On January 10, 1920, Mrs. Bertie Hamlin of Washington and Hyde Park, an old friend of the Roosevelts, wrote in her diary, “As I was walking along R Street … I met Franklin Roosevelt—he has had his tonsils out and has been ill too—he looks rather poorly for him. He had two of his boys and a dog with him, and we walked along together. Several of the children have had or are having chickenpox—James is to have his appendix out—Eleanor was getting out 2000 invitations for Navy teas. He said he did not expect to run for the Senate—that even if he wanted it or could get it—he thought it was stupid.”
Mrs. Hamlin’s diary entry reflects a significant shift in Franklin Roosevelt’s thinking as the new decade opened. He no longer had much interest in a legislative position, even one as prestigious as a United States Senator. It seemed that after his years in the Navy Department, he had discovered that he was more comfortable as an executive, and preferred administering laws to enacting them.
Later that same day, Louis B. Wehle, general counsel of the War Finance Corporation and an old friend from Harvard, came to FDR’s office with an intriguing idea. He proposed that the Democrats, at their national convention in San Francisco in July, should nominate Herbert Hoover of California for president and Franklin Roosevelt of New York for vice president. Wehle told Roosevelt that he had tried out his idea on several influential Democrats, who had enthusiastically endorsed it. Everyone knew that the political currents were running in favor of the Republicans that year, but perhaps a Hoover-Roosevelt ticket might turn the tide. Hoover, whose humanitarian efforts in Europe had saved literally millions from starvation, was an international hero and would make a particularly attractive candidate. The only question was that no one—including Hoover—seemed to know whether he was a Republican or a Democrat.
Roosevelt, like almost every American, admired Hoover, but he was skeptical of Wehle’s proposal. Eventually, in March, Hoover settled the issue by announcing that he was a Republican.
There had been speculation about Roosevelt’s potential future, both in political circles and in the press. As early as May 22, 1919, the New York Sun ran an editorial proclaiming, “If it were the job of the Sun to suggest to the Democratic Party the man who … might prove a standard bearer to be reckoned with by the opposition party in 1920, it would name Franklin D. Roosevelt, the brilliant young assistant secretary of the Navy.” But the Sun was one of the most conservative papers in the nation, and no one, least of all Franklin Delano Roosevelt, took its suggestion all that seriously. It “is very delightful,” he wrote in a letter, “but one of the largest jokes on record.”
Meanwhile, Admiral William S. Sims, who had led the Navy in Europe during the war, and at various times had been both FDR’s antagonist and his ally, was by 1920 back in his position as president of the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, and was preparing an unwelcome surprise. He had written a book about his experiences in the war, and had come to the conclusion that the Navy had been badly mismanaged, particularly in the months leading up to America’s entry into the war and in the first few months of the war itself. As 1920 opened, he sent a lengthy, vindictive memorandum to Josephus Daniels in which he charged that the fault for the Navy’s failings lay not with the Navy itself, but with the incompetence and lethargy of the civilian in charge, namely Josephus Daniels himself. Sims claimed that the Secretary’s shortcomings had led to the loss of 500,000 lives, 2,500,000 tons of shipping, and a waste of $15 billion.
When Sims made these sensational charges public, Roosevelt’s initial position was to loyally side with Daniels. In a January 23, 1920 letter to his friend Livingston Davis, he wrote of Sims, “It does seem a pity, does it not, that really fine, interesting men seem so often to lose their heads completely. The net result of all this will be, of course, to hurt the Navy, including Sims.… The hurting of a Secretary or an Assistant Secretary, who, after all are but birds of passage, is very incidental and very unimportant, but the Navy has gone for nearly 150 years, and we hope, will always go on; therefore its reputation is of importance.”
The Republicans who controlled Congress immediately made plans to investigate Admiral Sims’s scandalous charges; when it occurred to Roosevelt that he might get caught in the crossfire and be subject to the same smears being levied at Daniels, he immediately reversed himself and gave a speech that cruelly damned his superior. He agreed with Sims that the Navy should have done much more in the way of preparation in the months leading up to the war. The New York Times, in its extensive coverage of the speech, reported that Roosevelt “said there was no program thought out, and that he [Roosevelt] prepared one which called for aggressive action.
“‘I was opposed by the President, who said that he did not want to commit any overt act of war, but who added that he was following a definite course in an effort to avert a war.
“‘Two months after war was declared,’ continued Mr. Roosevelt, ‘I saw that the Navy was still unprepared and I spent 40 millions for guns before Congress gave me or anyone permission to spend any money.’”
The speech was blatantly disloyal. Roosevelt regretted it almost immediately and issued an “explanation” that more or less denied that he had said anything like what appeared in the newspapers. But his attacks on Daniels and the president were so self-serving and traitorous that Daniels seriously considered forcing him to resign, an act that would almost certainly have destroyed Roosevelt’s political career. Daniels changed his mind on learning that Mrs. Wilson had developed a bitter hatred of FDR, and decided against taking any action. Instead, he wrote in his diary on February 21: “FDR persona non grata with W. Better to let speech pass.”
The one political position that Roosevelt most coveted in 1920 was the chance to become governor of New York. But he had missed his opportunity in 1918 when Wilson—and Boss Murphy—had urged him to run. By 1920, the governorship was not to be had. Al Smith, a Tammany stalwart, was sitting in the Governor’s mansion in Albany and was almost certain to run again, unless he decided to try for the Senate seat that Mrs. Hamlin had mentioned in her diary, which did not seem at all likely.
What became increasingly clear throughout the spring of 1920 was that the speech he had so casually pulled together for the Democratic National Committee meeting the previous May was still reverberating among the party faithful throughout the country. In the political gossip and rumors bandied about in the run-up to the Democratic Convention, scheduled for June 28 in San Francisco, his name figured prominently, and he had reason to hope he had a chance to be on the national ticket.
