F.D.R--An Intimate History (Excerpts and Notes)

Published in 1983, the book F.D.R. An Intimate History by Nathan Miller is old, thick and heavy. I carried with me almost every day to the work, hoping to find time in between to read.  Finally, after more than three months, after being renewed five times, the book can now be returned to the library.

 

Undoubtedly this is a great book, very well-written, very well-sourced and intriguing, being devoted to a fatherly figure of 32nd U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, a remarkable man who has “a second-class intellect but a first-class temperament”. The reading of this book is mostly fun, but confined by my own limited historical knowledge, the reading in the middle got bumpy, and I had to skip some parts to retain my passion.  During the reading, I took lots of notes, some in scribbles and some typed in the computer.  Copied down and saved here are some excellent paragraphs from the book, so that I can always come back and reread, and for you, my friends,  who might just be interested. 

 

 

 

F.D.R- An intimate History by Nathan Miller

 

1. From the book's front and back covers: 

Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Whether the mention of his name calls to mind the famous photograph in a touring car; head thrown back, teeth clenched on the trademark cigarette holder, radiating the confidence so desperately demanded by the times; or evokes some of the unforgettable phrases. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” “a date which will live in infamy,” “a rendezvous with destiny”, or triggers damning criticism of him as a socialist masquerading as a democrat, the potency of his memo remains undimmed.

 

In this, the only one-volume, complete biography of FDR in print, Nathan Miller looks at the man whose remarkable talents and brilliant personality helped change the United States more than any other president.

 

From his youth at Hyde Park, Groton, and Harvard, to his political education supervised by Louis Howe, as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, to his governorship of New York (which was but a carefully planned step on the road to the White House) and the dizzying madness of the 1932 convention, Miller Charts the forging of Roosevelt’s political and personal character—if indeed the two can be separated. For despite the hurdles thrown in his path, defeat when he ran for vice-president in 1920, disabling polio, the near wreck of his marriage to Eleanor, he proved himself unfailingly quick and discerning in marshaling his awesome charm and pragmatism to achieve his goals. The excitement of the New Deal. “one of the few successful gradualist revolutions in history,” is explained, as is FDR’s controversial handling of the Second World War. As this fascinating biography demonstrates, history and Roosevelt conspire to create, if not always a hero, always a man.

 

2. From the Foreword

 

“The President is dead!”

 

The news of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s death came to Americans in varying ways that warm April afternoon in 1945. A breathless announcer breaking into a radio soap opera... a sudden telephone call from a friend… a snatch of conversation overheard on the street or in a shop. The shock was magnified by the fact that even though almost everyone realized that Roosevelt was in failing health, he had developed an aura of invulnerability, an air of immortality that made death unthinkable.

 

For Americans of my generation—I was just short of eighteen—Roosevelt’s passing was like a death in the family. We could remember no other President. He dominated our lives as no political leader has been able to do since. We gathered about the radio to listen to the mellifluous voice of the Fireside Chats, and his face dominated the newspapers, magazines, and newsreels that were part of every show at the neighborhood movie theater. And during the worst of the Great Depression, most of the people who patronized my parents’ grocery store, in South Baltimore, were kept from starving only by New Deal relief programs.

 

Experiences such as these lead me, like so many others, to measure all Presidents against Roosevelt’s long shadow and all administrations by the New Deal. Thus, the writing of this book has been a voyage of discovery into my own past, an opportunity to test the memories and impressions of my youth against my research. The results have sometimes been unsettling.

 

Although Roosevelt’s name can still evoke a wistful look in the eye or a hard set of the jaw in some quarters, most of the emotional fires generated by the New Deal has burned out. To young Americans, Roosevelt is merely a figure in grainy film clips, and they have little understanding of the passion he stirred nearly a half century ago. My book is an attempt to bring FDR to life for this audience. I have tried to paint a portrait that is fair and unflinching in its realism, a portrait that captures all sides of this flawed but essentially great man. In particular, I have tried to show how a man regarded by most of his contemporaries as little more than an amiable country squire became the trustee for all those who put their faith in the maintenance of humane, decent, and civilized values.

 

No book of the magnitude of this one could be written without the generous assistance of others.......

 

3. From the book

 

The weather matched the mood of the nation.

 

Inauguration Day—March 4, 1933—dawned dour and cheerless and the Washington sky was as gray as the marble facades lining Pennsylvania Avenue. Rain had fallen off and on and sleet clung to the tree. Tugging at the flags and bunting hanging from buildings and lampposts, the raw wind chilled the spectators who had been gathering since early morning to see Franklin Delano Roosevelt installed as thirty-second president of the United States. Some stamped their feet to keep warms, others warded off the numbing cold by standing on newspapers, torn and grimy sheets that told of a country in the grip of the severest depression in history. It seemed a destructive force beyond human control.

 

Upwards of fifteen million Americans—more than a quarter of the work force-drifted hopelessly from factory gate to factory gate in search of jobs that no longer existed. Statistics had failed, the number of jobless may have totaled as high as seventeen million.

 

Panicked depositors besieged the banks, vainly trying to withdraw the savings of a lifetime before the banks closed—or collapsed.

 

America’s anguish was everywhere. It was in the sad eyes of women as love and laughter vanished from their lives. It was in the face of a Baltimore grocer who saw the store fixtures for which he could no longer pay carried away. And it was in the desperation of the thousands of young people who were riding the rails…

 

P.197

 

This implies a mystical metamorphosis—a spiritual rebirth akin to being born again—but Roosevelt was too much the pragmatist to be a mystic. Behind his lighthearted banter was a vaulting ambition that had caused him to seek important position in public life. The struggle against polio gave him a depth he lacked as a young man, a compassion for the afflicted, and added shadows to an outwardly sunny personality; yet it did not transform him. Since he came close to death, Roosevelt’s victory over polio reinforced his private religiousness but it did not alter his ideas, his basic philosophy, or his view of life.

 

Prolonged illness can lead to narcissistic self-absorption, and it would have been easy for Roosevelt to give up his political aspiration and retire to the comfortable life of Hyde park. His refusal to bid farewell to a normal life testifies to his courage and determination-  and the strength of his ambition. The iron core of will, this stubbornness, rather than any alteration in character resulting form the crisis, enabled him psychologically to survive the shattering ordeal.

 

He brought his listeners to their feet with a call for unity. “You equally who come from great cities of the East and from the plains and hills of the west, from the slopes of the Pacific and from the homes and fields of the Southland, I ask you in all seriousness…

 

He has a personality that carries to every hearer not only the sincerity but the righteousness of what he says.

 

Both daring and cautious, Roosevelt could seize upon an idea and make a decision with breathtaking speed; yet, at other times, he might temporize until almost the last moment. He could be extremely flexible but had an underlying vein of steely stubbornness. He delighted in breaking precedents and loved tradition as dearly as the most conservative member of the .. He could be ruthless, yet, hating to fire anyone….

 

No one was allowed to penetrate his armor of aristocratic nonchalance. “Never let your left hand know what your right hand is doing,”