Politicians From New York City

"When I came back to my native country, after all the stories about Hitler, I couldn't ride in the front of the bus. I had to go to the back door. I couldn't live where I wanted. I wasn't invited to shake hands with Hitler, but I wasn't invited to the White House to shake hands with the president, either."

"Roosevelt the shrewd tactician and Roosevelt the idealist were difficult to reconcile. This was particularly so in time of war. Though his public stance in the 1930s against violence- 'I hate war'- helped to maintain domestic support among a largely isolationist population, it was difficult for him to hide his hatred of fascism and his expectation that America at some point would become involved with keeping the peace abroad. The ambiguities in this position were sufficiently pronounced to make it almost impossible for the American public to decide just where their president stood on the issue of war, yet to make it just as difficult for Roosevelt to seize the initiative and side openly with the democracies in 1940 and 1941. When Japan attacked in December 1941 everything was simplified for people and President alike: isolationism was dead as a political force and Roosevelt could lead his people in war unfettered by hostile opinion. He brought to the role of war leader some admirably suitable qualities. His was a big personality, made larger by years of publicity and the calculated wooing of popular approval. He had unrivalled experience in politics, having spent eight years in the highest office in the land. When it came to a job of work he was not hostage to party prejudice but hired Republican and Democrat alike. He was adept at managing Congress, and at building bridges between many constituencies- ethnic, political, religious- that made up American society."

"Roosevelt was certainly an ambitious President, who disliked the obstruction of his policies. He devoted most of his energy to short-term political tactics, and was never choosy about the allies he found. He was obsessed with public opinion and his own popularity. He was an unsophisticated idealist, who once confessed that his political outlook could be summed up in two words: Democrat and Christian. Though the idealism was genuine enough, friends and colleagues found his views on most issues ill-defined and pragmatic. Roosevelt's instinct for political survival created in him a distrust of ideological conviction. Charles Bohlen, who interpreted for him at Teheran, thought the President 'preferred to work by improvisation than by plan'. He disliked putting anything down on paper, and instead did much of his work in informal conversations, throwing round ideas, exploring options, testing the water. He could be disarming, flattering, cheerful, supportive, but was, by general agreement of those around him, difficult to pin down. 'Not a tidy mind,' wrote an otherwise sympathetic British observer."

"In 1920 he was chosen by James Cox, the Democrat candidate, to run as Vice-President. It was his first setback. He campaigned on support for the League of Nations, which America had not yet joined, but found the tide of opinion isolationist. In the Republican landslide he failed to win even his home state of New York. The following year, at age 39, he was struck by polio and paralysed from the waist down. He withdrew from politics to fight his affliction. Those who knew him well found him transformed by the struggle. The young politician had an arrogance, an intolerance of weakness, a hint of superficiality, that marred his energy and charm. During the seven years it took him to recover he became a more humble and more sympathetic personality. 'He was serious,' Roosevelt's Secretary for Labour Frances Perkins later wrote, 'not playing now.'"

"Franklin Delano Roosevelt was everything Stalin was not. He was born in 1882 into a wealthy New York family, on a 100-acre estate beside the Hudson river. He had every social advantage. Excessively pampered by his mother, Roosevelt was first sent to the exclusive school at Groton, Connecticut, modeled on the English public school, then on to Harvard and to law school. He was not outstanding academically, but the tall, distinguished, sociable patrician, a member of America's untitled aristocracy, needed little more than his name and background when he launched himself into politics in 1910. He had no particular scruples about which party to join; his cousin, Theodore, was the Republican President, but he adopted the Democrat ticket because they asked him to stand first. He soon became a political high-flyer. In 1913 he was appointed Assistant Secretary for the Navy. He was a solid administrator, and also an arch politician, utterly absorbed by the art of politics. A college friend remembered a man "extremely ambitious to be popular and powerful." He had many Republican friends, whose social world he shared, but made his name fighting on issues for the common man."

"Freedom is not an abstract idea; freedom is the very thing that makes human progress possible — not just at the ballot box, but in our daily lives. One of our greatest Presidents in the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, understood this truth. He defined America's cause as more than the right to cast a ballot. He understood democracy was not just voting. He called upon the world to embrace four fundamental freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. These four freedoms reinforce one another, and you cannot fully realize one without realizing them all."

"We really ought to do some celebrating because Franklin's demise is the biggest public improvement that America has experienced since the passage of the Bill of Rights."

"On our return from the Brenner Pass, we learned that President Roosevelt had died. We were all depressed and saddened by the loss of our Commander in Chief. None of us had heard much about Harry S. Truman, our new president and Commander in Chief. As in his choices of Generals George C. Marshall and Dwight D. Eisenhower, FDR picked the best man in choosing Truman as his successor."

