FDR - Jean Edward Smith [230]
A pall was cast over the campaign in April, when Louis Howe died. Howe had been ailing more than usual for the past year and in August 1935 had been moved from the White House to the U.S. Naval Hospital where he died peacefully in his sleep a little before midnight, April 18. “Franklin is on his own now,” Howe confided to a visitor shortly before his death.16 Roosevelt and Eleanor had visited the little man almost daily during his confinement, and his death was a heavy blow. For ER it meant the loss of a dear friend and mentor, an ally who had continued to mediate the differences between her and Franklin. After Howe’s death “communication grew harder for each of them,” wrote Blanche Wiesen Cook, “and for their work together.”17 For FDR it meant the loss of his most intimate friend and adviser—the only person except for Missy who spoke frankly regardless of the consequences. “For one reason or another, no one quite filled the void,” said Eleanor many years later. “There are not many men in this world whose personal ambition is to accomplish things for someone else, and it was some time before a friendship with Harry Hopkins … again brought Franklin some of the satisfaction he had known with Louis Howe.”18
FDR handled the funeral arrangements himself: formal services in the East Room of the White House; flags at half-staff; interment in the Episcopal cemetery at Fall River, Massachusetts. The president and his sons stood bareheaded on the snow-covered ground as Howe’s body was carried gently from the hearse to the gravesite.19 The New York Times reported that Roosevelt “appeared oblivious to everything around him, both during the service and when he returned to his car.”20 Later, FDR appointed Howe’s widow postmaster of Fall River. Admiral Richard E. Byrd, a family friend, named a peak in Antarctica “Mount Louis McHenry Howe.”21 As one historian has written, Howe’s influence will always remain hidden. He talked to FDR daily, but no one knows what they said. “His major service was relentless criticism. He was the ‘no’ man from whom the Boss could never quite escape.”22*
Howe’s death marked the departure of the last of Roosevelt’s original advisers. As FDR veered left, one after another of the early brain trusters fell by the wayside: first Lewis Douglas, then James Warburg, then Moley himself. A new set of acolytes took their places—a changing of the guard that inaugurated a new direction of march. There was the former journalist Stanley High, once editor of the Christian Herald, an easy-to-get-along-with speechwriter with a gift for memorable expressions. Sam Rosenman called him the best phrasemaker he ever worked with, and it was High who gave Roosevelt’s 1936 campaign speeches their remarkable polish.23 There were Thomas Corcoran and Benjamin Cohen, gifted legal technicians who had come to Washington under Felix Frankfurter’s aegis. The garrulous Corcoran was Mr. Outside to Cohen’s Mr. Inside—a remarkable team that not only provided Roosevelt in-house expertise in legislative drafting (sadly lacking in 1933) but was equally adept at lobbying the bills through Congress. Additional legal and economic talent was provided by Robert Jackson, William O. Douglas, and Isador Lubin, who weaved in and out of the White House.
The Republican National Convention convened in Cleveland on June 10, 1936. Caught between self-styled constitutionalists who wanted to repeal the New Deal and progressives like William E. Borah, Hiram