FDR - Jean Edward Smith [162]
Roosevelt accepted the challenge immediately.36 Dr. Lindsay R. Williams, director of the New York Academy of Medicine, was asked to select a panel of eminent physicians, including a brain specialist, to conduct the examination.* In addition, Looker was invited to visit Albany unannounced and observe the governor whenever he wished and as often as he wished.
The panel examined Roosevelt at his East Sixty-fifth Street town house on April 29, 1931. “We have today carefully examined Governor Roosevelt,” they wired Looker. “We believe that his health and powers of endurance are such as to allow him to meet any demand of private and public life. We find that his organs and functions are sound in all respects. There is no anemia. The chest is exceptionally well developed, and the spinal column is absolutely normal; all its segments are in perfect alignment and free from disease. He has neither pain nor ache at any time.… Governor Roosevelt can walk all necessary distances and can maintain a standing position without fatigue.”37
Looker’s personal observations coincided with the specialists’ findings. Three times he called on FDR unannounced and spent the day and part of the evening with him. “I observed him working and resting,” Looker wrote. “I noted the alertness of his movements, the sparkle of his eyes, the vigor of his gestures. I saw his strength under the strain of long working periods. Insofar as I had observed him, I came to the conclusion that he seemed able to take more punishment than many men ten years younger. Merely his knees were not much good to him.”38†
During one of his unannounced visits Looker asked Eleanor if she thought FDR could stand the strain of the presidency.
“If the infantile paralysis didn’t kill him, the Presidency won’t,” ER replied.39
Looker published the medical findings in Liberty magazine. At five cents a copy, Liberty was the nation’s leading mass-circulation journal, with Theodore Dreiser, Ernest Hemingway, and William Faulkner occasionally gracing its weekly pages. “From the specialist examination, as well as from my own observation,” wrote Looker, “I am able to say unhesitatingly that every rumor of Franklin Roosevelt’s physical incapacity can be unqualifiedly defined as false.”40 For the Roosevelt campaign, Looker’s article could not have been more opportune. Howe ordered 200,000 reprints, sending a copy to every name on the numerous mailing lists Farley had assembled.
Throughout the autumn of 1931 Farley and Howe continued their canvassing for delegates; FDR rested briefly at Warm Springs; and Raskob and Shouse took another run at the platform. At the end of November the party chairman announced he was polling the 90,000 contributors to the 1928 campaign on the question of Prohibition preparatory to the next meeting of the Democratic National Committee on January 9, 1932.41 It was a rerun of the March 5 battle, with Farley scurrying for proxies and forcing Raskob to back down once again. With Roosevelt’s southern and western allies in firm control of the National Committee, Chicago was selected as the site of the 1932 convention.* In an even more impressive display of muscle, Robert Jackson of New Hampshire, a staunch Roosevelt supporter, was elected to the vacant position of national secretary—Farley’s first but very obvious move to wrest control of the party machinery from Raskob.42
On Saturday, January 23, 1932, FDR announced his candidacy—carefully timed to gain maximum coverage in the nation’s Sunday-morning newspapers.43 The announcement coincided with the Democratic Territorial Convention in Alaska, which had just instructed its six delegates to the National Convention to vote for Roosevelt under the unit rule.44 Alaska was the first jurisdiction to select delegates in 1932, and Farley had taken pains to ensure the Roosevelt campaign launched on a high note.45