Man of the Century
A sprawling biography makes the case for the greatness of "that man."

Reviewed by Robert S. McElvaine.

Sunday, December 21, 2003; Page BW06

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT: Champion of Freedom

By Conrad Black. PublicAffairs. 1,280 pp. $39.95

Is it possible that there is anything new to say about Franklin Delano Roosevelt, nearly 60 years after his death and after the publication of dozens of Roosevelt biographies totaling uncounted millions of words? Some writers and publishers think so. In the past year alone, we've seen a recently unearthed book by former Supreme Court Justice and Roosevelt intimate Robert H. Jackson, That Man: An Insider's Portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt, a brief biography that Roy Jenkins had not finished when he died last year (Franklin Delano Roosevelt), and two putatively new views of the nation's longest-serving president. Both of the latter books come from authors classified as "conservatives," yet their assessments could hardly be more different.

In September, Jim Powell's FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression, resurrected the argument of Herbert Hoover and many conservative businessmen and economists that Roosevelt's New Deal policies turned what would otherwise have been a temporary economic contraction into a needless decade-long depression that produced counterproductive governmental restraints on American freedom.

Powell's book will sell well because he is preaching to the converted, and most particularly to the greatly motivated legions of conservative book-buyers. But one of the blurbs about the book, from historian David Landes, claiming that Powell is "willing to let the chips fall where they may," would be far more apropos if it were said of Conrad Black's massive new biography of the Democratic Roosevelt.

Black, who recently resigned under pressure from his post as CEO of Hollinger International, is, his publisher attests, "a staunch conservative." Yet, at least in the pages of this book, he understands that Franklin Roosevelt conserved capitalism by saving it from the capitalists. As a result of FDR's achievements, Black contends, "American capitalism ceased to be a menace to itself and became an unambiguous engine to greater and better-distributed national prosperity." Given his current problems with the New Deal-created Securities and Exchange Commission, Black may want to reconsider his approval of Roosevelt's regulatory agencies. Yet the author is surely correct in this assessment, as perhaps his own situation confirms. The argument is a timely one for reasons beyond the author's problems. Those who dispute that capitalism needs regulation to curb the abuses to which it is innately susceptible are currently doing all they can to see to it that this major achievement of Roosevelt's will not survive very far into the 21st century.

Black contends that Roosevelt "was a less admirable character, perhaps, than his admirers have traditionally believed. But in applying his ruthless and often amoral political genius to almost wholly desirable ends, he was a greater statesman than even his most vocal supporters have generally appreciated." The author holds back nothing in pointing out the numerous Roosevelt shortcomings that made him a less-than-admirable character. Black writes that Roosevelt was given to "boastful revisionism" and "unmitigated falsehoods," was "frequently duplicitous," "incapable of admitting error," "almost compulsively devious" and "never mastered the art of self-deprecation or even detached comment about himself."

Although the author says little directly about the comparison, one of the more striking impressions of Roosevelt that can be gleaned from this biography is how many of FDR's traits were later shared by Ronald Reagan. Like Reagan, Roosevelt had a penchant for making up and believing stories that were useful to him or that he had reason to want to believe. While Reagan often misremembered movie scenes as reality, Roosevelt frequently invented stories that, as they say, "ought to be true." And, like Reagan, FDR believed himself to be an instrument of God. This belief gave him supreme self-confidence in the face of devastating setbacks.

Like other Roosevelt biographers, Black sees FDR's polio -- or, possibly, according to an analysis by Dr. Armond S. Goldman and his colleagues recently published in the Journal of Medical Biography, Guillain-Barré syndrome (although the weight of opinion clearly favors polio) -- as having had some positive impact upon the man. His disability "masked egoistic traits that otherwise might have made him more vulnerable politically."

Also like Reagan, Roosevelt survived an assassination attempt (in 1933, before his inauguration) with what appeared to be complete calm, sleeping soundly after it was over. He "never mentioned the episode again, as far as anyone can recall." The remarkable "aplomb in the face of real danger" that Roosevelt and Reagan exhibited when attempts were made on their lives reflects the assurance both men felt about their destinies.

Black's prose is replete with nice turns of phrase, such as his comment that FDR's mother's "retreat from control of [Franklin and Eleanor's] lives would be conducted with the skill and tenacity of Robert E. Lee at Richmond." The author also provides nice portraits of key characters, describing, for example, FDR's personal secretary (and onetime Albany reporter) Louis McHenry Howe as "a gnomish cynic plying around in a miasma of whiskey and cigar smoke" and "asthmatic, simian, small and stooped, with large ears and eyes, a bulbous nose, and poor complexion." Then there is this wonderful phrase about Theodore Roosevelt, which says so much in a mere six words: "never a man to understate matters." Or this comment on TR's daughter: "Alice . . . would retain a tongue that could clip a hedge until the end of her days."

Black does have an unfortunate tendency to repeat information already supplied, even if it was given only a few pages before. The book is certainly longer than it needs to be and could have benefited from a dose of judicious editing, particularly in the later chapters, which appear to have been composed in too much haste. By the early part of the concluding chapter, Black gives the impression of having pieced together a string of notes, jumping from one topic to another without benefit of transition. A paragraph about Roosevelt's assertions of friendship with Charles de Gaulle, for example, concludes with a wholly unrelated sentence about the president not being able to hold his hand steady enough to light a cigarette.

"It is the contention of this book that Franklin D. Roosevelt was the most important person of the twentieth century," Black states. This argument is easily supported. My own assessment would be that FDR's principal competition for that title is Mohandas Gandhi. A statement that the great Indian advocate of nonviolence made may best capture what Black sees in Roosevelt. "Strength does not come from physical capacity," Gandhi proclaimed. "It comes from an indomitable will."

If I may put what I take to be the essence of Black's message in my own words, the greatest irony about Franklin D. Roosevelt is that this man who had so often oversold his role in everything from his family history to World War I turned out indeed to be among the world's most important people. He played a central role in saving freedom, in the forms of a slightly modified free enterprise system and democracy, from the supreme threats posed by the Great Depression and fascism. And that was no folly. It is difficult to imagine that anyone who reads Black's biography would think it proper for this nation to stop recognizing Franklin Roosevelt's extraordinary accomplishments by replacing his visage on the dime with that of Ronald Reagan.

For those with enough time and interest in the subject to warrant going through a study of much more than a thousand pages, Black's biography is worth reading. But most readers, as well as professional historians, will find Justice Jackson's "insider's portrait" of Roosevelt of greater interest. Still, it seems fitting somehow that a conservative press baron -- and a British lord at that -- should be the one to make such a strong case that Franklin Roosevelt truly was the lord of the manor, the conservator of not only the land and the common people, but of capitalism and democracy as well. •

Robert S. McElvaine is professor of history at Millsaps College in Jackson, Miss. He is the author of "The Great Depression: America, 1929-1941" and "Eve's Seed: Biology, the Sexes, and the Course of History."