"By the end of the 1940s, most Greek Americans were voting for the Democratic Party. During the Depression, the New Deal recovery measures of Franklin Delano Roosevelt appealed to the large majority of both working class and small businessmen alike. In sharing well in the general prosperity following World War II, Greek Americans strengthened their Democratic Party loyalties...If Franklin Roosevelt was venerated by most Greek Americans, Harry Truman was much more an object of genuine affection."

"Above all these sailors was the Commander in Chief, Franklin D. Roosevelt- a remarkable leader indeed. Unlike Winston Churchill, Roosevelt never imagined himself to be a strategist. In general he followed the advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which included King, Marshall, and his own chief of staff, wise old Admiral Leahy. Thrice at least he went over their heads- refusing to redeploy American forces into the Pacific in 1942, insisting that Guadalcanal must be reinforced and held at all costs, and inviting a British fleet to participate in the Okinawa campaign. He also threw his influence in favor of MacArthur's desire to liberate Leyte and Luzon against the Navy's wish to bypass them. He was a tower of strength to Marshall, King and Eisenhower against insistent British pressure to postpone OVERLORD and shift DRAGOON from Marseilles to Trieste. The Navy was his favorite service- I heard him once, in his true regal style refer to it as "my Navy"- and he did his utmost to build it up and improve its efficiency both before and during the war."

"I believe it was on Friday that we raised the price [of gold] 21¢, and the President [Franklin Delano Roosevelt] said, "It is a lucky number because it is three times seven." If anybody ever knew how we really set the gold price through a combination of lucky numbers, etc., I think that they really would be frightened."

"The greatest fraud this country has ever known. An amusing and charming fellow but a man entirely without a conscience.... Roosevelt was the perfect politician."

"Franklin D. Roosevelt is no crusader. He is no tribune of the people. He is no enemy of entrenched privilege. He is a pleasant man who, without any important qualifications for the office, would very much like to be President."

"Today, science has brought all the different quarters of the globe so close together that it is impossible to isolate them one from another," Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote the night before he died, in an address which was to be his last message. "Today we are faced with the pre-eminent fact that, if civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships-the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together and work together in the same world, at peace."

"I did not see the President again until July 18. That morning he informed me that he had directed the Secretary of the Navy to recall me to active duty as "Chief of Staff to the Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States." That same day I submitted my resignation as Ambassador to France. The President announced my new appointment on July 21. I was not present. There was a barrage of questions from the newsmen as to the scope of my authority and activities. The President was cagey, as he always was in dealing with the newsmen, and did not tell them very much. He said that I would be a sort of "leg man" who would help him digest, analyze, and summarize a mass of material with which he had been trying to cope singlehandedly. There was considerable pressure at that time for the naming of a supreme commander of all the American forces. Asked if I was to be that commander, the President replied that he still was the Commander-in-Chief. And he was. Asked what kind of staff his military adviser would assemble, he replied that he did not have "the foggiest idea." Actually, at no time did my staff number more than two aides and two or three civilian secretaries. Someone suggested I should have a public relations man. To me such an officer could only have been a nuisance! Since I was representing the President at all times, I felt that any talking should be done by Mr. Roosevelt. He was much better at that than I was, anyway."

"On Monday, July 6, 1942, the President telephoned to my little office in the State Department Building and asked that I come over at noon for a conference. We talked for a half hour. He had made up his mind. He wanted me to serve on his staff as a military and naval adviser to the Commander-in-Chief. He did most of the talking- he always did."

"Of Roosevelt's cultivation of bureaucratic disorder too much has probably been said. The observation was once made that it undeniably had a negative impact, in that succeeding generations of Washington power-managers were so shaken by exposure to it that they studiously tried to inculcate the opposite as soon as they had the chance, tried to eliminate the very possibility of a President with such debonair disregard for the organizational niceties. A standard of tidiness was later set against which Roosevelt is measured and found wanting. But we are permitted to inquire whether in terms of national policy-making the replacements for Roosevelt's "poor" administration have been all that satisfactory. The years since have witnessed catastrophic failures of coordination between politics and the military that his years in office did not. Perhaps there was more method to his maneuverings than appeared. Yet a price was paid. His determination to go his own way, his insistence on informing himself through his own idiosyncratic avenues of communication, his deliberate short-circuiting of the proper channels of responsibility- all these had defects of their virtues that now and then led him and the country astray. His two great failures were France and China. These historic civilizations of depth and pungent flavor, to which he was instinctively and without reluctance attracted, defeated his best efforts to incorporate them in an all-embracing view of the postwar world. In each instance he was badly advised, and there is no great artfulness needed to see where the bad advice came from and why he listened to it. But evidence was also available to him that de Gaulle was a far more powerful personage than he had imagined and Chiang Kai-shek was a far weaker one: he chose not to act on it. He wanted a revived but malleable France that would be willing to give up its empire and a united but nationalist China that would be a "great nation," able to fill the vacuum left by Japanese defeat. He got neither."

