America, September, 1940. Chapter Five: A Freudian Mind Meld
Radio was the campaign instrument of choice in 1940 and Roosevelt was its master. All he needed were words of brilliance and Harry had the two-man team to write them. He told them how it would work.
This Chapter: Robert Sherwood won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1936 and 1938, and his newest, “There Shall Be No Night,” was playing to packed houses on Broadway in 1940 when Harry Hopkins invited him to join Franklin Roosevelt’s campaign, writing the president’s speeches. That made two men writing the speeches that were the essence of the campaign. They would be delivered by the president before large audiences and broadcast on the radio as he traveled by train in the corridor from Washington to Cleveland to Boston. The train would become the White House, filled with staff and reporters, in these campaign forays that would intensify in the last five weeks of the campaign. Harry explained how it would work, and how it would win, to Sherwood, who was thrilled to be a soldier in the front line of the war to defeat Adolf Hitler.
Contents: Here are the five chapters of “America, September, 1940” from “Seeking the Hinge” with their dates of publication.
Chapter One: Politics and Romance. Monday, May 5
Chapter Two: Work and Death. Tuesday, May 6
Chapter Three: Guru Letters and Magic Seeds. Wednesday, May 7.
Chapter Four: An Emancipation Celebration. Thursday, May 8.
Chapter Five: A Freudian Mind Meld. Friday, May 9.
Chapter Five: A Freudian Mind Meld
Reading time: nine minutes
Harry was still enough of a guy from Grinnell to be impressed, almost smug, that the new speechwriter on the campaign was an author who had one Academy Award nomination and two Pulitzer Prizes on his résumé, and a play currently on Broadway that was odds-on to win another Pulitzer. His credentials fit nicely with those of Sam Rosenman, who was an Associate Justice of the New York Supreme Court. They were unpaid campaign volunteers. Harry was also unpaid, although in his case the unpaid part was involuntary. He thought if he ended up empty as the campaign went on, Ed Flynn would put him on the campaign payroll, or dip into petty cash.
In the third week since he agreed to surrender nine weeks of his life to the cause of Franklin Roosevelt, Sherwood had yet to write a word. The boss had assigned him a sleeping room in the White House next to the one where Sam Rosenman slept. Both men had exceptional living circumstances in Manhattan, but Roosevelt’s most used counselors were always those closest to hand. Harry and Sam had the experiences that taught them that requirement, and Harry helped Bob — too tall at six-foot-eight to call him “Bobby” as Tallulah did — understand it.
“It’s the curse of his handicap,” Harry said that Monday in late September. “He has had to conquer it every day for twenty years, and he has. But every day it’s there all over again. It’s the challenge he wakes up with. So people at hand, right there when he needs them, are vital to his confidence, to his belief, his absolute conviction, that he can. Our proximity enlarges his strength and our mobility becomes his mobility. We amplify him.”
Harry had the best quarters of the three of them, two rooms and an electric coffee pot that Missy had forced on him, so they gathered there. He gave Sherwood an overview of the campaign and their place within it.
“First, there’s Ed Flynn. He’s the campaign boss and he’s our shield. There are several million distractions that arrive every day in a campaign and Ed gets all of them. It’s a wonder he doesn’t hate us, and maybe he does but hasn’t had time to say so.
“Our job is the war of words. In the old days, their reach was confined to those close enough to hear, and others who could read them in the papers. Radio has changed that, made the words even more important. The boss is the absolute master of the radio. Willkie sounds like he suspects that a microphone is his enemy. He’s a smart guy and he’ll probably get over that pretty quick, but there is no chance — no chance at all — that he’ll come close to being as good as Franklin Roosevelt.
“Here’s how it works. There’s an event on the calendar, or maybe it’s one we create on our own. Columbus Day, for example. Well, not as an example, because it’s a real day on our calendar, the next big one in fact. The boss will talk about what he wants to say at odd times during the day when he’s got time and it’s on his mind. He might just wheel down the hall and say, ‘Don’t ignore the Italian vote on Columbus Day. I took a good poke at Mussolini three months ago and I don’t want all the fine Italian Americans to think I meant that for them. Don’t forget them.’ And go on back to his office. Or maybe we’ll sit around half the night with him. That’s why we’re here, so we can be there when the time comes. Grace Tully is part of our team. She’s the typist, the chief typist. She has help but she’s always there, scribbling away. Missy, too, but she’ll be doing more listening then scribbling. Maybe a Cabinet member if the subject is in their portfolio.
