FDR: Into the Storm, 1937-1940 (Magill Book Reviews)

At a glance:

This is, on the surface, an old-fashioned biography, repletewith portentous weather reports and parenthetical asides. It payshomage to the twentieth century’s consummate politician, theunflappable Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Still its central theme isdrift, the disquieting equivocation of a Lincolnesque democrat whofreely put himself at the mercy of the tide of circumstance. Aliberal amidst a sea of self-interested sharks, FDR was unable tomake giant corporations heel for long. Insufficiently dedicatedeither to national planning or vigorous antitrust prosecution, hefailed to check the accelerating growth of technological tyrannywhich presently imperils the planet.

Second presidential terms are rarely successful. Amazinglyresilient, FDR did not suffer the ruinous fate of his Democratpredecessor Woodrow Wilson. Like Dwight D. Eisenhower and RonaldReagan, he remained personally popular even as his governingcoalition waned. After his ill-considered, hubris-engenderedcourt-packing fight and rash attempt to “purge” disloyal Democratsin the 1938 primaries, Roosevelt became palpably timid in mattersforeign and domestic (e.g., the Spanish Civil War and theanti-lynching bill). Bent on conserving his political capital formatters pertaining to national security, he tolerated paralyticinternecine feuds (such as between Secretary of War Harry Woodringand Assistant Secretary Louis A. Johnson) and rebuffed, with tragicconsequences, efforts to relax immigration restrictions for victimsof Naziism. Davis writes: “Roosevelt hesitated. Heprocrastinated. The indirection, the secretive deviousness whichhe had practiced intermittently in more prosperous times, often, itseemed, for the sheer fun of dramatic surprise and role-playing,was now practiced by him almost continuously out of, clearly, afelt grim necessity. On occasion, his reluctance to meet opposingforces head-on became extreme to the point of cowardice.”

Based almost totally on secondary sources, INTO THE STORM isthin on new revelations but rich in character development, not onlyof the buoyant FDR and his inner circle but also of suchadversaries as isolationists Burton K. Wheeler, Joseph P. Kennedy,and Charles Lindbergh (“I am absolutely convinced Lindbergh is aNazi,” FDR told Henry Morgenthau) and charismatic 1940 Republicanchallenger Wendell Willkie. One wishes Davis would haveconcentrated more on the social consequences of the New Deal andless on the coming in Europe of World War II. Quibbling aside,this is a thought-provoking liberal critique of modern America’spremier president as the country entered the storm of the century’smost important event. Recommended.

Sources for Further Study

Campaigns and Elections. XIV, June, 1993, p.60.

Chicago Tribune. January 3, 1993, V, p.1.

Choice. XXXI, September, 1993, p.199.

The Christian Science Monitor. March 26, 1993, p.13.

Foreign Affairs. LXXII, Summer, 1993, p.199.

Library Journal. CXVIII, February 1, 1993, p.90

The New York Times Book Review. XCVIII, March 21, 1993, p.9.

Publishers Weekly. CXL, January 11, 1993, p.45.

The Wall Street Journal. March 24, 1993, p. A12.

The Washington Post Book World. XXIII, March 28, 1993, p.3.