Eleanor Read online

  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.6

  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.7

  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.”8 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.9

  She gave the hardest time to front-runner John F. Kennedy. She had not always been so hostile. In 1952 she backed him against incumbent Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge. “It is important, I think, that these young courageous representatives who have had experience in the House, move into the Senate and bring into that body some of the influence of youth.”10 But in the Senate Kennedy had been “evasive” on McCarthy—so she wrote in a magazine article in early 1958. The senator’s father, getting wind of the article, got James Landis to talk to Mrs. Roosevelt, which he did, but without success. Joseph Kennedy then asked that the matter be dropped, since Mrs. Roosevelt was obviously anti-Catholic. His son disagreed. That could not be the case since she had supported Al Smith. A few months later, in December, 1958, on ABC-TV, she thrust at the senator more harshly. She conceded that John Kennedy was a young man with an enormous amount of charm. Although he had written a book, Profiles in Courage, she

  would hesitate to place the difficult decisions that the next President will have to make with someone who understands what courage is and admires it but has not quite the independence to have it.

  She suggested that he was too much under the influence of his father, Joseph P. Kennedy, who had been “spending oodles of money all over the country” in his son’s behalf and who “probably has paid representatives in every state by now.” This would be “perfectly permissible,” if the senator had done it for himself.11

  The charges stung, but Kennedy declined to be provoked. She was a victim of misinformation, he asserted coolly. He asked Mrs. Roosevelt to name one such paid representative or give one example of spending by his father on his behalf. “If my comment is not true, I will gladly so state,” she replied:

  I was told that your father said openly he would spend any money to make his son the first Catholic President of this country, and many people as I travel about tell me of money spent by him in your behalf. This seems commonly accepted as a fact.12

  He was disappointed, Kennedy answered, that she now seemed to accept the view “that simply because a rumor or allegation is repeated it becomes ‘commonly accepted as a fact.’ It is particularly inexplicable to me inasmuch as, as I indicated in my last letter, my father has not spent any money around the country, and had no ‘paid representatives’ for this purpose in any state of the union—nor has my father ever made the statement you attributed to him—and I am certain no evidence to the contrary has ever been presented to you.” “Dear Senator Kennedy,” she replied to this,

  I am enclosing a copy of my column for tomorrow and as you will note I have given your statement as the fairest way to answer what are generally believed and stated beliefs in this country. People will, of course, never give names as that would open them to liability.13

  This did not satisfy Kennedy. He appreciated her courtesy in printing his denial, but “since the charges could not be substantiated to even a limited extent, it seemed to me that the fairest course of action would be for you to state that you had been unable to find evidence to justify the rumors.” She retreated slightly:

  In reply to your letter of the 10th, my informants were just casual people in casual conversation. It would be impossible to get their names because for the most part I don’t even know them.

  Maybe, like in the case of my family, you suffer from the mere fact that many people know your father and also know that there is money in your family. We have always found somewhat similar things occur, and except for a few names I could not name the people in the case of the family.

  I am quite willing to state what you decide but it does not seem to me as strong as your categorical denial. I have never said that my opposition to you was based on these rumors or that I believed them, but I could not deny what I knew nothing about. From now on I will say, when asked, that I have your assurance that the rumors are not true.

  If you want another column, I will write it—just tell me.14

  Kennedy was out to make friends, not score debating points. He thanked her for her “gracious” letter. “I appreciate your assurance that you do not believe in these rumors and you understand how such matters arise. I would not want to ask you to write another column on this and I believe we can let it stand for the present.” He hoped there might be a chance to get together and talk about other matters.15

  Somewhere deep in her subconscious was an anti-Catholicism which was a part of her Protestant heritage. In her Great-grandmother Ludlow’s Sunday school exercise books, there were lessons on the dangers of popery. Enlightened Protestantism had long since outgrown such primitive prejudice—she had ardently supported Al Smith in the 1920s—but her fear of the church as a temporal institution was reawakened from time to time by its political operations. The clash with Cardinal Spellman had left its scars.

  Although Maureen Corr, Mrs. Roosevelt’s Irish-born secretary, whom, significantly, she employed after the Spellman episode, considered her boss one of the least prejudiced human beings she ever knew, she sensed Mrs. Roosevelt’s deep fear of the church in politics in her opposition to Kennedy. It was opposition that was all the more striking to her friends as her sons James, Franklin, and Elliott began to work for the senator and sought to overcome her distrust of him. They had no more success than did Abba Schwartz, who had worked with her on refugee matters and had carefully cultivated her and her friends in Kennedy’s interest.