"Mr. Hoover's presidency was drawing to a close and Mr. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, one of the most dynamic grave diggers of the Western world, succeeded on a platform not dissimilar to that of his predecessor. Though Mr. Roosevelt belonged to the Democratic party, his social background indisposed him for a time to leftist policies, both national and international. But his wife (from another branch of the Roosevelt family) was more in tune with leftist ideas, undoubtedly the aftereffect of higher feminine education in the United States. Whereas Mr. Roosevelt played his politics by ear, his wife, who wielded considerable influence, was ideologically far more consistent. Mr. Roosevelt, moreover, had but the scantiest education for his task; he hardly knew Europe, and his knowledge of foreign languages was as modest as his acquaintance with the mentality of other nations. Largely ignorant himself, and profoundly anti-intellectual, he had no way of judging, evaluating, and coordinating expert opinion. Even worse, perhaps, his sense of objective truth was gravely impaired. His handicap was by no means primarily of a physical nature."

"During the fighting on Okinawa, and while Eisenhower's armies were pressing across Germany in the final assault against the European enemy, President Roosevelt died, on 12 April, at Warm Springs, Georgia. The news of the President's death struck his political and military staff with the same consternation that it caused in the country at large. Although the President had seemed an ill man at Yalta, it had not been anticipated that he would not be alive when the final victory came against the Axis powers. Marshall and King were at the Union Station in Washington on Friday morning, 14 April, when the train bearing the President's body arrived. They took part in the procession from the station to the White House, and the next day they went with the other members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to attend the burial at Hyde Park. They flew from Washington to Stewart Field, some ten miles north of West Point, in an Army Air Corps plane, and were driven to the United States Military Academy, where they were put up by the Superintendent, Major General Wilby. The next morning they were driven across the river to the President's house at Hyde Park for the burial in the flower garden. There was such a press of mourners that the Joint Chiefs could not even see the grave."

"Governments can err, presidents do make mistakes, but the immortal Dante tells us that Divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted on different scales. Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference."

"We do not see faith, hope, and charity as unattainable ideals, but we use them as stout supports of a nation fighting the fight for freedom in a modern civilization. Faith — in the soundness of democracy in the midst of dictatorships. Hope — renewed because we know so well the progress we have made. Charity — in the true spirit of that grand old word. For charity literally translated from the original means love, the love that understands, that does not merely share the wealth of the giver, but in true sympathy and wisdom helps men to help themselves."

"The brave and clear platform adopted by this convention, to which I heartily subscribe, sets forth that government in a modern civilization has certain inescapable obligations to its citizens, among which are protection of the family and the home, the establishment of a democracy of opportunity, and aid to those overtaken by disaster."

"These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power. In vain they seek to hide behind the flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the flag and the Constitution stand for. Now, as always, they stand for democracy, not tyranny; for freedom, not subjection; and against a dictatorship by mob rule and the over-privileged alike."

"For too many of us the political equality we once had won was meaningless in the face of economic inequality. A small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people's property, other people's money, other people's labor — other people's lives. For too many of us life was no longer free; liberty no longer real; men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness. Against economic tyranny such as this, the American citizen could appeal only to the organized power of government. The collapse of 1929 showed up the despotism for what it was. The election of 1932 was the people's mandate to end it. Under that mandate it is being ended."

"The hours men and women worked, the wages they received, the conditions of their labor — these had passed beyond the control of the people, and were imposed by this new industrial dictatorship. The savings of the average family, the capital of the small-businessmen, the investments set aside for old age — other people's money — these were tools which the new economic royalty used to dig itself in. Those who tilled the soil no longer reaped the rewards which were their right. The small measure of their gains was decreed by men in distant cities. Throughout the nation, opportunity was limited by monopoly. Individual initiative was crushed in the cogs of a great machine. The field open for free business was more and more restricted. Private enterprise, indeed, became too private. It became privileged enterprise, not free enterprise."

"It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction. In its service new mercenaries sought to regiment the people, their labor, and their property. And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man."

