FDR - Jean Edward Smith [287]
The act placed enormous pressure on General Marshall and Admiral Harold R. Stark, the chief of naval operations, both of whom worried increasingly about the denuded state of America’s defenses. “If we were required to mobilize after having released this equipment and were found short,” Major Walter Bedell Smith of the general staff warned Marshall and Morgenthau, “everyone who was a party to the deal might hope to be hanging from a lamp post.”2 FDR called off the torpedo boat transfer but continued to press the military for increased aid to Britain.
The isolationist sentiment on Capitol Hill removed the last doubts Roosevelt had about seeking a third term. FDR now saw himself more as commander in chief than president and recognized the necessity to prepare the nation for war.3 When the delegates to the Democratic National Convention convened in Chicago on July 15, 1940, there was no serious doubt he would accept renomination. If anything, Willkie’s selection by the GOP made his candidacy all the more likely because no other Democrat stood a chance of winning in November.
Roosevelt refused to tip his hand. By not doing so he dominated events in Chicago. He selected the site because he believed Mayor Kelly would control the galleries. He sent Hopkins (now partially recovered) to set up shop in the Blackstone Hotel—not a campaign headquarters but a communications post.* And he asked Judge Samuel Rosenman to come to the White House: a personal visit that could have no purpose other than to prepare his acceptance speech. FDR wanted to be drafted but declined to say so. That frustrated the delegates on the floor, who were awaiting their marching orders, and the president relished the suspense.
The script did not play out as Roosevelt intended. On Monday, the first day, the proceedings were listless. The Chicago Daily News reported that the delegates were drafting Roosevelt “with the enthusiasm of a chain gang.”4 The president wanted to be renominated by acclamation, but Garner would not cooperate and neither would Farley. When FDR telephoned to suggest ever so obliquely that an actual ballot might be dispensed with, Farley rejected the proposal out of hand. “That’s perfectly silly,” he told the president.5 Even worse for Roosevelt, Farley as national chairman, not Mayor Kelly, controlled the tickets to the gallery. When FDR’s name was mentioned by the mayor in his welcoming remarks, the convention’s response was tepid. Farley, on the other hand, received a prolonged ovation even though the massive pipe organ—which was to have sounded “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling”—remained mysteriously silent. “Power failure,” snapped Mayor Kelly.6
Tuesday began badly for the president as well. Hopkins, often condescending when dealing with politicians but now even more abrasive because of his illness, was probably the last man in Washington who should have been entrusted with managing a campaign. Delegates were infuriated by his assumed power over the convention and resentful at the way he exercised it.† “Harry seems to be making all his usual mistakes,” Eleanor told friends at Val-Kill, where she listened to the proceedings over the radio. “He doesn’t seem to know how to make people happy.”7
Even the platform miscarried. A sizable group of isolationists led by Senators Wheeler and Walsh insisted on including a plank aimed at blocking any intervention abroad: “We will not participate in foreign wars and we will not send our army or navy or air force to fight in foreign lands outside of the Americas.” Roosevelt salvaged the plank at the last moment by adding the words “except in case of attack,” which Walsh and Wheeler grudgingly accepted.8
At a strategy session attended by Senator James Byrnes and Attorney General Robert Jackson Tuesday morning in Hopkins’s suite at the Blackstone, Harold Ickes said that “if the Republicans had been running the convention in the interests of Willkie, they could not have