Eleanor (41 page)

In 1960 Khrushchev returned to the United States, this time uninvited. He came for the UN General Assembly, to make anti-western demonstrations. He was in the midst of his quarrel with the Chinese. In her opinion, he “behaved outrageously.” He savagely attacked Hammerskjöld. He interrupted speakers. He banged his shoe on the desk. It was a hooligan performance. Nevertheless, she invited him to tea, and he accepted. When people criticized her for having done a “dreadful thing,” she coolly replied that it was just politeness, that he had gotten nothing to eat when he had last been to Hyde Park and so she had to make it up to him. She was greatly relieved that he did not bring up the United Nations
during his visit, for “I would have had to have been rude.” Instead, they argued economics—he boasting about the Soviet economic progress and she asking whether the Soviet consumer would be the beneficiary, he replying that the Soviet goal was the four-hour day and she innocently asking whether he had begun to educate his people on how to use their leisure time. Khrushchev was not indifferent to her arguments. The next morning a stack of books arrived from him, all in English and with little paper slips in them marking the pages on which he had underlined passages bolstering his case. To those who attacked her for having talked with the Soviet premier, she said:

We have to face the fact that either all of us are going to die together or we are going to learn to live together and if we are to live together we have to talk.
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At Hyde Park in September, 1959, just before Khrushchev’s arrival, she was asked whether she expected to have extensive talks with the Soviet premier. “He has no interest in me whatsoever,” she replied. “I have no power. That gentleman likes power.” The ladylike denial that she had any power or any acquaintance with the uses thereof was characteristic. Often when she was asked her opinion on a political matter and did not wish to commit herself, she mildly insisted, “I know nothing of politics,” a bit of guile that was part of her feminine stock in trade. When a young man proposed to do a thesis on her political influence, she brought him to Dr. Elizabeth Drewry, director of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library. “Please tell him that I have no influence and that he will be wasting his time.”
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She was, of course, an astute politician and at times could be as implacable and unforgetting as FDR and Louis Howe in avenging a treachery. That was the case with Franklin Jr.’s defeat for state-wide office in 1954. Tammany Hall, which Franklin Jr. had bested in 1949 when he defeated its candidate for Congress, retaliated five years later when the county heads, led by Carmine De Sapio, leader of Tammany and Democratic National committeeman, turned
down his bid for the gubernatorial nomination, giving it to Averell Harriman. His mother had warned him, “Don’t ever trust him,” referring to De Sapio, when Franklin told her that De Sapio had advised him to come to the convention as the upstate candidate in order to avoid the “big city boss” stigma. Denial of the gubernatorial nomination was a setback to Franklin’s political hopes, but since he was nominated for attorney general it was also an opportunity, especially if he were to run ahead of the ticket in November. Mrs. Roosevelt, who had been sitting with Franklin Jr. and his wife in a little room at the back of the armory, was the only one to suggest he might lose, adding, however, “They may never forgive you if you don’t run.” Disaster came on Election Day when Franklin was the only state-wide loser—to Jacob K. Javits—in a Democratic sweep. “F jr. was defeated because they put a
very good
Jew against him,” she wrote Uncle David. “Ordinarily he has the Jewish vote but much of it had to vote for a good Jew. Then De Sapio & Buckley in Manhattan & the Bronx cut him in the Italian & Irish votes.”
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Deeply unhappy for her son, Mrs. Roosevelt, although she was aware of Franklin’s shortcomings, in time came to hold De Sapio primarily responsible for his defeat. Franklin’s political team disbanded. He moved to Washington to concentrate on his law and business interests. Mrs. Roosevelt, however, did not forget. If the chance came, she would even the score.

This was not the only reason for the relentless duel with De Sapio that now began. In 1956 he again ran afoul of her when he not only politically masterminded Harriman’s bid for the presidential nomination against Stevenson but kept Stevenson supporters off the New York delegation, despite Stevenson’s popularity in the state, and gave him only listless support in the campaign.

