I have finally finished No Ordinary Time: Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II. It was a great read, filled with amusing stories as well as gripping drama. The book is too long and too interesting for me to feel comfortable summarizing it. However, it's also too important for me to not at least try to capture a bit of the lessons learned.
1. A mask of charm is both an invaluable political tool and incredibly hollowing. Both FDR and Reagan had a charm that seemed effortless. But both had been characterized by those closest to them as individuals for whom there remained a wide gulf between their essential self and the outside world. That gulf could not be bridged even by those closest to them. It seems a hard way to live, but I suppose being President is not easy.
I can't speak for Reagan, but FDR's pattern of charm and distance was established well before he contracted polio. It appears to stem from the early death of his father, his demanding (even domineering) mother, his status as a sheltered only child, and perhaps his social difficulties at Harvard.
I have been told by those somewhat close to me that they are surprised when I am honest with them about my past, about my feelings, and about my despair. Evidently I also use charm as a way of distancing myself, although obviously with considerably less facility than FDR.
2. It is important to have both a hammer and an anvil to effect social change. The anvil is sedentary and patient. The anvil waits for things to come to it. The hammer is impatient, restless, relentless. The hammer seeks to achieve through sheer determination a changed world. But the anvil knows that, with the hammer's help, good things will ultimately be forged.
Eleanor Roosevelt could accurately be characterized as a battleaxe, but for this analogy, she is the hammer. For her own personal reasons, and personal tragedies, she had a restless, relentless drive. This often led to a lack of focus - and in the case of Japanese-American internment, perhaps a critical level of diffusion that prevented an eleventh hour rescue from internment. But she was incredibly consistent, and very aggressive about pushing everyone, especially her husband, for change.
FDR, on the other hand, was a careful student of polls, and often moved very slowly on issues of social justice, economic restructuring, or other policy changes he knew were not widely supported. It is perhaps his genius, as well as a stain on his legacy, that he did not lead on issues of African-American rights, labor's struggle with crony capitalism, or war mobilization.
But it is fair to say that he depended upon Eleanor as a way of saying and doing things he could not, by virtue of his twin handicaps - one physical, and one vocational. Often, the President can't lead, and it's not because he lacks courage. It is because, by coming from the President, things that should be broadly supported, or self-evident in their justice, become immediately contentious. Recent history illustrates this.
It's also fair to say that Eleanor alone could not have done what she did without FDR's backing. Even though he was called upon repeatedly to rein her in, he refused. FDR trained Eleanor to really investigate things - to ask specific and incisive questions, to observe and remember. His gifts of memory are legendary; what I did not know was how he literally taught and trained his wife to become such a keen judge of organizations and individual character.
It's worth noting that they were aided tremendously by a press that regulated itself regarding the president, his wife, and the president's relationship with women. This probably will never be possible again - the press was, by and large, very deferential to the office and to the man. Even as his powers were failing in his fourth term, the press, his staff, and even members of Congress would do their best to conceal his lapses.
Eleanor also benefited by having a weekly column. She got plenty of hate mail over it, especially from the South over her support of African-American civil rights. Still, I wonder whether any first lady would, or could, write a weekly column appearing in newspapers across the nation, and the extent to which that could be a bully pulpit for change.
Catt needed Paul in Women's Suffrage. King needed X in Civil Rights. FDR needed Eleanor to preserve the home front, even as foreign affairs consumed him.
3. The story of race relations is intimately tied to the story of the American labor movement. I did not realize how little I knew about American Labor, nor about its role in the advancement of African-Americans. Even with the existential threat of world war, the fight for manufacturing jobs and combat roles for blacks was a brutal one. Perhaps less dramatically violent, but equally powerful, was the struggle to allow women to do factory work. Eleanor later realized that the war did more for the poor and the oppressed than the New Deal ever did, or perhaps could.
This period saw the increased militancy of African-American groups and American labor, including some incredibly unpopular mine strikes during the war. Fortunately for everyone, they were resolved more or less peacefully, with the president exercising some wisdom on the matter (of course supported by Eleanor's field reports).
4. Great individuals often depend upon several people to give them what they need to be great. FDR fed voraciously among various men and women for social company and relaxation. It wasn't parasitic, but it was a very aggressive symbiosis that often threatened the ability of others to enjoy basic levels of independence. Few gave more to the President than Harry Hopkins, but Roosevelt resented that Hopkins' marriage would eventually lead his key social and intellectual partner to move out of the White House.
Eleanor, similarly, depended upon Joe Lash, Lorena Hickok, her daughter Anna, and a number of people as sounding boards, foils, and, ultimately, sources of love. I'd say each of them demanded, and got, almost the entirety of the lives of ten individuals.
It's teaching me to be both more giving and more demanding of the people I would have close to me. Each of us has to find the handful of people -- rarely biologically related -- that make time and make a difference.
5. FDR overruled his military in key strategic decisions, and was right. But he did not try to fight the war himself, and he did not interfere at levels below grand strategy. To do this required tremendous confidence in one's self. In fact, it was Roosevelt's ability to remain calm even in the darkest days of the war that stunned, even creeped out, many who observed him.
This was a surprise to me, as I had previously read Partners in Command: George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower in War and Peace. In it, it appeared that the American general staff in general, and Marshall in particular, possessed unusually clear insight into the strategic aspects of the war. However, as No Ordinary Time reveals, Marshall himself admits he was wrong about a number of things - notably the need to support Britain and the Soviet Union early in the war, at the expense of US readiness. Also, both books acknowledge that American combat forces were too green, and would have been slaughtered had a premature European invasion taken place. Rather than a sideshow, the African and Italian campaigns helped harden American ground troops, and prepared them for success in Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge.
After Korea and MacArthur, civilian leaders were especially wary of military overreach. After Vietnam, civilian leaders were unnerved by the use of force. One hopes America is only now finally emerging from an unhealthy period where both military and civilian leadership lacked the self-confidence, tempered by the wisdom of restraint, to exercise effective leadership.
6. One can be in love with someone and mostly live separate lives. In many ways, FDR and Eleanor's relationship has strong parallels to Bill and Hillary Clinton. Both couples loved each other, and drew upon each other's strengths. Both wives were betrayed by their husbands, and in important ways, never forgave them. But both women also used the experiences as proof that they had to develop their own separate lives.
The American Experience: Clinton (one of a fantastic set of documentaries about American presidents, including FDR) mentions that Hillary Clinton actually moved back to Arkansas during one of Bill's early campaigns, and looked as if she was going to become a housewife, albeit one who worked outside of the home.
FDR and Eleanor redefined their love, what it was to be in love, even as they both needed emotional support and got it from people other than their spouse. Even more than the case with the Clintons, one gets the sense that something is keeping them together that is larger than either political necessity nor the mores of the time. It's fair that both were in love with each other, but both were also exasperated by each other. They depended upon key intermediaries to know how to manage them, singly and together. Most couples are not so lucky.
7. Sometimes, we can be surprised by the simplicity of the needs and desires of people far form home.
I'll mention briefly that one poignant vignette concerned Eleanor's visits to field hospitals in the Pacific. She was initially worried that the troops were going to be disappointed, as security procedures only announced that "a woman" was coming to visit. Eleanor, ever conscious of not living up to her mother's beauty, was worried the men would be expecting a pinup girl. But she found that they appreciated her visits, because she was something they hadn't seen in a year of service - an American mother.
Of all the things that tug at the heart in this book, this seemed a particularly touching insight.
There are many other lessons. But this is a good starting point.
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