A New Deal for FDR: a Full Month

Long before the nation enlisted the entire month of October to honor Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Clintons spent a late night celebrating FDR by roaming the second floor of the White House.

No, this wasn’t the famous seance in the solarium written up by Bob Woodward--where amid popcorn, pretzels and a spiritualist, Hillary Rodham Clinton chatted up Eleanor Roosevelt and exorcised a few first lady frustrations.

This was much more fun.

As told by Doris Kearns Goodwin--Pulitzer Prize-winning writer of a book about Franklin and Eleanor--the first lady invited the author and her husband, Richard, to spend a night at the White House, exploring the second floor where the Roosevelts spent so much time. The two couples talked and strolled until 2 a.m. through halls where secluded history was made.

“I was certain Churchill was still sitting there smoking a cigar and drinking a brandy in the corner,” Goodwin muses.

Now the country is remembering the 32nd president with symposiums and speeches, unveilings and exhibitions coast to coast. With the inflationary rate in bestowing honor, FDR gets 31 days to Washington and Lincoln’s joint Presidents Day in February. Some find that inappropriate, though it remains to be seen whether celebrating Roosevelt goes annual.

There are no plans for dealing in the true currency of American commemoration: a day off with pay.

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This first month ever devoted to honoring a president was intended to complement the dedication of an FDR memorial near the Tidal Basin. But monument completion was delayed until next spring by budgetary and design concerns, including whether to depict the polio-stricken president in a wheelchair.

So the father of expansive federal government and modern liberalism is remembered at a time when both major political parties are calling for less government. It is also a time when the Republican-controlled 104th Congress, with President Clinton’s help, has begun to deconstruct experiments like welfare and farm subsidies that had their beginnings in the New Deal.

“It’s peculiar that at the very time when even Democrats recognize that the era of big government is over, that we should be celebrating the memory of the president who more than anyone else gave us a big government to begin with,” says Adam Meyerson, vice president of the conservative Heritage Foundation and editor of its Policy Review magazine.

Except that “peculiar” may be too impolitic for the politicians.

Bob Dole, who often draws fondly upon a past rooted in the FDR era, has praised Roosevelt as an “energetic and inspiring” leader during the Depression and a tough commander in chief during World War II. Clinton--who would be the first Democrat since Roosevelt to win a second term if reelected, and whose political director, Harold Ickes, is the son of a stalwart liberal in FDR’s Cabinet--invites comparisons.

“Franklin Roosevelt was, above all, a pragmatic political leader dedicated to making a difference in the lives of people, on behalf of a country, he cared deeply about. And that is exactly the description that I would use for President Clinton,” says Ann F. Lewis, Clinton campaign communications director.

Even House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) describes Roosevelt as the greatest president of the 20th century.

“Roosevelt’s concept of welfare was vastly different than his party has evolved it,” says Tony Blankley, press secretary to Gingrich. “Different policies make sense for different times and what may have been a worthy experiment 60 years ago may be seen to be a failed experiment today.”

Thus is the Roosevelt legacy subject to spin. (Lewis, for example, argues that it is unseemly to tack a “liberal” label onto FDR, whom she declares one of the nation’s greatest presidents.)

Meanwhile, a month of remembrances unwinds.

The Smithsonian Institution, Library of Congress and Supreme Court have held or are scheduling dozens of events; Bill Gates released an FDR CD-ROM; television documentaries are airing; Roosevelt reference material is being made available to schoolteachers everywhere; and civic and educational groups are slating activities--among them, symposiums on children at UC San Diego’s Eleanor Roosevelt College on Oct. 24-25; and FDR lectures Sunday and Oct. 27 on the presidential yacht Potomac berthed in Oakland.

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Earlier this month, President Clinton proclaimed October as Roosevelt History Month in honor of Franklin, Eleanor and Teddy, but most of the tributes focus on FDR. (Hillary Clinton unveiled a statue of Eleanor Roosevelt in New York City, and the New Dealer’s first inaugural address is on display in the Capitol Rotunda all month.)

“Any enthusiast with energy and time to spare can put together an impressive-looking committee and create a History month,” sniffed the Economist magazine last month.

An exhausted Peter Kovler did just that, but would dispute the suggestion that it was simple. An FDR devotee (he donated $500,000 toward building the Roosevelt memorial), liberal Democrat and heir to the James B. Beam Distilling Co. fortune of Chicago, Kovler, 44, began organizing Roosevelt History Month two years ago.

“Doing a presidential history month right before an election is when people are most interested in the subject,” says Kovler, who pulled together Hillary Clinton, Vice President Al Gore and former President Reagan as honorary chairs of his committee.

About 2,000 phone calls later, after lobbying last December for unanimous passage of a Senate resolution marking the month, Kovler likes to point out the irony of honoring FDR at a time when so much of his big-government legacy has become a crucial campaign issue.

“The timing turns out to be, for those reasons, magnificent in a way no one could imagine,” Kovler says. “There’s a real strong disconnect between the denunciation of liberalism and the desire to celebrate, I think, the man who is considered the greatest liberal president we ever had. I don’t know if that’s absurd or ironic, or all of the above.”