In honor of the Twenty-Second Amendment today, can somebody explain why FDR decided to run for a fourth term. He knew he wouldn’t live another four years. The democrats were pretty much a shoe-in for the 1944 election, the European invasion was going full out and the japs were being pushed back in the Pacific. The war was all but won. The only thing that makes much sense is that FDR was a complete egomaniac.
He was a politician after all. A pretty savvy one at that. So he must have known that a fourth term would trigger a backlash inevitably ending in something like the 22nd. So why did he do it?
Moving is a pain in the ass. This way he got to stay in the Whitehouse.
That may not be the only solution, but it’s good enough.
Tricky thing about wars - they’re not over until they’re over and there are tons of post-war details to hash out. And I’m banking he thought he’d live long enough to take care of a few more of those details.
Considering the Yalta conference was a major deal, a sudden change in administrations could well have been disruptive. At the least FDR contributed to the talks - his mental faculties were apparently unaffected.
The later Potsdam conference was certainly interesting for that reason - new British PM (though Churchill started out the conference as PM prior to the elections) and a new US President. The changes in personality and political views were certainly reflected in the talks.
He liked the job?
Yes, Roosevelt was in poor health, but in addition to ego, he had a vision for the post-war world that he hoped to implement. He thought that, like Woodrow Wilson, he’d have a chance to re-make the world.
[ul]
[li]One view has it he did not think a leadership change during war was appropriate.[/li][li]Wikipedia is mum on any motivations.[/li][li]From a health perspective, a fourth term was not a good choice.[/li][li]A 1944 New York Times article supports the notion not to change leaders during war.[/li][/ul]
My take was his ego to be the victorious president played a large role.
A lot of POTUS have egos the size of Mount Everest. Although the war was almost won, the peace still remained and FDR wanted major changes worldwide (dismantling of the British and especially the French empires). He was vain enough to feel he could handle a cold blooded tyrant like Stalin with his personal charm. FDR was also the vice president for the losing Democratic ticket in 1920 and probably felt the Cox-Roosevelt administration could have handled this better.
I am too lazy to look through “American Heritage” but there was an article once on FDR’s machinations to dump vice-president Wallace and replace him with someone like Oliver Douglas or Harry Truman. In it, Allen Drury, at that time a political reporter who later wrote political dramas like “Advise and Consent” talked about how happy the Democratic party operatives were when FDR decided to run for a full term. Their meal ticket was still there. In those days the “coattail” effect of various office seekers for a winning president was pretty strong. The bosses were worried that some of them might lose their jobs if a lesser known, possibly weaker candidate was named.
FDR could have ignored his declining medical condition. While the 1920 presidential election was not Wilson vs Harding, there were people who felt Harding’s seemingly better health was a factor. Harding ended up dying before Wilson. In 1956 Adlai Stevenson made much of Eisenhower’s health problems such as a heart attack. Eisenhower ended up outliving Stevenson.
Keep in mind back then, the media was very forgiving to FDR’s paralysis. There is very little footage of him in a wheelchair. In contrast, when George Wallace resumed his candidacy in 1972 after being paralyzed by a would be assassin, you saw plenty of footage of him being pushed in a wheelchair. There are people like FDR biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin who have said they thought FDR was just a little lame before they researched it and found how extensive his paralysis was. You
can argue all you want about how it doesn’t matter if a candidate can walk or not and I’d agree with you. But there is a significant number of voters who want a POTUS to be healthy and physically active.
FDR’s idea of the ideal president was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He was not shy about this, having stated almost exactly that. He had a huge ego. (And remember that other than the Japanese American internment, I’m a huge fan.) He also didn’t know when he was dying, only that he was in poor health and might not make it. Truman was a good choice of next President, but there was no way to get him to run for President in 1944, so what were the other choices? Wallace? Garner? Roosevelt didn’t care for them all that much.
Note that his having a third term had already broken the tradition, and set up the backlash. Wendell Wilkie campaigned on it as an issue.
He also had the A-bomb card still in his back pocket. Who’s to know how he would have opted to play it. It would be the biggest leap of trust of all time to knowingly hand over the keys to atomic warfare to an unknown politician – and possibly one from the opposition party – when the alternative was to keep it in the family and hope his health held out long enough to see his plan through. Perhaps FDR would have opted for an offshore demonstration. Perhaps not. But he gave the go-ahead in '41
" He knew he wouldn’t live another four years"
This is certainly disputable.
Why even the question? If you had been president for three terms, had liked being president for three terms, thought there was a good chance you could be re-elected, why would you not run?
Like my dad once said, FDR and Hitler had 2 things in common: they both wanted to be ruler for life and they both were.
Just a note that in the 2008 race the age of McCain was a very large campaign undercurrent. Ditto Reagan.
Indeed.
[Quote=Ronald W. Reagan, 1984 debate against Walter Mondale]
I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.
[/quote]
This was my first thought too, but Duckster’s link and Truman’s Wikipedia article lend credence to the idea that Roosevelt was in pretty bad shape and had to have known there was a good chance he wouldn’t make it through all four years. That also might be the reason Truman was the VP for his fourth term instead of Henry Wallace.
Sources report that the extent of the President’s health problems were kept from him.
I just read this a couple of hours ago, but I don’t even remember the search term s used - I’m sure it wasn’t any obscure site though (ie Joe’s History of FDR)
And when the doctors tell someone they are very sick and won’t live out the year, does everyone accept that? We’ve all heard tales of ‘They said I’d be dead in six months. I said The hell I will!’
While we were firmly ensconced in European when the election happened, he probably made the decision before D-Day. If that had failed the war would have lasted much, much longer.
Good point.
The Battle of the Bulge happened after the elections and was a fraught battle. Even before the Bulge, the Allies knew it was still possible for the Germans to prolong the war if things broke the wrong way.
Ego probably played its role, but dismissing the notion of administrative continuity in the largest conflict in human history is Monday morning quarterbacking of the worst sort.
FDR was pretty active in the last few months of his life. So while he was increasingly ill, its not like he was bedridden or anything. And he’d been in poor health for long stretches before, so I don’t think it was a forgone conclusion, at least in his own mind, that he’d die in office.
And at 62 he wasn’t exactly geriatric. Reagan and McCain were both running for their first terms when they were a full decade older.
Also, politics was based a lot more on personal relationships and back-scratching arrangements back then then it is now. Simply swapping FDR for another Democrat might’ve been a lot harder and more disruptive then, say, swapping out Obama for another Dem would be today.
So presumably he hoped he’d live out his term, in which case his reason for running would be the same as his reasons for running the last three times. And if he did die in office, he’d at least have the chance to pick his successor and much of the cabinet that would continue after him, instead of