“And us. We three. I’m not being modest when I say I can’t write a speech. I’ve been known to turn a phrase now and then, but a whole speech? No, that’s what Sam has always done and why you’re here now to help him.”
Sam butted in and said, “Harry’s the interpreter. He speaks Rooseveltese. It’s quite odd, a little unsettling. It’s a kind of Freudian mind meld.”
Harry said, “Maybe. Anyway, a good speech will take several drafts, maybe a half-dozen. Then it will have its day in the sun. Or on the radio. Or both. For a week or so afterwards, the boss will extract from it extemporaneously. On the back of the train whenever it stops. To the boys of the press when they get their moment with him. He’ll sort of use the speech up day by day. Ed Flynn may make an advertisement out of it for the newspapers or the radio or maybe print the whole thing and mail it out. All the while that’s going on, we’re working on the next one. They’ll start coming along fast and furious the closer we get to election day.
“Finally, this. Franklin Roosevelt is the best political campaigner there ever was. He is blessed with an instinct for how to do this. He will listen to each of us, and a lot of others. He goes quiet when he does. When he decides — and he never decides until he has to — only a fool would bet against him. There is not a doubt in my mind that if we back his play, we’ll win this thing.”
The president appeared at the door. The three rose. He said, “Good morning, my cutthroats. Be seated. Let me share with you my thoughts on how we should proceed over the remaining weeks of the campaign.
“I want to capture the high ground as the defender of democracy. Our foreign enemies are the enemies of democracy as all conquerors are at their core. We are informed that soon, perhaps this week, a pact will be announced that binds Germany, Italy, and Japan to the mutual defense of any of the three that is attacked, according to their definition of that word, by a nation not currently in a declared state of war. That means us. Each of the three is a dictatorship, fascist in Europe and imperialistic in Japan.
“Our domestic enemies are fed, if not led, by fascists of an American stripe. The organization that calls itself America First, which began as an Ivy League student rebellion against intervention out of a rational fear that they would end up dead on distant battlefields, has been captured by the industrial community. Henry Ford has no fear of getting shot in a war. He and his kind want to use the noble sentiments of the dewy set to defeat me and put an end to a form of government that insists that they conform to their social responsibility rather than simply and exclusively to their bank accounts. Their primary stalking horse, Charles Lindbergh, is as close as a man can be to being the leader of the Nazi Party in America. He is a full-blown fascist.
“All that America has achieved in the one hundred fifty years of its existence, and all that we have achieved in the last eight years, can be ascribed to the success of democracy, the difficult yet indispensable form of self-government that is the sworn enemy of our foes, both foreign and domestic. Therefore, in the weeks just ahead I want to make the case for democracy and for its achievements. Let us use our pulpit to rise above petty political issues by ignoring them completely, by identifying and enumerating the benefits that have come to all through patient and persistent adherence to the principles of democracy. In short, let’s take the American people to school by reminding them of all they have accomplished by their steadfast support of their unique and holy form of government.
“Then, in the last ten days of the campaign, and not until then, we shall address the lies and distortions that our opponents have foisted upon the people as their policies and proposals.
“Got it? Please join me at lunch today when we will begin the detailed discussion of how all this will be accomplished by the force of your magnificent messages. I have asked Missy and Arthur to arrange for a feast suitable for civilized carnivores. Don’t arrive expecting benedictine and thin gruel. We’re going to have blood dripping down our chins. Thank you.”
He turned to leave and stopped himself, turned back and said, “By the way, I want to take advantage of Columbus Day by making clear to the fine Italian American community that my disgust with the Duce does not extend to them. Missy suggests a wreath laid at the explorer’s statue in Columbus Circle may be helpful, and I don’t disagree. But I want to deliver unmistakable words as well. See you at one o’clock.” And he left.
Sam Rosenman said to Robert Sherwood, “See?”