  Her resistance to Kennedy matched, perhaps even fed, a reviving hope that Stevenson might again win the nomination, although she freely conceded that to hav
e twice lost the race for the presidency was a greater liability than being a Roman Catholic in such a competition. Mary Lasker sent her a Gallup poll showing that 20 per cent of the voters would not vote for a Catholic for president, which, Mrs. Lasker argued, would be a great handicap for any presidential candidate. Mrs. Roosevelt, studying the same figures, was impressed by the increase over the years in the number of people who would vote for a Catholic.16

  By the end of 1959 the drift of her thinking on the presidency was indicated when she mentioned that Stevenson was “the only person in the Democratic Party who might be appealed to” in the event of a stalemated convention. “The Democrats have a lot of good Vice Presidential material” was her dry comment on the names most frequently mentioned.17

  Noting that a good many professional politicians were talking about the “favorite son” of Texas, Lyndon B. Johnson, she commented mildly that she was listening to “everybody’s arguments” and still enjoying her above-the-battle posture. But the professionals should not count on her staying out of the fray. She had “a little nagging feeling,” she warned on her column, that somewhere along the way to the convention she would have to decide which of the candidates was best qualified to meet the problems of the day. “I shall resist this little nagging thought as long as I possibly can.”18

  She did not know who that other elder statesman of the party, Harry Truman, would be for in 1960—Stuart Symington or Lyndon Johnson—but she was sure he would not be for Stevenson. The former president made that abundantly clear at a glittering fund-raising dinner at the Waldorf in December, 1959, staged by the Democratic Advisory Committee in her honor. It was graced by most of the presidential hopefuls except Senator Johnson, who, as leader of the congressional wing of the party, was feuding with the Advisory Committee, which was representative of its presidential wing.

  Truman startled everyone by his introductory remarks, which assailed “the self-appointed guardians of liberal thinking.” The price of not going along “with these hothouse liberals” was to be abused as “a reactionary.” Often, “these self-styled liberals,” he went on, “hurt the cause of liberalism” and “paved the way for reaction.”

  There was a buzz and murmur throughout the large dining room. What was Truman after—the New York Post? The ADA? Mrs. Roosevelt thought he was after bigger game and that this was a replay of the Chicago effort of the party professionals massed behind Truman to control the choice of a candidate and the direction of party policy. She was going “to differ with him a little bit tonight,” Mrs. Roosevelt began, directing a smile at the former president, who grinned back prepared for the spanking he knew would follow this disarming opening.

  She welcomed “every kind of a liberal” who came into the party willing to learn “what it is to work on being a liberal.” But older people—both she and the president were now seventy-five—also had “something to learn from liberals that are younger. . .because they may be conscious of new things we have to learn.” Changes were coming in the world. “We cannot exist as a little island of well-being in a world where two-thirds of the people go to bed hungry every night.” She hoped the Democrats would help the nation meet the challenges confronting it. “I want unity but above everything else, I want a party that will fight for the things that we know to be right at home and abroad.”

  Stevenson drew the greatest round of applause that evening. He managed with a witty, graceful anecdote to draw a line between himself as the leader who had twice been honored with the party’s nomination and the bevy of young hopefuls who were on the stage with him—and at the same time, without seeming to grasp for the prize of a 1960 nomination, to suggest he was available.

  He recalled that in 1952 he had come to a similar rally in New York. Since he was insisting at that time that he was candidate only for re-election as governor of Illinois and not for the Democratic presidential nomination, he had ducked the issue by proposing marriage to Mrs. FDR. Although she had not accepted him, he remained, he went on, “a patient man and still available.”19

  Early in 1960, Mrs. Roosevelt had some kind words for Lyndon Johnson. He had kept his promise to civil rights groups, she reported, and she was grateful to him for getting the civil rights bill to the floor. A short time later the bill passed and she said publicly that the party owed Senator Johnson a vote of thanks, adding that “we are fortunate to have had a parliamentary leader with the skill of Senator Johnson.” There was a softening toward Kennedy, who appeared on her television program in January, an invitation that had been engineered by J. Kenneth Galbraith as part of a strategy to make Kennedy more acceptable to the liberals.20

  But her preference continued to be for Stevenson. He called at her office at the AAUN after a spell in the Caribbean sun, and she noted in her column that the reporters who saw him afterward had commented, “But this is a new Stevenson. It is the Stevenson of 1952.” She presented the ADA citation to him at the ADA Roosevelt Day Dinner, and in her remarks reminded her audience that in 1956, when Stevenson had called for a nuclear test ban, which the Eisenhower administration was now actively seeking, Vice President Nixon, the man slated to run for president, had called it “treasonable nonsense.”21

