FDR - Jean Edward Smith [157]
* FDR’s response to Stimson, Hurley, and Mills was much like his reply to Martin, Barton, and Fish in the 1940 presidential campaign, when he worked Democratic crowds into paroxysms of partisan enthusiasm by invoking the names of the isolationist congressmen Joseph Martin of Massachusetts, Bruce Barton of New York, and Hamilton Fish of New York. “Martin, Barton, and Fish” rolled off FDR’s tongue in rhythmic cadence and was zestfully picked up and chanted by Democratic audiences, to their mutual delight.
* Miller was married three times, briefly and unsuccessfully. In 1932 and again in 1941 he is said to have married to quell rumors about himself and ER. After 1929 he and Eleanor had become constant companions in Albany, and gossip abounded. “That’s why I got married in 1932 with plenty of publicity. I got married with someone I wasn’t in love with. Same with the second marriage. But I was never successful in killing the gossip.”
In 1947, during divorce proceedings initiated by his third wife, Simone, it was alleged that Miller was conducting an adulterous affair with ER and a packet of her letters to him was introduced into the proceedings. The trial judge awarded Mrs. Miller a considerable but undisclosed settlement and custody of their two children and ordered the letters sealed. (Eleanor was godmother to both children.) There was minimum publicity, although New York Daily News columnist Ed Sullivan wrote, “Navy Commander’s wife will rock the country if she names the co-respondent in her divorce action!!!” Eleanor’s FBI file also contains a reference to the proceedings in Miller v. Miller. On October 4, 1947, the New York field office informed Clyde Tolson, J. Edgar Hoover’s deputy, that Mrs. Miller “is planning to sue her husband for divorce and she will name Eleanor Roosevelt as correspondent.” (Microfilm, FDRL.) In 1984, Joseph Lash reported that Eleanor was devastated by the proceedings, “especially because of their possible impact on her children.” Joseph P. Lash, interview with Earl Miller, reprinted in Love, Eleanor 119 (New York: Doubleday, 1982); Lash, A World of Love 296–297 (New York: Doubleday, 1984); New York Daily News, January 13, 1947.
THIRTEEN
NOMINATION
I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a New Deal for the American people.
—FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, JULY 2, 1932
THE DAY AFTER FDR’s reelection, James Farley, at Louis Howe’s instigation, threw the governor’s hat into the presidential ring. “I do not see how Mr. Roosevelt can escape becoming the next presidential nominee of his party,” Farley told a hastily assembled press conference, “even if no one should raise a finger to bring it about.”1 Neither Howe nor Farley had cleared the announcement with FDR. Both were convinced it was time to strike, taking the tide of victory at the flood. If Roosevelt disagreed, he could repudiate them.
“I was in doubt as to how he would take it,” Farley recalled. But the worry proved groundless. When he reached FDR by phone in Albany, the governor laughed. “Whatever you said, Jim, is all right with me.”2 Roosevelt immediately called reporters into his office and issued his own statement: “I am giving no consideration or thought or time to anything except the duties of Governorship. You can add that this applies to any candidacy, national or otherwise in 1932.”3 It was vintage Roosevelt. Publicly, Farley was disavowed; privately, he and Howe had been flashed a green light to proceed. Roosevelt was committed. “Eddie,” he confided to Bronx