Roosevelt (71 page)

The President’s tactics were his own. Another explanation for his caution lay in the nature of the opposition in Congress and among the people. Certainly the opposition to an internationalist or collective security program was not to be dismissed lightly. In a 1937 poll nineteen out of twenty people answered a flat “No” to the query whether the United States should enter another world war. Most of the people trusted Congress rather than the President to keep America out of war. They were powerfully drawn by the symbols of Peace and Neutrality—and they tended to equate the two. To be sure, these attitudes somewhat lacked stability and durability. But they had a terrible intensity. The late 1930’s was the period when the famous aviatrix Laura Ingalls showered the White House with “peace” leaflets from her plane, when Father Coughlin and John L. Lewis were whipping up isolationist feeling, when to some fascism constituted the “wave of the future.” Two decades of bitterness over World War I and its aftermath had left a hard, smarting scar tissue.

Any attempt by Roosevelt to override this feeling clearly would have been disastrous. His real mission as a political leader was to modify and guide this opinion in a direction closer to American interests as he saw them. To raise this question is again to confront the paradox of Roosevelt’s leadership.

For under the impact of shattering events abroad, people’s attitudes were slowly shifting. Most Americans, of course, clung to their “Keep-Out-of-War” position. But between Munich and the outbreak of war a great majority of the people swung over to the position of all help to Britain and France short of war. By September 1939 about 37 per cent of the people favored positive help to Britain, France, and Poland; less than half of these wanted to dispatch military help then or at any later time, while most favored sending food and materials. This 37 per cent interventionist element confronted a hard-core isolationist bloc that opposed any aid at all to either side. In the middle was a group of about 30 per cent that would refuse to sell to either side except on a cash-and-carry basis.

It was this vast middle group that offered the President his supreme opportunity. For this group was clinging to the symbol of
nonentanglement while grasping the need of American help to nations under attack. This group, combined with the interventionists, would have given heavy backing to Roosevelt’s all-aid-short-of-war policies. Was it possible that these millions of middle-of-the-roaders thought that cash and carry in 1939 meant material help to
neither
side? No; a later poll showed that 90 per cent favored cash and carry even if in practice only Britain and France got the supplies. Without question these middle attitudes were shot through with confusions and uncertainties. But this made a real leader’s opportunity all the greater, for opinions that are superficial and volatile are the most subject to influence. A situation that was an opportunity for Napoleon, A. N. Whitehead has observed, would appear as an unmanageable disorder to most of us.

Roosevelt felt that events and facts themselves would educate the public. So they did—but not quickly enough. Each time in the race between aggression and American opinion victory went to the former. The early months of 1939 were the supreme test. Roosevelt’s great hope was that he could demonstrate to Hitler that America would give material aid to nations the Nazis planned to attack. The President’s tactic was based on a sound proposition—the best way to keep America out of war would be to keep war out of the world. But he did not lead opinion toward a position of all aid short of war. He tagged along with opinion. Sometimes, indeed—most notably when he was frightened by the reaction to the “quarantine” speech and later by the furore over America’s frontier being “on the Rhine”—he lagged behind the drift of opinion favoring more commitment by the United States to joint efforts against aggression.

The President’s immediate problem was not, of course, isolationist feeling in general but the mighty isolationist phalanxes in Congress. Doubtless he feared that defeat of a crucial bill on the Hill might mean a permanent setback for his hopes to aid the democracies and might so dishearten friends of America abroad as to encourage more appeasement. If such was Roosevelt’s tactic with Congress, the fate of embargo repeal in the spring of 1939 suggests that he failed. Perhaps if he had taken a position against the embargo much sooner and much more openly and consistently, he could have won repeal in the spring of 1939. But the fact is that only when he knew he had the votes on the Hill did he utter the clarion call that resulted in repeal in October of that year. Once again events, not the President, had done the job of educating—and once again the time was tragically late.

No leader is a free agent. Even Hitler had to cope with grumbling and foot dragging among the military; even Stalin had to deal with backward peasants and with party rivals grasping for power.
Roosevelt’s plight was far more difficult. He was captain of the ship of state, but many hands reached for the tiller, and a rebellious crew manned the sails. It was only natural that this vessel should move ahead by hugging the shore, threading its way past shoal and reef, putting into harbor when the storm roared. The test of great political leadership is not whether the leader has his way; it is, first, whether the leader makes the most of existing materials he has to work with, and, second, whether he creates new materials to help him meet his goals.

At the end of 1939, as Roosevelt neared the last year of his second term, it was time to apply to him both tests of leadership. His goal had always been clear in broad outline—a prosperous people in a secure nation. By the end of 1939 this goal was still far off. Economic conditions had improved since the recession, but only back to the uncertain levels of the mid-1930’s, with millions out of work. And as the President himself saw more clearly than most Americans, the nation was in grave peril.

The ship of state had not reached port; neither had it foundered. How had the captain done?

Undeniably the reefs and shoals were formidable. Any attempt to chart a clear course to port—in this case to build a liberal program for New Deal objectives—ran head on into the absence of a cohesive liberal tradition in America. Any effort to shape long-term economic programs ran up against limited understanding of economic problems. Any effort to build a consistent foreign policy that would throw the country’s weight toward peace and against the aggressors encountered the fierce isolationism of most Americans. The political and governmental means to these ends were equally hard to forge. Attempts to build a stronger “presidential party” behind the New Deal fell afoul of the federal, factional make-up of the existing party system. Any effort to establish a cohesive rank-and-file group for New Deal policies in Congress splintered against the entrenched power of seniority. Even the attempt to fashion a more cohesive executive branch ran into the centrifugal tendencies of the American system and the pervasive popular fear of executive power.

