"Wottaman" in the White House

JAY FRANKLIN

The average American has a general notion—based, no doubt, on the Lin-colnian tradition—that the Chief Executive of the United States ought to combine the best features of Moses, Robinson Crusoe, and Mark Twain. The popular idea of the Presidency is that it requires a miraculous instinct for the Promised Land, the knack of the all-around handyman and deep feeling for the oracular wise-crack. It is a matter of record that no man since Lincoln -not even including Honest Abe himself— has measured up to this exacting formula.

If there is one human trait in which our greater Presidents have excelled, it is perhaps the jack-of-all-trades tradition in American statesmanship, the tradition which began with Ben Franklin. Most of our early Presidents were many-sided men—inventors, architects, and philosophers, as well as practising politicians. Jefferson, for example, designed his own house at Monticello and it is, possibly, heresy to point out that he forgot to build a staircase from the first floor to the second until it was too late to do anything about it except a make-shift. In modern times, of course, Theodore the Well-Beloved engaged in fisticuffs, jiu-jitsu, horseback rides, hikes and conversations redolent of the Strenuous Life. Coolidge pitched hay and wore Indian costumes. Herbert the Unhappy indulged in fly-fishing and metallurgy. And Franklin Delano Roosevelt has put a zest into the White House that is hard to equal.

For this reason, the human mind boggles at the stupidity of those jackals of the publicity racket who have tried, with indifferent success, to commit Wall Street to antiRoosevelt "whispering campaigns"—to the effect that F.D.R. is a sick man, that he has lost his mind, or other anonymous libels peculiar to the art of mud-slinging. Naturally, mud is no new thing in politics. It was whispered that the great Teddy was a violent drunkard, that Woodrow Wilson's personal morals were those of the stew's, that Harding was a mulatto, and that Hoover was in British pay. They said that Jefferson was a "Jacobin", (the equivalent of a "Bolshevist" at the time of the French Revolution). They attacked the morals of Andy Jackson's wife. They called Lincoln "the Illinois gorilla"—all this by way of showing that the policies of these eminent Americans were highly inconvenient to certain vested interests. There is, of course, no lie so stupid that it will not find people to believe it, but in the case of the recent "whispers" impugning Roosevelt's health and sanity, in an effort to head off the tax bill and the anti-utility bill, even the vigorously partisan New York Herald-Tribune and such old-time stand-pat commentators as Mark Sullivan publicly branded these tactics as contemptible and ridiculous.

In fact, the only sincere comment which can be made on the subject of Roosevelt is the traditional "Wottaman!" His politics, naturally, are another question. In his effort to act as political balance-wheel for a nation of 125,000,000 individuals, spread thin over a very wide and diversified continent, he has from time to time infuriated ("very shade of political opinion. When Hoover had held us back too long, Roosevelt's "radicalism alarmed the conservatives. After the tremendous New Deal victories of November 1934, his "swing to the right annoyed the liberals. Now that conservatism has received aid and comfort from the Federal judiciary, his "radicalism" is again exciting the apprehension of those who follow the "due process clause in preference to the election-returns. You can't he President of the United States and please all of the people all of the time, in a period of crisis.

It is not his politics but his personality which is remarkable. He is a phenomenal human being. He keeps his head, keeps his temper, keeps smiling, and keeps working, rightly or wrongly, while Supreme Court decisions demolish his major recovery measures under the N.R.A., while the lesser judiciary starts putting the skids under his agricultural and power policies, and while Congress revolted and refused to pass the "death sentence in the utilities bill and other economic measures on the "must" list of "desirable legislation." Things which would have had Teddy cursing the "malefactors of great wealth," which should have set Wilson tapping out another state paper on his little portable type-writer, which would have had Coolidge crackling like thorns under a pot, and Hoover rumbling at the microphone, have not impaired Roosevelt s even good temper or his zest for the game of presidential politics which he is playing. When things get hot and hectic, he runs down Chesapeake Bay on the Sequoia or goes picnicking with a handful of his friends and foes, to engage in beefsteak dinners, clam-bakes, poker and a good time. And not all the yappings of the inverted snobbery in the tabloid zone of public opinion have prevented him from taking his annual mid-winter cruise with Vincent Astor in the Nourmahal down to the tropics. And, in between times, for a change, he will take a barn-storming trip across country or make a tour of our overseas possessions in a battle-ship.

During the campaign of 1932, lie took the physical punishment of several speeches a day on the campaign train, on trips which wore out the stoutest correspondents, and turned up smiling, fresh as a daisy, ready for more. He still possesses a physical stamina and a physical strength which are phenomenal and can out-eat, out-talk and out-do nine-tenths of the people about him. Wottaman!

