Infidels_ A History of the Conflict Between Christendom and Islam - Andrew Wheatcroft [198]
In each case he chose his public words with the greatest care: the head ruled the heart. Out of the public eye, maledicta actually corresponded much more closely to the president’s personal feelings about the nation’s enemies than the measured tone of his Pearl Harbor speech. In private he told his secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau Jr., formerly a farmer and stockbreeder, in words reminiscent of Spanish speculations on the Morisco problem centuries before: “You have either got to castrate the German people or you have got to treat them so that they can’t go on reproducing the people who want to continue the way they have in the past.”12 But in his set-piece speeches like the State of the Union, Roosevelt eschewed the harshest language of atrocity and evil. He chose instead a public idiom of reason and argument, seeing it as appropriate for the effective conduct of a war in a democratic society.
His cousin Theodore, TR, had been the youngest-ever president, taking office (as vice president) after the murder of President William G. McKinley in 1901. The elder Roosevelt is hard to pin down. He was a polymath: articulate, with a frantic zest for life, a war hero. But if we wanted a single word that embraced all his aspects it might be “word-smith.” Being an author extended across every period of his life: from the sickly youth; the unsuccessful rancher; the great white hunter; the feisty young politician in New York to the mature, bull-like Rough Rider, Colonel Roosevelt, commanding his own regiment of volunteers; and ultimately the leader of his nation.13 Roosevelt never stopped writing. Between 1882 and 1918, he published more than twenty substantial works, plus a mass of shorter works, articles, pamphlets, speeches, letters, and journalism.14 His natural domain was words.
For all his impetuosity, Theodore Roosevelt achieved an inner discipline, and nowhere was this more evident than in his language. Many things that he said or wrote now seem outrageous or provocative, but they most often occurred in conversation or in a private letter. His abhorrence of profanity was Victorian, but this natural restraint was also well judged. In public he spoke to engage the hearts and minds of his audience. Part of his political success lay in widening his appeal and constituency, and this was achieved as much by what he said as by what he did.
All these three presidents—Lincoln and the two Roosevelts—understood the power of the word to secure the support and allegiance of a mass electorate. The modern media-orientated presidency began with Theodore Roosevelt, who was supremely aware of the need for an effective public image.15 But Lincoln also fully recognized the power of the press, while FDR, with his use of radio, pushed presidential communication with the people into a new dimension. These three exemplars knew what they wanted to say, and they said it.
THE CONTRAST BETWEEN THEN AND NOW IS COMPELLING. THE TWO days of infamy in the history of the United States—December 7, 1941, at Pearl Harbor and September 11, 2001, in New York and Washington, D.C.—were tragedies on a similar scale. At Pearl Harbor 2,390 died and 117 were wounded, while about 3,000 died in the attacks on September 11. Yet the two presidents—FDR and George W. Bush—spoke very differently about the two events. Roosevelt spoke first to a hurriedly summoned session of Congress on December 8, 1941.16 On the next day he spoke to the nation in a Fireside Chat by radio. FDR used a tone of studied control. He did not mock the enemies of America nor did he belittle them. Rather he spoke with an icy neutrality:
We may acknowledge that the enemies have performed a brilliant feat of deception, perfectly timed and executed with great skill. It was a thoroughly dishonorable deed, but we must face the fact that modern warfare as conducted in the Nazi manner is a dirty business. We don’t like it—we didn’t want it—but we are in it and we are going to fight it