"As President of the United States I say to you most earnestly once more that the people of America and the Government of those people intend and expect to remain at peace with all the world. In the two years and a half of my Presidency, this Government has remained constant in following this policy of our own choice. At home we have preached, and will continue to preach, the gospel of the good neighbor. I hope from the bottom of my heart that as the years go on, in every continent and in every clime, Nation will follow Nation in proving by deed as well as by word their adherence to the ideal of the Americas — I am a good neighbor."

"It is true that other Nations may, as they do, enforce contrary rules of conscience and conduct. It is true that policies may be pursued under flags other than our own, but those policies are beyond our jurisdiction. Yet in our inner individual lives we can never be indifferent, and we assert for ourselves complete freedom to embrace, to profess and to observe the principles for which our flag has so long been the lofty symbol. As it was so well said by James Madison, over a century ago: "We hold it for a fundamental and inalienable truth that religion and the manner of discharging it can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence.""

"Our national determination to keep free of foreign wars and foreign entanglements cannot prevent us from feeling deep concern when ideals and principles that we have cherished are challenged. In the United States we regard it as axiomatic that every person shall enjoy the free exercise of his religion according to the dictates of his conscience. Our flag for a century and a half has been the symbol of the principles of liberty of conscience, of religious freedom and of equality before the law; and these concepts are deeply ingrained in our national character."

"This country seeks no conquest. We have no imperial designs. From day to day and year to year, we are establishing a more perfect assurance of peace with our neighbors. We rejoice especially in the prosperity, the stability and the independence of all of the American Republics. We not only earnestly desire peace, but we are moved by a stern determination to avoid those perils that will endanger our peace with the world."

"Several centuries ago the greatest writer in history described the two most menacing clouds that hang over human government and human society as "malice domestic and fierce foreign war." We are not rid of these dangers but we can summon our intelligence to meet them. Never was there more genuine reason for Americans to face down these two causes of fear. "Malice domestic" from time to time will come to you in the shape of those who would raise false issues, pervert facts, preach the gospel of hate, and minimize the importance of public action to secure human rights or spiritual ideals. There are those today who would sow these seeds, but your answer to them is in the possession of the plain facts of our present condition."

"It is now beyond partisan controversy that it is a fundamental individual right of a worker to associate himself with other workers and to bargain collectively with his employer. New laws, in themselves, do not bring a millennium; new laws do not pretend to prevent labor disputes, nor do they cover all industry and all labor. But they do constitute an important step toward the achievement of just and peaceable labor relations in industry."

"An American Government cannot permit Americans to starve."

"The task of Government is that of application and encouragement. A wise Government seeks to provide the opportunity through which the best of individual achievement can be obtained, while at the same time it seeks to remove such obstruction, such unfairness as springs from selfish human motives. Our common life under our various agencies of Government, our laws and our basic Constitution, exist primarily to protect the individual, to cherish his rights and to make clear his just principles."

"To a great extent the achievements of invention, of mechanical and of artistic creation, must of necessity, and rightly, be individual rather than governmental. It is the self-reliant pioneer in every enterprise who beats the path along which American civilization has marched. Such individual effort is the glory of America."

"Furthermore, the drain of a depression upon the reserves of business puts a disproportionate strain upon the modestly capitalized small enterprise. Without such small enterprises our competitive economic society would cease. Size begets monopoly. Moreover, in the aggregate these little businesses furnish the indispensable local basis for those nationwide markets which alone can ensure the success of our mass production industries. Today our smaller corporations are fighting not only for their own local well-being but for that fairly distributed national prosperity which makes large-scale enterprise possible. It seems only equitable, therefore, to adjust our tax system in accordance with economic capacity, advantage and fact. The smaller corporations should not carry burdens beyond their powers; the vast concentrations of capital should be ready to carry burdens commensurate with their powers and their advantages."

"Social unrest and a deepening sense of unfairness are dangers to our national life which we must minimize by rigorous methods. People know that vast personal incomes come not only through the effort or ability or luck of those who receive them, but also because of the opportunities for advantage which Government itself contributes. Therefore, the duty rests upon the Government to restrict such incomes by very high taxes."

"The desire to provide security for oneself and one's family is natural and wholesome, but it is adequately served by a reasonable inheritance. Great accumulations of wealth cannot be justified on the basis of personal and family security. In the last analysis such accumulations amount to the perpetuation of great and undesirable concentration of control in a relatively few individuals over the employment and welfare of many, many others."