In 1958, at the Buffalo state convention, De Sapio publicly affronted Mrs. Roosevelt, Herbert Lehman, and Governor Harriman by hand-picking New York District Attorney Frank Hogan for the senatorial nomination over Thomas K. Finletter and Thomas E. Murray. Normally a good soldier in Democratic ranks, she was by now so indignant with De Sapio that it overflowed against Hogan. The Democrats could have had a nominee “who knew more about
foreign policy” was her “Meet the Press” comment on Hogan’s candidacy, a damaging statement that was only partially offset by an election-eve clarification that she intended to vote for him.

Her distrust of De Sapio was so great that she voiced the theory as the campaign drew to a close that he would arrange matters in such a way that Harriman lost while Hogan won.
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Not exactly the most popular figure at Democratic headquarters at the Biltmore Hotel that election night, she sensed the hostility in the room and, pleading that she could not stand the photographers, left a few minutes after putting in an appearance. When it became clear Harriman and Hogan both had lost, she crisply voiced the hope that the defeat would mean the downfall of Tammany. De Sapio’s domination of the Buffalo convention was the basic reason for the rout. “When the Tammany Hall boss bossed the convention it meant the defeat of the democratic process.”
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She now joined Lehman, who had been equally incensed by De Sapio’s ham-handedness at Buffalo, and Finletter in setting up the New York Committee for Democratic Voters, dedicated to the reform of the Democratic party, including the unseating of De Sapio. “No campaign in which I have participated,” she said, “has meant more to me than this present struggle to bring real democracy into the party in this state.”

It took three years and endless campaigning on hot summer nights. “Short speeches, climbing up a ladder onto a sound truck, I often wonder how much sense one really makes,” she asked but stuck to it doggedly. Finally on September 7, 1961, with the assistance of New York’s Mayor Wagner, who also had broken with De Sapio, he was overthrown.

Was she opposed to De Sapio personally, she had been asked. No, she was opposed “to the kind of boss rule he represents” was her reply.
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On New Year’s Eve, 1961, friends and family were gathered at Hyde Park. Mrs. Roosevelt was in gay spirits. Someone remarked he had heard De Sapio might be made ambassador to Tanganyika. Why not Somaliland? another voice was heard to say, where his knowledge of Italian would come in handy.

“But he doesn’t know Italian,” protested Mrs. Roosevelt from the head of the table. She had campaigned in Italian over station WOV, but he was unable to, she remarked. She had been told, she went on, that Mr. De Sapio was very bitter toward her. She could not understand why, she said, putting on her most grandmotherly look. Justin Feldman, who had been Franklin’s administrative assistant, broke in to remark that all of them had dispersed after the 1954 defeat to attend to their private affairs, “But not Mrs. Roosevelt. She evened the score with Carmine for having knifed Franklin.”

Louis Howe, she commented, had always said that in politics you never forget a double cross. She hadn’t done anything. Governor Lehman had done all the work. She had just awaited her opportunity.
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14.
A NEW GENERATION TAKES OVER

I
N THE SUMMER OF
1959 M
RS
. R
OOSEVELT RECEIVED A GAY
card from Adlai Stevenson postmarked Corsica. He was cruising in the Mediterranean with Adlai Jr., his wife, Bill Benton and his family, and some friends, “and all we’ve missed is you!” It was exciting to get a postcard from him, she replied:

I don’t think I would be the perfect addition because I have never had Franklin’s success in really enjoying the ocean even when it is fairly calm. I would have loved to have been with all of you, however, and I hope that the rest of the summer will be as pleasant as these past weeks.

Her letter went on to give news of other Stevenson friends. She had seen Mary Lasker, “and poor Anna Rosenberg has had to go into the hospital.” The Stevenson “loyalists” were keeping in touch with each other.
¹

After the 1956 defeat she assumed that Stevenson would not run again but felt that the forward-looking elements in the Democratic party should continue to look to him for leadership while younger men in the party were encouraged to come forward to establish their claim to the 1960 nomination. Asked in 1957 who would make a good candidate in 1960, she named Wayne Morse, G. Mennen Williams, Joseph Clark, Edmund Muskie,
*
and Chester Bowles.
²

The handling of the nation’s foreign affairs loomed uppermost in her mind, especially after her visit to Russia, as she wrote Bowles:

