FDR - Jean Edward Smith [3]
Roosevelt nudged the nation toward a war footing. He pressed passage of the Lend-Lease Act to provide aid for embattled Britain, reestablished the draft (its extension carried by only one vote in the House of Representatives), and, probably in violation of the Constitution (and certainly contrary to statute), traded fifty seaworthy destroyers to Great Britain for base rights in the Western Hemisphere. What he did not do is connive with the Japanese in the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Roosevelt did not pay as much attention as he should have to the deteriorating situation in the Pacific in 1941; he allowed hawkish subordinates too much leeway, and he muffed a possible summit meeting with the Japanese prime minister. The administration recognized that Japan might attack in December 1941, but it did not expect the assault to come at Pearl Harbor, which the military believed to be impregnable.
FDR can be criticized on a number of issues. He ignored racial segregation, he did not rush to admit the victims of fascism to America’s shores, and he could be cavalier about the protection of civil liberties in wartime. But there is absolutely no evidence that he was complicit in the events of December 7, 1941.
Roosevelt’s wartime leadership resembles that of Lincoln. As in 1933, he restored the nation’s confidence. Under FDR’s hands-on direction, the United States became “the arsenal of democracy.” Britain was saved from defeat, the Soviet Union was provided the materiel it required, and by 1943 American armed forces had assumed the offensive. Roosevelt’s wartime diplomacy paved the way for the defeat of the Axis powers and the establishment of a world order based on the rule of law. His relations with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin suggest statecraft at its finest. On the other hand, his treatment of Charles de Gaulle was petulant and continues to roil Franco-American relations. It would also be fair to say that FDR did not fully comprehend the difficulties that would arise in containing communism in postwar Europe, nor did he fathom the sea change at work in China. The United States was a third-rate military power when World War II began. When it ended, America was the most powerful nation in history.
Roosevelt’s personal life has been obscured by his accomplishments. The “children’s hour” every evening at which the president mixed martinis for his guests, the poker games with cabinet cronies, the weekly sojourns on the presidential yacht Potomac, and his personal relations with family and friends warrant extended treatment. Roosevelt enjoyed life to the full, and his unquenchable optimism never faded.
Not to be overlooked are the four women who played crucial roles in FDR’s life: his mother, Sara; Lucy Mercer, the woman he loved; Missy LeHand, the woman who loved him; and his wife, Eleanor. After Eleanor discovered FDR’s affair with Lucy in 1918, their relationship became more professional than personal—an armed truce, in the words of their son James. They remained together for a variety of reasons, and Eleanor became a national personality in her own right. But her impact on the president’s life was tangential. She and FDR moved in different circles, each with a separate entourage, and only at formal levels did their paths converge. I say this as an unabashed admirer of Mrs. Roosevelt. She has been deservedly canonized because of what she stood for, yet we overlook the fact that she was a political liability for the president in the 1930s and ’40s. FDR did not need reinforcement among liberal and minority voters, where Eleanor was most highly regarded; he needed the votes of the white South, the Middle West, and the Great Plains, where for many she was anathema. Eleanor Roosevelt is a truly great American, not least because she was her own person. But she did not flourish until after the president’s death.
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