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His day—and that means, day after day, in practice—is a steady grind. He is waked early, reads his mail in bed, reads all the morning papers, conducts political conferences over his breakfast with Mrs. Roosevelt, other members of his staff and household, and political advisers.

Then, breakfast over, he goes down to the Executive Offices for the day's appointments. These run from 10:30 till nearly 6, with no time off for lunch or good behavior.

They involve the business of running the largest corporation and holding company in the world, the Government of the United States, whose corporate structure to-day makes the average utility corporate labyrinth look as simple as Idiot's Delight (which no doubt it is).. There are the old-line Departments represented by the Cabinet, with all the delicate financial problems involved in the Treasury and all the urgent international matters dealt with by the State Department, to select but two. Then there are the alphabet soup recovery agencies—the remains of the N.R.A., the A.A.A., the R.F.C., the P.W.A., the W.P.A., the T.V.A., the C.C.C., the F.C.A., the H.O.L.C., the R.A., the N.Y.A., the R.E.A., the F.D.I.C., the S.E.C., the N.E.C., and so on, far into the night.

The point is that it does go on far, far into the night. On lucky afternoons, he can break away for a short swim in the private pool, which his friends and admirers built for him in the White House, followed by tea with his friends and family. Afterward is dinner, usually a family meal but also usually with friends, relatives, visitors, or important or impressionable men and women from every branch of public and private life even when there are no State dinners. Later on there are quite apt to be motion pictures, followed by more discussions, by work on speeches, Messages to Congress or other public papers, followed by more conversation or by reading until midnight or later.

The range of his interests is remarkable. As a member of an old (but not aristocratic) New York Dutch family which made its fortune in the China trade in the days of the clipper ships, he is more interested in ships than in sealing-wax and in cabbages than kings. He delights in salt water, loves to sail his own Amberjack II and has a remarkable collection of ship models and prints. He loves swimming, which has played an important part in his life. He contracted his attack of infantile paralysis after a swim in the chill waters off Campobello Island and cured it by swimming in the curative waters of Warm Springs, Georgia. He is especially interested in the history of "the Waggoners of the sea," the Dutch, and loves to converse and correspond concerning them and their history with Hendrik Van Loon, lie turns from such erudite matters to discuss the art of prestidigitation with Fulton Oursler, the friend of Houdini and editor of Bernarr Macfadden's Liberty, or the kindred art of political manipulation with Jim Farley and Raymond Moley.

He comes as close to being a "complete man" as the many-sided men of the Renaissance or the equally versatile "founding fathers"—men like Washington and Adams and Jefferson, who were architects, inventors, philosophers and hedonists, as well as statesmen. He enjoys food and drink in a hearty low country spirit, being partial to T-bone steaks, and not particular about fancy sauces and seasoning. He plays a good game of poker and is a consummate bluffer. He loves fishing and likes to get out on Vincent Astor's yacht with a group of his Harvard friends and fellow-members of the "Fly" Club.

His literary tastes are varied—fiction, biography and history—and, while he likes mystery stories, he is not a detective-story addict. In art and music his taste is not highly formed and he is more interested in people and ideas than in forms and sensory stimuli. He loves a good talk in front of a fire with a congenial friend or a stimulating mind, and is one of the few American statesmen who can talk with the British without losing his social bearings. Few political collisions have been more amusing than that which occurred when the British sent over their "charm" expert, Ramsay MacDonald, to meet the most charming President in our history on the eve of the London Conference. Both were "charmed" but the charm didn't work, for the London Monetary Conference blew up when MacDonald broke his pledge to keep the war debts outside of the picture and Roosevelt ditched monetary "stabilization."

This charm carries over into his voice and the radio companies have been amazed at his ability to project a wise, tolerant, and sympathetic personality by intonation alone through his "fireside talks." President Roosevelt and Father Coughlin have the best radio-voices in the country, and the Republicans tremble whenever the President goes on the air. This charm is a really remarkable thing. It is the expression of a vital, gallant spirit, quite as much as it is the product of real good-will and sincerity, and it is this combination which makes the Congress cheer him and makes even his bitterest political foes defer to him.

The point is that in the personality of President Roosevelt the country is witnessing one of the most amazing sustained performances in our history, It is not that his policies are good, had or indifferent. It does not matter whether he is right or wrong about banking, taxes or utilities. Here is drama, here is action, here is a man with a good brain, a sound digestion, an amazing vitality, and wide and cultured interests putting everything he has into a remarkably exacting job, doing it without groaning or sweating, doing it with gayety, courage and tremendous determination.