Алистер Смит - The Spoils of War - Greed, Power, and the Conflicts That Made Our Greatest Presidents

It was against the backdrop of calamity in Europe that Franklin Roosevelt chose to pursue a third term. Public opinion polls showed that his popularity was sufficient to defeat any of the frontrunners in the Republican Party. Unlike his predecessors who had tried to gain their party’s nomination for a third term, little stood in Franklin Roosevelt’s way. To be sure, some even in the Democratic Party thought a third-term was going too far, but if Roosevelt was watching the polls—as surely he was—he knew the nomination was virtually a sure thing and he knew that he had a very good chance of winning the general election.

Having quietly pursued the nomination, while giving no public indication that he sought to continue in office, he sent his wife, Eleanor, on July 18, 1940, to address the Democratic Party’s nominating convention in Chicago. Her task was to press them to accept Franklin’s choice of Henry Wallace for vice president. Mrs. Roosevelt addressed the extraordinary circumstances the country faced, saying, “You must know that this is the time when all good men and women give every bit of service and strength to their country that they have to give. This is the time when it is the United States that we fight for, the domestic policies that we have established as a party that we must believe in, that we must carry forward, and in the world we have a position of great responsibility. We cannot tell from day to day what may come. This is no ordinary time. No time for weighing anything except what we can do best for the country as a whole, and that responsibility rests on each and every one of us as individuals.”13 Although she refers to the great responsibility the United States has in the world, it is noteworthy that her emphasis was on the fight for “the domestic policies that we have established as a party that we must believe in, that we must carry forward.” That is, her initial justification for her husband’s run for a third term was not primarily the changed map of Europe, or the changes in the Pacific, but “the domestic policies . . . that we must believe in”; that is, the New Deal.

When, just a few hours later, FDR accepted the nomination via a radio address to his party’s convention on June 19, the president’s emphasis, unlike the First Lady’s, was squarely on the threat to world peace and the necessity, for the good of the nation, for him to sacrifice his personal desire for retirement and seek a third term, giving his utmost just as every American was being called upon to do. As he said,

During the spring of 1939, world events made it clear to all but the blind or the partisan that a great war in Europe had become not merely a possibility but a probability, and that such a war would of necessity deeply affect the future of this nation. . . . As President of the United States, it was my clear duty, with the aid of the Congress, to preserve our neutrality, to shape our program of defense, to meet rapid changes, to keep our domestic affairs adjusted to shifting world conditions, and to sustain the policy of the Good Neighbor. It was also my obvious duty to maintain to the utmost the influence of this mighty nation in our effort to prevent the spread of war, and to sustain by all legal means those governments threatened by other governments which had rejected the principles of democracy. . . . Plans for national defense had to be expanded and adjusted to meet new forms of warfare. . . . Every day that passed called for the postponement of personal plans and partisan debate until the latest possible moment. . . . And so, thinking solely of the national good and of the international scene, I came to the reluctant conclusion that such declaration should not be made before the national Convention. It was accordingly made to you within an hour after the permanent organization of this Convention.14

Hearing these words on the radio that night, or reading them in the morning newspaper, the average American voter must have believed—and rightly so—that the world was in dire circumstances, democracy itself was under siege, and that their government had now “to shape our program of defense . . . to maintain to the utmost the influence of this mighty nation . . . to sustain . . . those governments threatened by other governments which had rejected the principles of democracy.” This was a stirring message from the president who, however, in the same breath, explained that the United States’ defense of democracy was limited to the preservation of US neutrality, which he had formally declared on September 5, 1939—right after Britain, France, India, Australia, and New Zealand had declared war on Germany. Now, everything we know about FDR indicates that he did not want to be neutral, but even less did he want to risk his future reelection. Roosevelt had, for instance, tried to persuade Congress in early 1939 to repeal the Neutrality Act of 1935 and he failed. He wanted the ability to provide armaments in particular to Great Britain but was prohibited from doing so under the embargo provisions of the Neutrality Act.

With the concerns prompted by developments in Europe in mind, FDR went before Congress on September 21, 1939, and in apparent direct contradiction to the italicized portion of his fireside chat on September 3, he said, “Beginning with the foundation of our constitutional government in the year 1789, the American policy in respect to belligerent nations, with one notable exception, has been based on international law . . . The single exception was the policy adopted by this Nation during the Napoleonic Wars, when, seeking to avoid involvement, we acted for some years under the so-called Embargo and Non-Intercourse Acts. . . . Our next deviation by statute from sound principles of neutrality and peace through international law did not come for 130 years. It was the so-called Neutrality Act of 1935. . . . I regret that act. I regret equally that I signed that act. On July fourteenth of this year I asked the Congress in the cause of peace and in the interest of real American neutrality to take action to change that act. . . . I seek a greater consistency through the repeal of the embargo provisions and a return to international law.”15 While these remarks before Congress highlight his judgment that it was sound policy to lift the arms embargo in order to help arm Britain, we should not lose sight that in the same speech he reiterated, “The executive branch of the Government did its utmost, within our traditional policy of noninvolvement, to aid in averting the present appalling war. Having thus striven and failed, this Government must lose no time or effort to keep the Nation from being drawn into the war.” As with the September 3 fireside chat, when speaking before Congress the president had a remarkable opportunity to advance his vision, to bring the “appalling war” to a rapid end by defending our natural, democratic allies; but instead he chose only to ask for the authority to sell arms and to do everything “to keep the Nation from being drawn into the war.” It is hard to imagine the Franklin Roosevelt of the 1932 or 1936 election forgoing such opportunities.

Perhaps his reticence to get involved was warranted in September 1939, when one could argue, as many did, that Germany was fighting no more than a localized war against Poland. When FDR accepted his party’s nomination in July, however, Germany had already conquered Norway, Denmark, France, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Channel Islands. Democratic, continental western Europe virtually no longer existed: it was almost all under Nazi control. Still, the president did not seize the bully pulpit to launch, for instance, a presidential initiative to stop tyranny from sweeping democracy into the dustbin of history. He did not even speak directly to the enormous threat faced by Great Britain, nor did he name Hitler as the lying, tyrannical scourge he was. Whereas the prenomination Roosevelt had at least named Germany as the aggressor against Poland (as if there were any doubt), in his speech accepting his party’s nomination and in his September 3 fireside chat, third-term candidate Roosevelt did not, choosing instead to be vague, referring only to “governments which had rejected the principles of democracy.” FDR’s subdued words stand in remarkable contrast to Wendell Willkie’s nomination acceptance speech one month after FDR’s. Willkie, the candidate of a mostly isolationist political party, nevertheless dared to be specific and rightfully alarmist: