ONE "Grace, Take a Law"
JULY 1,1932
In Chicago, the Democratic Convention nominating speeches had
given way to hours of seconding addresses. Around 3 amthunder rum­
bled and lightning crackled outside of Chicago Stadium. The first bal­
loting did not start until 4:28 am and was bogged down by challenges.
At the Roosevelt estate in Hyde Park, New York, Judge Samuel
Rosenman was wrestling with the conclusion to a speech he was not
sure would be delivered.
He had passed the evening with Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt
and some members of his family-wife Eleanor, mother Sara, twenty­
two-year-old son Elliott-and Mrs. Dorothy Rosenman, listening on
the radio to the party proceedings. By the time the storm raged over
Chicago, Elliott was stretched asleep in a chair and Dorothy Rosenman
dozed, slumped against her husband's seat. By morning the judge had
sent to the closest delicatessen for hot dogs and retreated to a small, in­
formal dining room to finish Roosevelt's acceptance speech.
Franklin Roosevelt and Rosenman had first met during FDR's 1928
gubernatorial run. Fifteen years removed from his last experience with
New York legislative issues, Roosevelt had sought an aide to travel with
him, reeducate him on what faced the state, and help him write
speeches. Although his ghostwriting experience was limited, Rosen5
,
WHITE HOUSE GHOSTS
man, who had been a state legislator for five years and a member of the
Bill Drafting Commission for three, otherwise qualified. Clean-shaven
and slightly plump, Rosenman's fastidious appearance reflected an or­
dered mind. "He was a neat man," aide David Ginsburg recalled seven
decades later. He "knew where things were and knew what he wanted."
"When FDR won the 1928 election, Rosenman worked as his coun­
sel, helping the governor deal with the New York City political machine
and the state legislature, and aiding him in drafting speeches and polit­
ical messages. For the last two years of Roosevelt's term, Rosenman
lived in the governor's mansion-exposure that helped him learn the
processes ofhis boss's mind, especially how he wrote and spoke. Rosen­
man had in March suggested to Roosevelt that he bring university pro­
fessors to Albany to discuss national problems that he would face as
president-what would become known as FDR's "Brains Trust."
Now, Rosenman was determined to finish the speech regardless of
the outcome in Chicago: an incomplete project irked the ordered
lawyer, and after all it only lacked a peroration. "I pledge you, I pledge
myself, to a new deal for the American people," he wrote.
Like most such memorable political phrases, "New Deal" was not
conceived in capital letters. "When Rosenman handed FDR the new
paragraphs, the governor glanced at them and apparetly gave them lit­
tle more thought. Like other memorable slogans, this one had an­
tecedents and echoed ideas already floating through the public
consciousness. The issue of The New Republic presently on newsstands
had a cover story by economist Stuart Chase entitled "A New Deal for
America." In 1933, FDR would tell a founder ofthe International Mark
Twain Society that he had "obtained" the phrase from Twain's A Con­
necticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court. Rosenman would dismiss speqda­
tion that the phrase was designed to echo FDR cousin Theodore
Roosevelt's "Square Deal" and FDR hero Woodrow Wilson's "New
Freedom."
Raymond Moley, who had been the principal drafter of the accept­
ance speech (per custom he had not written a closing), later claimed
credit for the phrase's origin, noting that he had first paired the words in
a May 19 policy memo to the governor. But while his assertion is liter­
ally correct, he had used the words only in passing-"Reaction is no
6
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II
"Grace, Take a Law"
barrier to the radicaL It is a challenge and a provocation. It is not a
pledge ofa new deal; it is a reminder of broken promises."*
Whether any ofthis entered into Rosenman's choice is unknowable.
But the phrase would have been lost to history if another close FDR
aide had had his way.
After Roosevelt forces secured the nomination on the fourth ballot
on the evening of July 1, the candidate announced he would fly to
Chicago to address the convention, a risky move-air travel was still a
novelty-and. a break with tradition. The throng that greeted Roo­
sevelt's trimotored plane in the WIndy City on the afternoon ofJuly 2
included a mismatched pair ofRoosevelt aides, each with designs on the
nominee's speech.
One was Moley. A Columbia University professor of public law, he
had an incisive mind and grounded sense that distinguished him as a re­
alist among the ivory tower set. He had piercing eyes, and smoked a
heavy, dark pipe. He had first met Roosevelt in 1928 when he helped
the candidate prepare a plan and a speech on simplifying the state's jus­
tice system. In the 1920s, Moley had conducted studies of criminal jus­
tice in Cleveland, Ohio, and then in Missouri and Illinois. He had
directed research for the New York State Crime Commission and had
also done some work for a group called the National Crime Commis­
sion, of which FDR was a director.
