FDR - Jean Edward Smith [282]
Knox, whose appointment had been in the works for some time, cleared it with Landon before accepting.* To make the public aware of the gravity of the international situation, he insisted that a Republican join him at the War Department. The war cabinet, so to speak, must be bipartisan. Roosevelt initially thought of his old Columbia Law School classmate William Donovan for the post but at the suggestion of Justice Felix Frankfurter turned to Stimson.59 Knox also requested that the appointments be deferred until after the Republican convention. Roosevelt declined. It was important to stress the bipartisan nature of the defense effort, he told Knox. Even more important, if the GOP nominated an isolationist candidate, Knox and Stimson would be deemed guilty of bad sportsmanship in joining FDR’s team afterward.60 Stimson, whom Roosevelt surprised with a telephone call to his apartment at New York’s Pierre Hotel on the morning of the nineteenth offering the appointment, had his own conditions. Fully aware of the internecine struggle between Woodring and Undersecretary Louis Johnson, he wanted a free hand to name his own assistants. FDR agreed, and Stimson brought to Washington a remarkable team that remained throughout the war: Judge Robert P. Patterson of the U.S. Court of Appeals as undersecretary, John J. McCloy as assistant secretary, and Robert A. Lovett as assistant secretary for air. Knox brought New York investment banker James V. Forrestal to Washington as undersecretary. With the exception of Forrestal, none of these appointees supported the New Deal and none had ever voted for FDR. Patterson had been appointed to the federal bench by Herbert Hoover in 1931; McCloy was the managing partner of Cravath, Swaine, and Moore;† Forrestal was president of Dillon, Reed; and Lovett was a senior partner at Brown Brothers, Harriman. Nevertheless, they proved devoted administrators who rendered superb service to the president and the nation.61
Roosevelt not only undercut the isolationist opposition on the eve of the Republican convention, he added two of the most powerful GOP foreign policy voices to the cabinet. On June 18, prior to their appointments, both men had delivered speeches on national defense. In Detroit, Knox had called for compulsory military training, a million-man Army, the most powerful air force in the world, and unstinting aid to Great Britain. Stimson, speaking at the Yale commencement in New Haven, had asked for repeal of the Neutrality Act in its entirety, reinstitution of the draft, and the use of the U.S. Navy to convoy supplies to Britain.* By advocating a peacetime draft, Knox and Stimson prepared the way for the president to follow.62
The appointment of Knox and Stimson cast a pall over the Republican convention. Roosevelt had not only upstaged the event but exposed the deep fissure in the GOP over foreign policy. Not since Bull Moosers and Old Guard fought it out in 1912 had the party been so divided. The isolationist wing, stung to the quick by Knox and Stimson’s defection, proceeded to read them out of the party—a mean-spirited response that did the Republicans no good with an electorate increasingly concerned about national defense. Keynote speaker Harold Stassen, striking a more responsive chord, noted that the appointment of two distinguished Republicans merely reflected the lack of talent among the Democrats. His only regret, said Stassen, was that the Grand Old Party was not replacing the rest of Roosevelt’s “New Deal incompetents.”63
Four candidates vied for the nomination. Thomas E. Dewey, New York City’s thirty-seven-year-old racketbusting district attorney, was the front runner. A forceful public speaker, Dewey started like a house afire, claiming 67 percent of the Republican vote in a May 9 Gallup poll. But with Hitler’s invasion of the Low Countries