But what was the factor of creative leadership in these lost battles? Could it be said that Roosevelt had tried and failed? Was it bad luck, or a rebellious crew, or a flimsy ship that had kept him from reaching port? Or was the blame his alone?

There is an important difference between the politician who is simply an able tactician, and the politician who is a creative political leader. The former accepts political conditions as given and fashions a campaign and a set of policies best suited to the existing conditions. The latter tries consciously to change the matrix of
political forces amid which he operates, in order that he may better lead the people in the direction he wants to go. The former operates within slender margins; the latter, through sheer will and conviction as well as political skill, tries to widen the margins within which he operates. He seeks not merely to win votes but consciously to alter basic political forces such as public opinion, party power, interest-group pressure, the governmental system.

There were
times—most notably in 1935—when Roosevelt brilliantly capitalized on every opportunity to convert New Deal aims into law. There were times—most notably in the court fight—when he tested and found the outer limits of his power. But sometimes he made no effort at all—especially in gaining lasting influence in Congress. Sometimes he tried too little and too late. And sometimes—as in the case of party consolidation and realignment and of economic program—he seemed to lack the intellectual qualities necessary to the task.

During his second term Roosevelt seemed to forget the great lesson of his inaugural speech of 1933—that courageous affirmation in itself changes the political dimensions of a situation. That speech was more than a speech—it was an act that loosened a tidal wave of support behind the new administration. The most important instrument a leader has to work with is himself—his own personality and its impact on other people. When the people’s opinions are vaguely directed the way the leader is headed but lack depth and solidity, action by the leader can shift opinion in his own favor. In the parallelogram of forces in which the leader operates, such action alters the whole equation. To be sure, more than speeches was needed after 1937, for the feeling of crisis had gone and popular attitudes had hardened. But the inaugural speech of 1933 stood as an index of the leader’s influence when he takes a posture of bold affirmation.

Roosevelt’s failure to build a liberal coalition and a new party behind the New Deal is a further case in point. For here the materials were available for the right shaping and mixing. To be sure, most Americans during the mid-1930’s as an abstract matter opposed realigning the parties along liberal and conservative lines. But when confronted in 1938 with the question of following “President Roosevelt’s” proposal that old party lines be disregarded and that liberals of all parties unite to support liberal candidates for Congress, twice as many people favored as opposed the idea. The missing key was long-term and effective organization by Roosevelt of firmer support for realignment. Despite its failure, the purge showed the great potential of party realignment in the North and in the border states.

As for foreign policy, at potential turning points of public opinion—most notably in 1935 and 1936, when the people’s fear of war might have been directed toward internationalist policies rather than isolationist ones—the President had failed to give the cue the people needed. Roosevelt did not exploit his superior information about the foreign situation and his understanding of foreign policy in order to guide popular attitudes.

Indeed, Roosevelt to a surprising degree was captive to the political forces around him rather than their shaper. In a democracy such must ever be the case. But democracy assigns a place for creative political leadership too. The forces handcuffing Roosevelt stemmed as much from his own actions and personality as from the unyielding political environment. He could not reshape his party, reorient foreign policy attitudes, reorganize Congress and the bureaucracy, or solve the economic problem largely because he lacked the necessary intellectual commitment to the right union of ends and means.

A test of Roosevelt’s creative leadership, of his willingness to alter the environment—the pressures working on him—when he had the capacity to do so, was provided by the inner circle of his advisers. Haphazardly brought together, embracing conservatives and liberals, isolationists and internationalists, his brain trust helped him mediate among opposing policies and ideas during his first term. But, despite the comings and goings of individuals, the brain trust remained an amorphous and divided group during Roosevelt’s later period of party leadership, at a time when he needed program guidance more directly and clearly pointed toward the aims of an expanded New Deal at home and toward firmer action abroad. Instead of compelling his advisers to serve his new needs, he allowed them unduly to define his own purposes. Fearing commitment to any one adviser or faction, he became overly involved in the divisions among all of them.

Roosevelt, in a sense, was captive to himself as well as to his political environment. He was captive to his habit of mediating among pressures rather than reshaping them, of responding eclectically to all the people around him, of balancing warring groups and leaders against one another, of improvising with brilliance and gusto. Impatient of theory, insatiably curious about people and their ideas, sensitively attuned to the play of forces around him, he lacked that burning and almost fanatic conviction that great leadership demands.

Roosevelt was less a great creative leader than a skillful manipulator and a brilliant interpreter. Given the big, decisive event—depression at home or naked aggression abroad—he could dramatize its significance and convey its import to the American people. But when the crisis was less striking but no less serious, and when its
solution demanded a union of intellectual comprehension and unified and continuing strategic action, Roosevelt saw his efforts turn to dust, as in the cases of court packing, the purge, and putting his country behind efforts toward collective security. He was always a superb tactician, and sometimes a courageous leader, but he failed to achieve that combination of tactical skill and strategic planning that represents the acme of political leadership.

Finally, though, the President had to take account of another crucial factor that must finally be weighed in the scales. This was the election of 1940. All his past, all his future, would come into balance in the fateful, turbulent year that lay ahead.