"Wealth in the modern world does not come merely from individual effort; it results from a combination of individual effort and of the manifold uses to which the community puts that effort. The individual does not create the product of his industry with his own hands; he utilizes the many processes and forces of mass production to meet the demands of a national and international market. Therefore, in spite of the great importance in our national life of the efforts and ingenuity of unusual individuals, the people in the mass have inevitably helped to make large fortunes possible. Without mass cooperation great accumulations of wealth would be impossible save by unhealthy speculation. As Andrew Carnegie put it, "Where wealth accrues honorably, the people are always silent partners." Whether it be wealth achieved through the cooperation of the entire community or riches gained by speculation — in either case the ownership of such wealth or riches represents a great public interest and a great ability to pay."

"With the enactment of the Income Tax Law of 1913, the Federal Government began to apply effectively the widely accepted principle that taxes should be levied in proportion to ability to pay and in proportion to the benefits received. Income was wisely chosen as the measure of benefits and of ability to pay. This was, and still is, a wholesome guide for national policy. It should be retained as the governing principle of Federal taxation. The use of other forms of taxes is often justifiable, particularly for temporary periods; but taxation according to income is the most effective instrument yet devised to obtain just contribution from those best able to bear it and to avoid placing onerous burdens upon the mass of our people."

"Let us not be afraid to help each other — let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and Senators and Congressmen and Government officials but the voters of this country."

"The Joint Legislative Committee, established by the Revenue Act of 1926, has been particularly helpful to the Treasury Department. The members of that Committee have generously consulted with administrative officials, not only on broad questions of policy but on important and difficult tax cases. On the basis of these studies and of other studies conducted by officials of the Treasury, I am able to make a number of suggestions of important changes in our policy of taxation. These are based on the broad principle that if a government is to be prudent its taxes must produce ample revenues without discouraging enterprise; and if it is to be just it must distribute the burden of taxes equitably. I do not believe that our present system of taxation completely meets this test. Our revenue laws have operated in many ways to the unfair advantage of the few, and they have done little to prevent an unjust concentration of wealth and economic power."

"The work itself will cover a wide field including clearance of slums, which for adequate reasons cannot be undertaken by private capital; in rural housing of several kinds, where, again, private capital is unable to function; in rural electrification; in the reforestation of the great watersheds of the Nation; in an intensified program to prevent soil erosion and to reclaim blighted areas; in improving existing road systems and in constructing national highways designed to handle modern traffic; in the elimination of grade crossings; in the extension and enlargement of the successful work of the Civilian Conservation Corps; in non-Federal works, mostly self-liquidating and highly useful to local divisions of Government; and on many other projects which the Nation needs and cannot afford to neglect."

"All work undertaken should be useful — not just for a day, or a year, but useful in the sense that it affords permanent improvement in living conditions or that it creates future new wealth for the Nation."

"I am not willing that the vitality of our people be further sapped by the giving of cash, of market baskets, of a few hours of weekly work cutting grass, raking leaves or picking up papers in the public parks. We must preserve not only the bodies of the unemployed from destitution but also their self-respect, their self-reliance and courage and determination. This decision brings me to the problem of what the Government should do with approximately five million unemployed now on the relief rolls."

"The lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fibre. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit. It is inimical to the dictates of sound policy. It is in violation of the traditions of America. Work must be found for able-bodied but destitute workers. The Federal Government must and shall quit this business of relief."

"We find our population suffering from old inequalities, little changed by vast sporadic remedies. In spite of our efforts and in spite of our talk, we have not weeded out the over privileged and we have not effectively lifted up the underprivileged. Both of these manifestations of injustice have retarded happiness. No wise man has any intention of destroying what is known as the profit motive; because by the profit motive we mean the right by work to earn a decent livelihood for ourselves and for our families. We have, however, a clear mandate from the people, that Americans must forswear that conception of the acquisition of wealth which, through excessive profits, creates undue private power over private affairs and, to our misfortune, over public affairs as well. In building toward this end we do not destroy ambition, nor do we seek to divide our wealth into equal shares on stated occasions. We continue to recognize the greater ability of some to earn more than others. But we do assert that the ambition of the individual to obtain for him and his a proper security, a reasonable leisure, and a decent living throughout life, is an ambition to be preferred to the appetite for great wealth and great power."

"Throughout the world, change is the order of the day. In every Nation economic problems, long in the making, have brought crises of many kinds for which the masters of old practice and theory were unprepared. In most Nations social justice, no longer a distant ideal, has become a definite goal, and ancient Governments are beginning to heed the call. Thus, the American people do not stand alone in the world in their desire for change. We seek it through tested liberal traditions, through processes which retain all of the deep essentials of that republican form of representative government first given to a troubled world by the United States."

"We have undertaken a new order of things; yet we progress to it under the framework and in the spirit and intent of the American Constitution. We have proceeded throughout the Nation a measurable distance on the road toward this new order."

"This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory."