FDR - Jean Edward Smith [150]
In the spring of 1929 FDR held the first in a long series of fireside chats, bypassing the Republican legislature and speaking directly to New Yorkers over the radio. Roosevelt was a master at simplifying complicated issues and bringing people into his confidence. His cultivated delivery and easy manner made the audience feel they were participating directly at the highest level of government. Usually Roosevelt spoke on Sunday night, when the radio audience was largest. His remarks were painstakingly crafted to achieve the desired informality. Sometimes Rosenman prepared the first draft; more often it was FDR himself. A flood of letters would deluge the legislature after each talk, and Roosevelt would usually get close to what he asked for from the Assembly.*
In April 1929, after the legislature adjourned, FDR stopped off in Washington on his way to Warm Springs. He had been invited by the capital’s newsmen to address their annual Gridiron Dinner, where he, not Al Smith, would represent the Democratic party. The other two speakers were President Hoover and Chief Justice Taft. Roosevelt’s remarks were off the record, but from his reception it was clear the Washington press corps considered him a prime contender for the Democratic nomination.*
That summer FDR undertook a round of speaking engagements that kept his name before the public. He was awarded honorary degrees by Hobart College, Dartmouth, Fordham, and Harvard. His commencement remarks stressed the importance of social consciousness and gently decried “the unlikely alliance between big business and big government.” At Harvard, where he attended his twenty-fifth reunion—the high point for Ivy League alumni—he was made chief marshal of the graduation exercises and an honorary member of Phi Beta Kappa. “It certainly is grand,” FDR wrote his old friend Livingston Davis. “I assure you that being governor is nothing in comparison.”35
On July 4 Roosevelt presided at the dedication of Tammany Hall’s new headquarters off Union Square. Charles Murphy was gone, succeeded by lesser men, but the wigwam remained the focus of Democratic politics in the city. The fifteen hundred Tammany braves in attendance cheered Roosevelt as “the next president of the United States.” FDR rose to the occasion. Unencumbered by academic propriety, he lashed out at the oligarchs of economic feudalism. If the American people wished to preserve their freedom, they should don liberty caps like their Revolutionary forebears and resist the concentration of economic power, said FDR. This time the struggle would be fought with ballots rather than muskets. And unless they were successful, “all property would be concentrated in the hands of a few, and the overwhelming majority would become serfs.”36
This was fire-and-brimstone populist oratory, and Roosevelt struck a responsive chord. His remarks made banner headlines across the country. Will Rogers, the cowboy humorist, then at the height of his popularity, wrote in his syndicated New York Times column that the speech “just about” ensured that Roosevelt would be “the next Democratic candidate.”37†
Having made their point, Roosevelt and Howe decided it was time to retrench. They had lit a spark, but it would be unwise to trigger a premature conflagration. FDR drafted a statement for the press: “It is probably because of the warm weather and the lack of real news that my young gentlemen