This was not FDR's "vision," for he had none. He was the product of an age where collectivism, patriotic exhortations, and a pragmatic rejection of overreliance on principle simply seemed to be the "way of the future." He imbibed these attitudes and ideas from his experience during the Progressive Era and from his advisers who did likewise. If Wilson was an intentional totalitarian, Roosevelt became one by default — largely because he didn't have any better ideas.
PROGRESSIVE FROM THE BEGINNING
Born in 1882, a year before Mussolini, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was hardly raised to be a great man. Indeed, he wasn't raised to be much of anything. A sweet and gentle boy, he was sheltered from anything like what we would today call a normal childhood. Almost smothered with attention from his parents, James Roosevelt and the former Sara Delano, he was expected to emulate their lifestyle as aristocrats. Young FDR had few friends his own age. An only child, he was educated mostly by Swiss tutors at home (recall that Wilson, too, had been homeschooled). In 1891, while his parents visited a spa in Bismarck's Germany, young Franklin — "Franz" to his classmates — attended a local Volksschule, where he studied map reading and military topography. He claimed to remember the experience fondly, particularly his study of German military maps.
Roosevelt's youth laid the foundations of his adult personality. When Franklin was only eight, his father suffered the first of several heart attacks. Franklin responded by resolving to conceal his sorrow and anxiety from his father. This is apparently where FDR first began the practice of masking his real feelings behind a permanently cheery demeanor. For the rest of his life, and particularly when he was president, his friends and enemies alike would complain that they could never trust that Roosevelt was telling them what he really thought. This was a polite way of saying that they could never be sure whether Roosevelt was lying to their face. "When I talk to him, he says 'Fine! Fine! Fine!'" Huey Long lamented. "But Joe Robinson [a political enemy of Long's] goes to see him the next day and again he says 'Fine! Fine! Fine!' Maybe he says 'fine' to everybody."5
FDR left his parental cocoon in 1896 to attend Groton. The transition was difficult. Raised speaking German with his German-speaking governess and French with his French-language tutors, and to speak English haughtily in all other circumstances, Roosevelt grated on the other students. Eventually, though, his determination to fit in — almost an obsession with conformity — paid off, and he rose in social status. He was not a particularly gifted student. His highest scores were in punctuality and neatness. Indeed, the consensus is that FDR verged on being an intellectual lightweight. He rarely read books, and those he did read were far from weighty. The historian Hugh Gallagher writes, "He had a magpie mind, and many interests, but he was not deep."6
FDR suffered painfully from envy for his cousin Teddy Roosevelt. When Franklin enrolled at Harvard in 1904, he took to mimicking the Bull Moose's mannerisms — in much the same way many baby-boomer liberals, like Bill Clinton and John Kerry, emulated John F. Kennedy in their youth. Young Franklin would over-pronounce "deee-lighted," shout "bully!" and wear knockoffs of his cousin Teddy's iconic pince-nez glasses.
It was also during college that Roosevelt secretly courted his distant cousin Eleanor. The match seemed odd to many but proved to be a powerful political symbiosis. Franklin, smooth and insubstantial, seemed to want a partner who provided attributes he did not have. Eleanor offered conviction, steadfastness, earnestness — and extremely valuable connections. She was ballast for her husband's airiness. Franklin's mother, who retained a tight rein on her son (in part by keeping him on a strict allowance) until she died in 1941, opposed the marriage. But she acquiesced in the face of Franklin's determination, and in 1905 the two were married. Eleanor's uncle Teddy gave her away.
By this time FDR was attending law school at Columbia University. He never received his degree but passed the bar and became a fairly unremarkable lawyer. In 1910 he was invited to run for the New York State Senate from Dutchess County, largely because of his wealth, name, and connections. The county Democratic chairman, Edward E. Perkins, consented to have what he considered to be a young fop on the ticket largely because he expected Roosevelt to contribute to the party treasury and to pay for his own campaign. When FDR met with Perkins and other party bosses, he arrived dressed in his riding clothes. Perkins disliked the young aristocrat but acquiesced, saying, "You'll have to take off those yellow shoes" and "put on some regular pants."7 FDR eagerly accepted and won the race. Much as at Groton and Harvard, however, he didn't make many friends in the state legislature and was considered a second-rate intelligence. His colleagues often made fun of him, using his initials to call him "Feather Duster" Roosevelt.
Still, Roosevelt performed serviceably as a progressive state senator and won reelection fairly easily in 1912 thanks to his relationship with Louis Howe, a brilliant political fixer who taught him how to appeal to otherwise hostile constituencies. But he never finished his second term. Instead, he was tapped by Woodrow Wilson to serve as assistant secretary of the navy. Franklin was ecstatic about taking the same job "Uncle Teddy" (by marriage) had used to jump-start his own political prospects fifteen years earlier.
Franklin Roosevelt was sworn in on March 17, 1913, his eighth wedding anniversary, at the age of thirty-one. And he immediately dedicated himself to emulating Teddy. His immediate boss, patron, and mentor was the famed progressive newspaperman Josephus Daniels. As both secretary of the navy and a journalist, Daniels represented all of the bizarre contradictions — from today's perspective — of the progressive movement. He was a thoroughgoing racist whose North Carolina newspapers regularly published horrendously offensive cartoons and editorials about blacks. But he was also deeply committed to a host of progressive reforms, from public education to public health to women's suffrage. A longtime political ally of William Jennings Bryan, Daniels could sound both pacifist and belligerent notes, though once ensconced in the Wilson administration, he was a dutiful advocate for "preparedness," expansion of the navy, and, ultimately, war.
Daniels was constantly outflanked by his young assistant secretary's belligerence. FDR proved to be a very capable and astoundingly political assistant secretary. "I get my fingers into everything," he liked to say, "and there's no law against it."8 He particularly relished the fact that when his boss was away, he was the acting secretary. He loved the martial pomp, gushing with pride over the seventeen-gun salutes he received in his honor and taking an enormous amount of interest in designing a military flag for his office. Indeed from day one FDR was one of the "Big Navy Boys" — and he was constantly frustrated with what he perceived to be his boss's slow-footedness when it came to rearmament.
From his first days as assistant secretary, FDR formed a powerful alliance with constituencies deeply invested in the development of a large naval war machine, particularly the Navy League, which was seen by many as little more than a mouthpiece for steel and financial interests. Just a month after his appointment, FDR gave a pro-big-navy speech at the league's annual convention. He even hosted a league planning meeting in his own office. During the months when the United States was officially neutral, FDR opened a channel with Teddy Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, and other Republican hawks critical of the Wilson administration. He even leaked naval intelligence to the Republicans so they could attack the administration, and Daniels in particular, for "unpreparedness."9 Today he might be called part of the neocon cabal inside the Wilson administration.