There were three leading contenders for presidential nomination: Mitchell Palmer, the attorney general; William Gibbs McAdoo, Wilson’s son-in-law and until recently his treasury secretary; and Governor James M. Cox of Ohio, a Progressive who was the candidate of the city bosses, including Tammany’s Charles F. Murphy.
As a prominent member of the party, FDR was a member of the New York delegation to the convention, and he spent the four-day train trip to the West Coast currying favor and mending fences with as many fellow Democrats as he could find.
By the time the convention opened at the end of June, the Republicans had already picked a bland nonentity, Senator Warren G. Harding of Ohio, to be their presidential candidate. Harding was a conservative choice, with none of the progressive fire that Theodore Roosevelt had brought to the GOP, and there was a sense of hope among the delegates that Harding’s nomination could give the Democratic ticket a greater chance of success despite the rising Republican tide in the nation.
Frances Perkins, who had been a skeptical witness to FDR’s earliest political efforts, was at San Francisco, and was clearly impressed by his presence at the convention. “Franklin Roosevelt was in the thick of it,” she remembered. “Tall, strong, handsome, and popular, he was one of the stars of the show. I recall how he displayed his athletic ability by vaulting over a row of chairs to get to the platform in a hurry.”
As so often with the Democrats, the balloting for president went on for days, but finally, on the forty-fourth ballot, the exhausted delegates managed to nominate Governor Cox. The candidate was asleep in Dayton when he was awakened at dawn by a telephone call from his floor manager, Edmond H. Moore, who gave him the news and asked for his preference for vice president. In his autobiography, Cox recalled: “I told him I had given the matter some thought and that my choice would be Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York. Moore inquired, ‘Do you know him?’ I did not. In fact, so far as I knew, I had never seen him; but I explained to Mr. Moore that he met the geographical requirement, that he was recognized as an Independent and that Roosevelt was a well-known name.” Moore got in touch with Murphy to get Tammany’s opinion on FDR. Murphy declared, “I don’t like Roosevelt. He is not well known in the country, but, Ed, this is the first time a Democratic nominee for the presidency has shown me courtesy. That’s why I would vote for the devil himself if Cox wanted me to. Tell him we will nominate Roosevelt on the first ballot as soon as we assemble.”
As good as his word, Murphy saw to it that Roosevelt’s name was placed in nomination, and, after the other three nominees withdrew their names, Roosevelt was nominated for vice president by acclamation. Congratulations showered in from around the country, including a particularly warm one from Herbert Hoover: “The fact that I do not belong to your political tribe does not deter me from offering my personal congratulations to an old friend. I am glad to see you in the game in such a prominent place, and, although I will not be charged with traitorship by wishing you success, I nevertheless consider it a contribution to the good of the country that you have been nominated and it will bring the merit of a great public servant to the front. If you are elected, you will do the job properly.”
A somewhat less effusive telegram came in from Woodrow Wilson: “Please accept my warm congratulation and good wishes.”
Soon after the convention, on Sunday, July 18, 1920, the two nominees met in Washington to pay their respects to the president. At the White House, they were asked to wait fifteen minutes while Mr. Wilson prepared to receive them. Eventually they were ushered out of doors onto the south portico, bright with the summer sun. There, huddled in a wheelchair, with a shawl draped over his paralyzed left arm and his chin sunk into his chest, sat Woodrow Wilson, a figure of despair and defeat. “He is a very sick man,” Cox said compassionately, as he stepped forward and greeted the president warmly. Only then did Wilson look up. With half his face immobilized, he attempted a smile. Then, in a weak whisper, he said, “Thank you for coming. I am very glad you came.”
Roosevelt, who had worked closely with Wilson but had not seen him for almost a year, was shocked by his utter weakness. He saw tears standing in Cox’s eyes. Cox said, “Mr. President, I have always admired the fight you made for the League.” The president tried to draw himself up. “Mr. Cox,” he whispered, “that fight can still be won!” Cox said, “Mr. President, we are going to be a million percent with you, and your administration, and that means the League of Nations.” The president looked up again and, in a voice scarcely audible, said, “I am very grateful.” His slack-jawed head fell back on his chest. The meeting was over.
It was a time for the candidates to map out their campaign, and a time for Franklin Roosevelt to bid farewell to the patient, long-suffering superior he had alternately admired and disdained. Roosevelt’s letter of resignation to Josephus Daniels very deliberately glosses over the often-stormy relations that characterized so much of their seven years together. It says less about their true relationship than it does of the willingness of both of them to paper over their very real differences. In a handwritten letter, FDR wrote:
My dear Chief:
This is not goodbye—that will always be impossible after these years of the closest association—and no words I write will make you know better than you know now how much our association has meant. All my life I shall look back,—not only on the work of the place—but mostly on the wonderful way in which you and I have gone through these nearly eight years together. You have taught me so wisely and kept my feet on the ground when I was about to skyrocket—and in it all there has never been a real dispute or antagonism or distrust.
Hence, in part, at least, I will share in the reward, which you will get true credit for in history. I am very proud—but more than that I am very happy to have been able to help.
We will I know keep up this association in the years to come—and please let me keep on coming to you to get your fine inspiration of real idealism and right living and good Americanism.
So au revoir for a little while. You have always the
Affectionate regards of
Franklin D. Roosevelt
There is a dissembling tone to the letter that might strike some as hypocritical. But Roosevelt was no hypocrite. He almost certainly couched the letter in sugary half-truths simply because that is what Daniels would have wanted and expected. He was playing to his audience.
What is probably more significant is that it is a letter that Theodore Roosevelt could never have brought himself to write.