Franklin and Winston

Journalist Jon Meacham has written a fascinating memoir in Franklin [Roosevelt]) and Winston [Churchill]: an Intimate Portrait of  an Epic Friendship (2003, Random House, New York). The book should be read by every president that manufactures alliances and manages international conflicts. That would be every one! If our current president had read this book he may not have as quickly characterized Churchill as a reactionary colonialist and removed the Churchill bust from the White House. Churchill was a defender of the British Empire and unwilling to let colonial people have self-determination, but he was also the last European hope against Hitler. His success in lining up American help against the Nazi's, not an easy task in isolationist America, not only saved Britain. Churchill was instrumental in getting the U.S. in the war before it was too late for the free world.

Meacham analyzes the contrasting management styles of Roosevelt and Churchill. Roosevelt was practical, devious, always withholding a part of himself. He controlled his emotions completely, met women he wasn't supposed to see, and could completely compartmentalize his personal and private life from his public duties. He was a fair weather friend--publicly embarrassing and ignoring Churchill when, acting in matters of state as he saw them, he cozied up to Stalin. Roosevelt had utmost faith in his ability to charm anyone, even the Soviet dictator, and had he lived until the end of 1945, he may have been able to convince Stalin to act less aggressively in Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe. Roosevelt may have reacted less vociferously than Truman to Soviet provocations, keeping tensions between America and the Russians below the boiling point. Right before his death, Roosevelt avoided confrontation and suggested a middle course with Stalin (P.341).

In contrast to FDR, Churchill was a straight shooter, courageous, honest, devoted, warmhearted, magnanimous, and an ornate, brilliant orator. He saw black and white, good and evil, when battling Naziism, and history shows his was the correct attitude, when many in his government wanted to make a negotiated peace with Hitler. He was also prescient in predicting and exposing the nefarious intentions of the Soviet empire after the war was over. Roosevelt was starting to come around to Churchill's view of Stalin when Roosevelt suffered the cerebral hemorrhage that ended his life.

Two themes run through the book that also resonate throughout the history of 20th and 21st century presidents. Should a president campaign as though he is healthy even though he is gravely ill, and how much time does a president need in order to recuperate from the weighty pressures of the office?
Roosevelt had congestive heart failure and  hypertension, which eventually killed him. At some level he knew he was dying but felt he had to lead the war to a successful conclusion, and no one else could have done it as well. The last point is debatable, but it was obvious to all who met him that FDR looked terrible by mid 1944. He looked haggard, had lost weight, and had energy for only four hours of hard work each day, when the war demanded much more time from the leader of the western world. Roosevelt campaigned like a champion in the 1944 election for a fourth term, slogging through a nasty storm in New York City in an open car. The press put the photographs in all the newspapers. He was fine the voters thought or, wanted to think.

John F. Kennedy was also much sicker than voters knew. Despite his chronic ill health he looked like Adonis (according to journalist and newscaster Walter Cronkite) in his critical televised debate with Nixon and governed with youthful vigor. (See my review of Kennedy here.) If voters knew the truth about Kennedy's health would they have voted for him over Nixon? Woodrow Wilson was cursed with chronic ill health before his debilitating stroke near the end of his second term. Running against the athletic and larger-than-life Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, Wilson could not afford to let the American people know he was a frail academic.

Do presidents need to be flying to Camp David, playing golf, attending lavish banquets, and just plain enjoying themselves as much as they do? Presidents are always "on" and Meacham's book gives the reader more respect for the formidable pressures of the office, especially in war time. Older, sicker men need time to recharge, whether it's collecting stamps (FDR) or collecting conquests  vacationing at Hyannis Point (JFK). The American people can rightly ask if a president is vacationing in order to work better or, like a Roman emperor, taking the job for what it's worth in order to enjoy frequent, free and lavish vacations.

What Presidents Teach Us about Luxury

Photo from PBS

Eleanor Roosevelt's austerity in the White House kitchen (abstract here) seems quaint today. Franklin D. Roosevelt put up with meals costing ten cents per serving (adjusted by inflation to $1.70 today). Despite the strains of the Great Depression and WWII on a polio-ravaged body, FDR traveled abroad for conferences with the allies, campaigned vigorously, battled the Great Depression (unsuccessfully but with great energy) and the Axis powers (successfully), and vacationed 958 days in close to 12 years as president, about 80 days per year. During much of those 958 days he was still engaged in executive duties in his vacation house in Warm Springs, Georgia. Most considered his vacations neither frivolous nor overly expensive.

