Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin praised Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, as well as the media ethics that allowed their unique partnership and living arrangements to survive, in her Montgomery Fellowship lecture yesterday in an overflowing Cook Auditorium.
Goodwin praised the classic media rule that private lives of politicians were not newsworthy unless they affected the work of these public figures.
This "wise world" allowed Roosevelt to serve his country as president without having his polio-induced paralysis analyzed by the media. In addition, the Roosevelt White House, inhabited by many close friends with eccentric habits including Winston Churchill, was not scrutinized, Goodwin said.
"Can you imagine what the media would have made of FDR's White House, with a secretary in love with the president, a reporter in love with Eleanor and a Prime Minister who drinks from breakfast to dinner?" Goodwin asked.
Roosevelt expanded the power of the presidency in many ways, Goodwin said.
His first 100 days in office and his extraordinary success in passing innovative legislation to curb the Great Depression became a "measuring mark for new presidents" in assessing their success in enacting policy, she said.
Roosevelt pushed for the creation of the Executive Office of the Presidency, which meant the president was "no longer a person but an institution," Goodwin said.
According to Goodwin, Roosevelt kept in constant touch with the American people despite his growing office. Goodwin said he did this by becoming the leader of his Democratic party, holding twice-weekly press conferences and giving powerful radio addresses.
Goodwin said an important aspect of his radio-based "Fireside Chats" was that the American people listening felt that everyone else in the country was listening too. Giving the American people this feeling of connection was a great source of power, Goodwin said.
Roosevelt's leadership during World War II is also to be admired, Goodwin said.
Rather than going along with isolationist sentiment reflected in the national polls, Roosevelt brought the American people into the war and into action that he felt was right, Goodwin said.
She said she feels this is what true leadership should be. Roosevelt could "inject his own internal confidence into the American people whenever they needed it most," Goodwin said.
Roosevelt's differences in temperament from Eleanor enabled their marriage to become a partnership, Goodwin said. Eleanor's discovery of one of Roosevelt's early affairs enabled her to seek fulfillment outside her marriage.
Eleanor became an advocate for Civil Rights, women and the poor during her life, although she was not capable of relaxing with Roosevelt, Goodwin said.
Eleanor in turn faulted Roosevelt for the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II and for the lack of action against the Nazi death camps, Goodwin said.
Despite these flaws, Goodwin said she finished her book on the Roosevelts, the Pulitzer Prize winner "No Ordinary Time," convinced that neither meant to hurt the other.
Today's labeling of Roosevelt as an adulterer or a harasser would be inaccurate or incomplete, she said.
Goodwin said history provides an outlet and a challenge to look at the past. She said she tries to make the past come alive without interpreting past figures' actions through modern standards.
Goodwin's lecture was part of the "Power and the Presidency" series put together this term by the Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Endowment.
