Becoming FDR

Starred review from June 27, 2022
Franklin Roosevelt’s struggle with paralysis made him a great president, according to this searching biographical study. Journalist Darman (Landslide) opens his narrative with Roosevelt a charming, callow, selfish politician who started a fight and showily leaped over chairs at the 1920 Democratic National Convention to get attention from the press. His agonizing bout with polio in 1921, which crippled his legs, changed him drastically, Darman argues, imbuing him with patience, discipline, thoughtfulness, strategic vision, and a genuine empathy for the disadvantaged. (It also liberated his wife, Eleanor, who emerged from his shadow during his convalescence to become a political leader in her own right.) Illness honed Roosevelt’s penchant for evasion and deceit as well, Darman suggests, as he concealed his disability behind displays of cheerful vigor. (During one carefully staged appearance, he chatted with reporters while jauntily smoking a cigarette that aides had to light and place in his mouth beforehand to hide the fact that he couldn’t yet use his hands.) Written in elegant, evocative prose—“The accent was the same, a honking aristocratic lockjaw charmingly discordant with the plain words it pronounced. But his voice was deeper, more grounded, more sure”—this insightful portrait convincingly grounds Roosevelt’s public achievements in painful private experience. Readers will be riveted. Agent: Sarah Chalfant, Wylie Agency.

August 1, 2022
A capable account of a specific period in the life of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945). Political historian Darman opens his study of FDR in 1920, when he was plotting a bid to become the vice presidential candidate of the Democratic Party, knowing that he lacked the experience and support to become the top dog but also that "the bottom of the ticket was another matter altogether." Alas, even though FDR labored valiantly "to convince the country that, despite their eight years in power, the Democrats were the party of the future, not the past," the Republicans won by a landslide. Roosevelt regarded the race and, it seems, himself as miserable failures, but his attention would soon be fixed on another problem, for within a year he would be diagnosed with polio. By Darman's account, it was remaking himself over the seven years following contracting the virus that shaped Roosevelt into the politician we think of today. For good or bad, Roosevelt was secretive about the illness, and even as president, he quietly made it known that news photographs of himself with wheelchair or walker were not wanted. When he returned to political life, Roosevelt had to be carried to the stage, but even there he hid himself behind the curtain and made his way to the lectern on his own. This was both deceptive and close to heroic, and "Franklin never let on how grueling it all was simply to make it through the day." The torments continued throughout his four terms as president, during which he was often a visitor to the curative waters of Warm Springs, Georgia, where he died. Usefully, Darman writes that even though FDR was "a privileged child of the American aris-tocracy...years of illness and convalescence had taught him what it felt like to be forgotten, humiliated, and overlooked as unim-portant." A welcome, insightful addition to the literature surrounding FDR.

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