Obama vacations are much more expensive, not because of his rented house (which he pays for), but because his large Praetorian Guard must be jetted over to Hawaii and put up in hotels.The latest $7 million dollar vacation can be inspected here. Let us put this most recent vacation in perspective. This one trip will cost more than the average American would make in 175 years of work. When Obama's wife or children vacation away from the president, they too must be guarded by a large entourage, and taxpayers foot the bill.

I am aware that George W. Bush vacationed a greater amount of time than any president including Obama. However, most of that was at the Crawford Ranch, 1,300 miles away, "working at home," which W preferred. That may be qualitatively different than jetting 4,800 miles to Hawaii to play golf and enjoy a tropical paradise, maybe not, since W's trips were also expensive. Most will agree that the attitude towards luxury and the use of taxpayer funds is quite different than what FDR experienced at the hands of his wife. Neither W nor Obama seem embarrassed by these trips, 54 Christmas trees in the White House, or, most fittingly, lavish White House state dinners (such as the million dollar gala for Mexico's president). Too bad FDR wasn't invited. He would have enjoyed a little caviar and champagne.

Eleanor Roosevelt was implicitly telling the public that the Roosevelts may be rich but they can live frugally and responsibly, and she vicariously shares the hardship of most Americans during the Great Depression. The current White House attitude is the opposite in every respect. Corporate boards often tie CEOs' bonus pay to corporate performance. Maybe we should do the same for presidential vacations, limiting taxpayer funds as long as America's economic performance is sub par.

The New Deal and the End of the Great Depression

When I’m on the stationary bicycle I enjoy reading my girlfriend’s New Yorker magazines. San Francisco Bay Area weather was beautiful this summer, so I’ve been running outside and spending less time on the stationary bike. Alas, now I’m three months behind on the magazines. Reading the May 24 issue, I was flabbergasted by lawyer and author Jeffrey Toobin’s article, Activism V. Restraint . Toobin writes about FDR’s failed court-packing initiative, but how he, in the end, made eight Supreme Court nominations. That “is what guaranteed that the federal government was able to address the economic crisis.” The author then relates this history to the problems facing Obama’s legislation.

FDR certainly addressed the economic crisis with New Deal legislation. Let us scrutinize how well these Keynesian programs worked. FDR was president from 1933 to part of 1945. I have collected below the unemployment rates of the years of the Great Depression—late 1929 to 1941 or so.

Year and Unemployment Rate

1923-29 3.3 %, 1930 8.9 %, 1931 15.9 %, 1932 23.6 %, 1933 24.9%, 1934 21.7%, 1935 20.1%, 1936 17.0%, 1937 14.3%, 1938 19.0%, 1939 17.2%, 1940 14.6%, 1941 9.9%, 1942 4.7%

(Source Bureau of Labor Statistics: http://www.bls.gov/opub/cwc/cm20030124ar03p1.htm)

I think we can make three conclusions. First, the unemployment rate did go down, and the number of people employed rose (with the exception of the 1937-1938 period). Second, the unemployment rates were still very high throughout—the best unemployment numbers, eight years after FDR had taken over and twelve years after the depression had started, were approximately the same as what our country is experiencing now. Third, the United States enjoyed full employment only after we started equipping the Allies and mobilizing for WWII. That crisis had nothing to do with the New Deal or unfriendly Supreme Court Justices.

Did FDR’s prescription for unemployment work? We need to examine a control group, a group of Americans that did not receive the independent variable, the New Deal, and compare them with the rest of the country. Obviously, that experiment will not be undertaken.

Would the unemployment numbers have been even worse had FDR not passed New Deal legislation? It is hard to say. On the other hand, UCLA researchers show that the Great Depression would have passed quicker if the New Deal had not gone into effect. (See link )

Historians Kennedy, Cohen, and Bailey, hardly a right-wing bunch, write in the popular textbook, The American Pageant, 12^th ed. (P. 803), “The depression dragged on with only periodic improvement for nearly eight years under his [FDR’s] leadership, until the cataclysmic emergency of World War II finally banished unemployment from the land.” Similarly, New Left historian Barton Bernstein writes (in Towards a New Past: Dissenting Essays in American History, 1968, Random House)

the New Deal failed to solve the problem of the depression, it failed to raise the impoverished, it failed to redistribute income, it failed to extend equality and generally countenanced racial discrimination and segregation.

We can conclude that the New Deal transformed American society, but did not solve the unemployment problem of the Great Depression. Obama's Keynesian solution may not alleviate unemployment much either. See what the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) thought of Obama's stimulus package here.The CBO says that the stimulus may have sustained as few as 700,000 jobs and as many as 3.6 million (costing around $200,000 per job). That's a poor return for a $825 billion dollar stimulus and tax rebate package that must be paid back.