lack a cure for another three decades. Nonetheless, FDR continually worked to improve his body and sought treatment. While he was deceitful with the public regarding the degree to which it affected his health, Black fairly points out he still got the job done and you almost have to be duplicitous if you wanted to survive in politics.
On the whole, at over a thousand pages, this is a book that would take many nights to finish reading, but Black has achieved a masterpiece. While I enjoyed his biography of Nixon even more, Conrad Black proves that FDR was an truly exceptional man in exceptional times.
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