After Roosevelt was elected governor, he appointed Moley to a
committee that helped overhaul the state's parole system and to the
Commission on the Administration ofJustice in the State ofNew York.
He also informally consulted with Moley on such matters, sometimes
using him to help draft speeches. Rosenman had tapped Moley as the
first member of the Brains Trust and he had become its leader, ferrying
a stream of professors up to Hyde Park.
*When the Saturday Evening Post serialized Moley's administration memoir After Seven nars
(1939), Rosenman clipped the article containing Moley's "new deal" claim and sent it to
FDR. "If you have some idea that you had anything to do with making yourself President,
you should read the attaChed modest, self-effacing account of the process by one Raymond
Moley," Rosenman wrote in a cover note. "He now emerges in a new role, a master of­
fiction!" (Rosenman, note to FDR and attached clipping, "Rosenman, Samuel: 1933-40"
folder, President's Secretary's File, FDR Library.)
7
WHITE HOUSE GHOSTS
Also awaiting the candidate in Chicago was a fonner reporter, Louis
McHenry Howe, an aide of longer standing than any other in FDR's
orbit, having first met the young politician when Roosevelt was a one­
tenn state senator more than two decades earlier. Sensing potential
greatness, Howe had undertaken to teach him politics and had become
an all-purpose political aide and confidant, acting as everything from
surrogate to strategist to speechwriter. He stood five foot four inches
tall, weighed less than one hundred pounds, and seemed chronically ill.
His face cratered by a childhood bike accident, Howe was known as
"the medieval gnome," an appellation that he embraced with grim
humor. He was devoted to FDR, territorially jealous, snapping angrily
at others who drew close to his Franklin.
As a trio, Rosenman, Moley, and Howe did not mesh, getting along
only as their common cause required. Rosenman later described Moley
as "very devious in some ofhis dealings" but "an excellent writer.... He
was sort of a hypochondriac, was quite morose, had a very limited sense
ofhumor, and for that reason, he was not easy to work with." Moley, in
tum, viewed Rosenman as "patently on the smug side, a trifle obse­
quious if you were 'important,' a shade highhanded if you weren't."
Roosevelt did not need them to get along so long as he could employ .
their talents. f
~en during the convention Howe saw a copy of the acceptance
speech in Chicago, he flew into a rage. "Good God, do I have to do
everything myself?" he exclaimed. "I see Sam Rosenman in every para­
graph of this mess." By the time Roosevelt landed in Chicago, Howe
had produced his own draft, to Moley's great alarm. The professor
fought his way through the chaos to Rosenman. "You've got to do
something about this," he told Rosenman, explaining Howe's intention
to switch the spe~ches. "J have tried to tell him how foolish that would
be, but it's no use; he is over there talking to the governor about it now."
Rosenman approached the open car that would carry Roosevelt to
Chicago Stadium (already two and a half hours late, he had no time to
rest) in time to hear Howe arguing with Roosevelt. "J tell you it's all
right Franklin," Howe said. "It's much better than the speech you've
got now-and you can read it while you're driving down to the conven­
tion hall, and get familiar with it."
8
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·.11
"Grace, Take a Law"
"But Louis, you know I can't deliver a speech that I've never done
any work on myself, and that I've never even read," Roosevelt re­
sponded. "It will sound stupid, and it's silly to think that I can."
Howe would not be put off. The governor agreed to peruse the al­
ternative text en route to the convention hall. For years to come, FDR
would recount with relish how, his car speeding through the crowd­
lined streets of Chicago, he had smiled, waved, and tipped his hat to the
crowd while sneaking glances at the Howe speech in his lap.
Standing in the back of the convention hall, Rosenman and Moley
listened in horror as Roosevelt started reading Howe's speech. But after
a minute he returned to words the pair knew well. FDR had tom the
front page off Howe's speech and then gone back to the Albany draft,
including the historic promise of a "new deal."
In campaigns and in the White House, speeches not only reflect poli­
cies but frequently act as a policy-forcing mechanism: The fact ofa pro­
nouncement focuses and curtails any lingering debates-most of the
time. The central issue of the 1932 presidential campaign was the de­
pression that had brought the country to the brink of material and psy­
chological collapse. One component of the economic debate was the
question oftrade tariffs, an issue that had tom the Democratic Party for
a generation.* In early September, Moley presented Roosevelt with a
pair of tariff-focused speeches: one, inspired by Tennessee Democratic
senator Cordell Hull, a free trader, advocated a 10 percent across-the­
board cut in tariffs; the other, a response written by retired Army
Brigadier General Hugh Johnson, argued against cutting the tariff in
favor of bilateral "old-fashioned Yankee horse-trades."
