FDR - Jean Edward Smith [115]
Pleased with the ticket of Cox and Roosevelt, and a trifle more optimistic than the circumstances warranted, the convention adjourned sine die at 1:42 P.M. FDR’s friends were overjoyed. Walter Lippmann of The New Republic wired his congratulations: “Your nomination is the best news in many a long day.” Herbert Hoover wrote, “the fact that I do not belong to your political tribe does not deter me from offering my personal congratulations to an old friend. I am glad to see you in the game in such a prominent place, and, although I will not be charged with traitorship by wishing you success, I nevertheless consider it a contribution to the good of the country that you have been nominated and it will bring the merit of a great public servant to the front.” Franklin K. Lane offered his advice: “Get plenty of sleep. Do not give yourself to the handshakers. Be wise! Don’t be brilliant.”69
On August 6, 1920, FDR resigned as assistant secretary of the Navy and headed west.70 In the next three months he would crisscross the country twice, delivering nearly one thousand speeches and countless impromptu addresses—the most extensive campaign ever conducted by a candidate for national office.71 Franklin wrapped himself in TR’s mantle, peppering his speeches with “bully,” “strenuous,” and all manner of verbal tics associated with the former president. “I do not profess to know what Theodore Roosevelt would say if he were alive today, but I cannot help think that the man who invented the word ‘pussy-footer’ could not have resisted the temptation to apply it to Mr. Harding.”72
Colonel Robert R. McCormick, a sometime Bull Moose and Franklin’s classmate at Groton, immediately protested. On August 13 the Chicago Tribune called FDR “the one-half of one percent Roosevelt. Franklin is as much like Theodore as a clam is like a bear-cat.… If he is Theodore Roosevelt, Elihu Root is [Socialist leader] Gene Debs, and Bryan is a brewer.”73 Edith Roosevelt, TR’s widow, said, “Franklin is nine-tenths mush and one-tenth Eleanor.” Nicholas Longworth, Alice’s husband and a man who knew something about alcohol, called FDR “a denatured Roosevelt.”74
Franklin’s advance man during the campaign was Steve Early, a blunt-spoken southern journalist who would remain at FDR’s side throughout his career. His press aide was Marvin McIntyre, who had handled that job at the Navy Department and who would become another permanent fixture. Louis Howe was there, of course, as were Tom Lynch from Hyde Park and FDR’s faithful personal secretary, Renah Camalier. When the campaign ran short of money, Franklin wrote a check for $5,000; Sara wrote another for $3,000. (In today’s currency, that would be $50,000 and $30,000, respectively.) Roosevelt was not yet the polished campaigner he would become. But he was tireless and confident, and Louis Howe thought he was becoming increasingly eloquent. Unfortunately, he was often unfocused and prone to exaggerate his personal achievements. Early complained, “he couldn’t be made to prepare speeches in advance, preferring to play cards instead.”75
Franklin’s casual approach caused a passel of trouble. On August 18, in Deer Lodge, Montana, he became carried away by his own rhetoric and claimed to have written the Haitian constitution, much as Al Gore once claimed to have invented the Internet. A week later in San Francisco, he boasted of “running Haiti and Santo Domingo for the past seven years.”76 The Associated Press picked up the stories, and Republicans had a field day. Harding said that when he became president, “I will not empower the Assistant Secretary of the Navy to draft a constitution for helpless neighbors in the West Indies and jam it down their throats at the point of bayonets carried by United States Marines.”77 John Barrett, director of the Pan-American Union, declared that Roosevelt had made a dreadful mistake. The New York Telegraph called him “a spoiled child to be spanked.”78 FDR denied having made the statements, but there were too many witnesses to make the denial credible.
For the most part, Cox and Roosevelt