  Her friends thought she would be happy to see Stevenson run, but Mrs. Roosevelt felt even more strongly that he should be free to make up his own mind. She definitely did not wish at that time to share the responsibility for his decision. In February, just before he departed on a two-month tour of Latin America, Stevenson asked to see her alone. She summoned David Gurewitsch and his wife, Edna, to be present to preclude his asking her to tell him what to do. Although the organizers of the unofficial draft-Stevenson movement were in touch with her she was not sure whether a fight should be made to get him the nomination, whether Stevenson wanted a fight made, or how much she should become involved. She was certain of one thing, however, as she confided to her friend Lord Elibank, Stevenson was “the only mature person among the lot.” Stevenson himself, on his return from Latin America, reiterated that he was not a candidate, and when pressed as to whether he would turn down a draft, parried with the quip that he was not a “draft evader.”22

  The Rosenmans and Averell Harriman were at Hyde Park on April 12 and tried to smoke her out, she reported to friends with a smile, thus suggesting that they had been unsuccessful. Harriman had taken the lead. He and the Rosenmans had come to the conclusion on the drive up to Hyde Park, he said, that Humphrey came closest to what they wanted a candidate to be and should be supported. What did she think? She refused to rise to the bait. She was equally noncommittal when they sought to elicit whether her heart still belonged to Adlai.23

  Walter Reuther came to see Mrs. Roosevelt at the end of April. It was getting better every day for Stevenson, he reported. But he was worried that the Humphrey-Kennedy battle in the primaries, especially in West Virginia, might pave the way for a conservative nominee and even endanger Democratic chances in November. He asked her to communicate with the two candidates and urge them to avoid sanguinary charges that might be long in healing. “I called Hubert Humphrey the other day,” she wrote Reuther, “but had absolutely no effect upon him. He and Kennedy both seem to feel that they have no chance in the nomination unless they go on with these primaries.”24

  In May, right after the West Virginia primary, where Kennedy, with the aid of Franklin Jr., gained the victory that was a turning point in his bid for the nomination, she reported, still from “the sidelines” and as “a neutral,” that she had found in going around the country “an underlying groundswell” for Stevenson among rank-and-file Democrats that professional politicians had better not ignore. She thought it reflected the country’s anxiety over the deterioration in U.S.-Soviet relations that followed the U-2 fiasco and the angry breakup of the Paris summit meeting.

  Stevenson’s chance would only come if the convention deadlocked, meaning that the front-runner Kennedy had to be kept from getting a majority on the first or second ballot. By the end of May her views h
ad crystallized sufficiently that she agreed to the request of the draft-Stevenson people to write “please wait” letters to Reuther and Gov. G. Mennen Williams of Michigan:

  Someone has told me that you plan to come out shortly for Senator Kennedy for President. I have a feeling, judging from the mail which comes in each day, that there is a greater and greater demand for Adlai Stevenson—the feeling being that we need a more mature man with more knowledge of the world in the next four years.

  I wonder if you would not consider waiting until the Convention to find out what Stevenson’s chances are before making your decision.

  I know this is perhaps difficult for you to do but I thought I might suggest it since it seems to me that a Stevenson-Kennedy ticket is probably the strongest ticket we can have in the fight against Nixon, or, if the situation should change in the Republican Party, against Rockfeller.25

  Mrs. Roosevelt was becoming more involved in the draft-Stevenson movement than she had intended. The dangerous state of the world after the collapse of the summit conference moved her to do so, but an equally powerful motivation was the apprehension with which she viewed Kennedy’s winning the nomination. That feeling came out on Memorial Day in a conversation with Rep. Richard Bolling, an outstanding House liberal and Kennedy supporter. He came to Hyde Park to speak in the rose garden. She knew the sins of the father should not be visited on the sons, she explained apologetically to Bolling, but she had to admit she was strongly affected by her feeling about Joe Kennedy. Just as she found it difficult to forgive the son for his equivocation on McCarthyism, so she had not forgiven the father for his prewar defeatism. She recalled how the ambassador had come to Hyde Park and had angered her husband with his defeatist talk about the overwhelming German air force. FDR had called her, and his tone was glacial as he told her to take Ambassador Kennedy and feed him lunch at her cottage and then see him to the train. She had not known what was up until Ambassador Kennedy began to talk with her. Then she had understood FDR’s fury.26