Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Transformation of the Supreme Court by Shaw Stephen K.;Pederson William D.;Williams Michael R.;Williams Frank J.;

Author:Shaw, Stephen K.;Pederson, William D.;Williams, Michael R.;Williams, Frank J.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2015-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

“You Could Help the Boss a Lot, Bill”: Drafting Douglas

Talk of William Douglas running with FDR in 1944 began immediately after Roosevelt’s defeat of Wendell Willkie in November 1940. Only days after that victory, President Roosevelt and Interior Secretary Harold Ickes discussed who should be “built-up” as the presidential successor. Ickes brought up Bill Douglas as a possibility. Roosevelt turned a critical eye: “No one knows whether he can make a campaign or not. He has never been tried out.”12 FDR threw out several other names for discussion; however, the President would soon change his mind and come to prefer Douglas as his 1944 running mate. But the selection of a future vice president or the anointing of a successor simply was not very important to Roosevelt, who immensely enjoyed the presidency, its power, and ceremony, and believed he would continue in office for years and terms to come.13 FDR did not really care either about who would run with him or succeed him in the White House—not at this time nor subsequently. In fact, after the 1944 Chicago convention he told his son James Roosevelt that he “didn’t give a damn whether the convention chose Douglas or Byrnes or Truman; the important thing was to get on with the war.”14 But FDR had a genuine personal affection for Douglas, admired his poker skills and his raconteur’s way with a story, and would have been just as pleased to run with the justice as with anyone. Perhaps if Roosevelt had felt stronger about personally selecting a running mate, he would have called on Douglas to serve; instead, he allowed the party machinery to make the selection.

Douglas’s supposed run for the White House in 1944 became a source of increasing gossip in Washington after Roosevelt’s third term election. Felix Frankfurter certainly thought Douglas was “making a ‘build-up’ for the White House,” and Judge Learned Hand rued “what a ‘build-up’ it is getting to be!”15 Frankfurter wrote Chief Justice Harlan Stone acknowledging that “there have been Presidential hopefuls on the Court since 1789—too many of them—but never before has any Justice sought a Vice-Presidential nomination!”16 Vice President Henry Wallace worried about a potential Douglas candidacy as well. He believed that political gadfly Thomas “Tommy the Cork” Corcoran had been constantly arranging for Justice Douglas “to meet a great variety of people,” presumably to increase Douglas’s chances in a future political bid. Wallace thought Corcoran planned to “bring out Douglas as a breath of fresh air from the Far West” for the upcoming election.17 Justice Robert Jackson told Wallace that Chief Justice Stone “was deeply concerned about the way in which Bill Douglas was running for President or Vice President.” Also, Justice Frank Murphy told Wallace he had witnessed Tom Corcoran visiting Douglas’s office “very frequently.”18 Wallace also worried with his knowledge that Joseph P. Kennedy “was strong for Bill Douglas for Vice President.”19

Henry Wallace had no cause to fear a Douglas candidacy, however; Douglas wanted to remain on the Supreme Court. Initially, perhaps Justice Douglas believed that he was “too young to go on the Court.

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