I think we are in a real emergency and the Democratic party must have someone who will look at the world as it is and begin to meet its problems in new ways. The only two people I can really feel happy about negotiating with Khrushchev would be you or Walter Reuther. . . .Our Democratic leadership seems to me impoverished in the Senate and House and even Adlai can do little about it.
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Paul Butler sent Mrs. Roosevelt a report prepared by the Democrats on the Senate Armed Service Preparedness Subcommittee, headed by Lyndon B. Johnson. It deplored the nation’s lack of military preparedness. “A truly patriotic service,” Butler said of the document. Military preparedness was most important, she agreed, “but I hope he [Johnson] will not forget that military speedup alone will not meet the Soviet challenge.”
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Of all the men in public life, Stevenson best recognized the many-dimensioned complexity of the Soviet challenge, but the practical politicians, she knew, felt strongly that a twice-unsuccessful presidential candidate could not win on a third try. Although Stevenson seemed unavailable, she declined to commit herself to any one candidate. At a dinner in Kansas, in October, 1958, the national committeeman began to boost G. Mennen Williams, the youthful governor of Michigan. He is one of the good younger men, Mrs. Roosevelt said agreeably. That did not quite satisfy the committeeman. Adlai Stevenson just did not get across to people, he pressed on, assuming her loyalties were still hitched to the Stevenson standard. In judging 1960 aspirants she would be insistent on only one commitment, she commented, that whoever the Democratic candidate was, he would pledge to make Stevenson secretary of state.

Her trip out to Kansas was a reminder to her that she was slowing
down. Although she had flown out Saturday afternoon, and back to New York late that night, arriving at dawn in an impressive display of energy and will for a woman of seventy-four, she had only remembered why she had agreed to go when she heard one of her hosts at the dinner say: “We are so happy and honored that you should come to our first FDR dinner.” It was time for her sons’ generation to take over, she felt.
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One of the younger Democratic leaders upon whom she looked favorably was Senator Humphrey. At the end of 1958 she gave his candidacy considerable impetus, greater perhaps than she had intended, when she told questioning newsmen that of the names being mentioned he came closest to having “the spark of greatness” the next president would need.
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For a time she said she was inclined to support Justice William O. Douglas if for no other reason than his willingness to speak frankly to the American people about relations with Red China. Mrs. Roosevelt was one of the first to sense the growing rift between Russia and China, advancing the theory after her second visit to the USSR in 1958, that perhaps the Chinese Communist tail was trying to wag the Soviet dog and that might make the Russians more disposed to deal with the West. But China, as well as Russia, was here to stay, and the United States should not make the mistake with China that it had with Russia and ignore its existence for fifteen years. The American people were living in “a dream world,” and she wanted a candidate who would take them out of it.
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Mrs. Roosevelt was distinctly cool toward Senate Democratic Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson. He was “one of the ablest people at maneuvering that we have in the party,” she said on “Meet the Press,” but she did not know what his basic convictions were. “You’re crazy,” was her comment when Mary Lasker described him as a “secret liberal.”
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And when her son James invited him to speak at the Memorial Day exercises in the rose garden in 1959 she was unenthusiastic and, after his arrival, kept herself out of sight, leaving him and Lady Bird to her friends to entertain. But he took it in his stride and, if he was aware of her absence, gave no sign of
it, plying her friends with stories calculated, when they reached Mrs. Roosevelt, to evoke a favorable impression (how he had told “Aubrey” [Williams], who had appointed him first director of the National Youth Administration in Texas, to bring his delegation of southern Negro bishops over to his office—he would sit for a photograph with them, even if they were in Washington to lobby for civil rights; how he had picked up “Hubert” [Humphrey], and together they had gone over to talk to Chancellor Adenauer, who was in Washington, on the need for disarmament). He managed also to get in a few digs at Richard Nixon for his treatment of Helen Douglas in the 1950 senatorial campaign in California. It was a virtuoso performance, the famous Johnson treatment, which, combined with the “genuineness of his feeling for FDR,” did cause her to unbend before the day was over, although it did not reconcile her to his candidacy.
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