Man of Destiny by Alonzo L. Hamby

Author:Alonzo L. Hamby
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2015-07-16T17:48:21+00:00

If for the Democratic Party demography was destiny, Roosevelt’s overwhelming persona was a triumph of individual will. Of all the larger-than-life national leaders of the 1930s, he alone maintained himself in office by democratic procedures. Yet, for all his charm and appeal, he also displayed the off-putting characteristics of the charismatic leader: a palpable appetite for power, a resentment of restraint from such institutions as the Supreme Court, an ideological outlook that removed politics from the realm of divergent interests and compromise to one of grand principle, and a tendency to personalize differences of opinion and ambition. These attitudes, while reassuring to his followers, appeared autocratic and menacing to those who opposed him.

In the emergency of 1933, Walter Lippmann had encouraged Roosevelt to act the dictator. In 1936, Lippmann accused him of personal rule and an authoritarian temperament, worried out loud about the perils of an overwhelming Democratic victory, and pronounced Landon an acceptable alternative. The Baltimore Sun and Washington Post, both usually reliable Democratic newspapers, withheld backing for either candidate. The Post gave Roosevelt credit for good intentions but warned of “dictatorship by default.” The leading voice of midwestern progressivism, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, charged Roosevelt with big-government overreach and endorsed Landon. In contrast, The Economist (London), published in a nation accustomed to big government and high tax rates, saw the New Deal as a moderate program led by a president addicted to extreme language. “The qualities which inspire loyalty in a crisis,” it observed, “are not those best calculated to inspire confidence in a calmer period.”45

The angry Right—typified by the Liberty League, the Hearst newspapers, and the Chicago Tribune—portrayed Roosevelt as a would-be dictator inspired by Stalin, predicted a regime that would require its citizens to wear dog tags engraved with their Social Security numbers, and warned that the American way of life was at stake. Landon, trying to get some traction, increasingly veered in the league’s direction.46

By the end of October, most seasoned observers realized that Roosevelt was moving toward a convincing victory, even if the Literary Digest persisted in predicting a Landon upset. Jim Farley predicted that the president would carry every state except Maine and Vermont.47

Roosevelt was riding a strong economy. He was the greatest popular communicator in the history of the office. His dominating personality contrasted vividly with Landon’s blandness. His party was sure to maintain control of Congress. In such circumstances, many leaders might have dialed down partisanship and talked of national unity. But charismatic leadership fed on conflict and crisis. It was, above all, personal.

On October 31, at the last big rally of the campaign, Roosevelt made his way to the rostrum at Madison Square Garden and reached for the flamethrower. He told his listeners that he and they stood at the head of an army that for four years had been fighting against the exploitative forces of “business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, [and] war profiteering.”

They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs.

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