Roosevelt seemed to scrutinize the two speeches before he looked
up at his aide and told Moley to "weave the two together." It was of
course an impossible order and Moley told him so. Roosevelt deferred a
decision for weeks, before, in the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, finally
shifting in favor of the Johnson approach. It would not be the last time
*Seventy-five years later, the Democratic Party remained split on the issue of trade.
9
WHITE HOUSE GHOSTS
FDR or other presidents would blithely expect his writers to execute
the rhetorical equivalent of cognitive dissonance.
Of greater importance at the Palace on the evening ofSeptember 22
was Roosevelt and Moley's first discussion of an inaugural address.
FDR removed his heavy leg braces and ordered the telephone cut off.
Despite a long day of campaigning, he was at his best at night, and after
briefly going over the next day's address, he and Moley turned their
thoughts to what Roosevelt Inight say after being sworn in more than
five months later. *
Moley always bristled at being characterized as a "speech writer"
or-worse-a "ghost writer," both ofwhich he interpreted to be some­
thing akin to a scriptwriter producing finished texts that pols would
read verbatim. "My job from the beginning-and this continued for
four years-was to sift proposals for him, discuss facts and ideas with
him, and help him crystallize his own policy," he wrote in 1939.
This summation is a good starting definition for the position of
presidential speechwriter. Implicit is the notion that policies and words
are inextricably linked-the former cannot be conjured in the absence
of the latter. It was a role Moley and others played for FDR in the
"White House, not mere wordsIniths but advisers who helped the presi­
dent flesh out policy by putting it in words. The job ofspeechwriter has
evolved as television eclipsed radio as the nation's medium, as the
"White House staff grew from a handful to a sprawling group of special­
ized cadres, and, of course, as each president has dealt with it in his own
way. The rise of presidential speechwriters has also spurred philosoph­
ical questions involving whose words the president speaks. And these
are issues that not only relate to questions of credit but can have real
world consequences.
The topic of the inaugural speech was next broached on a train trip
in early February from Wann Springs, Georgia, to Jacksonville,
Florida. Moley then brought a draft to Hyde Park on Sunday, February
26, 1933-six days before FDR's inaugural.
*Prior to the Twentieth Amendment (ratified in 1933 but too late to affect Roosevelt's first
term), which among other things set the date of the presidential inauguration at January 20,
presidents were sworn in on March 4.
10 "Grace, Take a Law"
Around 9 pm the next evening, after dinner, Moley and the president­
elect retired to the library, with its lit fireplace. Roosevelt, sitting at a
folding card table, carefully read Moley's typed draft before remarking
that he had better transfer it into his own longhand. Howe was arriving
the following morning and would "have a fit" if he suspected any other
hand but FDR's had composed the speech.
So, with Moley sitting on the long couch in front of the fireplace,
Roosevelt rewrote the speech on a legal-size tablet of paper. The two
men sipped whiskey and edited on the fly, reconsidering each sentence,
sometimes each word, before FDR committed it to paper. "How do you
spell foreclose?" Roosevelt asked at one point. There were occasional
distractions and interruptions--calls from incoming cabinet mem­
bers-as they worked through to the draft's end.
When they finished, Moley took his original and tossed it onto the
still-glowing fireplace embers. "This is your speech now," he said.
But Roosevelt had in mind more than to fool Louis Howe. His
handwritten copy ofthe speech, on file at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Li­
brary at Hyde Park, has a typewritten note dated Maich 25, 1933,
signed by the president and explaining that it was "the Inaugural Ad­
dress as written at Hyde Park on Monday, February 27, 1933. I started
in about 9.00 P.M. and ended at 1.30 A.M. A number of minor changes
were made in subsequent drafts but the final draft is substantially the
same as this original." That account omits Moley, conjuring an image
of FDR writing in solitude. A generation of historians recounted the
scene before Moley-incensed by the Roosevelt deception-published
his second New Deal memoir in 1966, correcting the record.
It was an unworthy and uncharacteristic ploy on Roosevelt's part,
but illustrates the tension that often exists over ownership ofa speech or
phrase when a president uses a writer. Moley Qumed his draft of the
speech because of "a keen sense that whatever might be the authorship,
he and he alone would have to carry the responsibility ofwhat was said
on the fateful day ofinauguration." The president has ownership ofhis
words, ifnot always literal authorship.
And the authorship question is rarely clear-cut. In the case of the
Roosevelt inaugural, the absence of any extant copy ofMoley's original
makes it impossible to pinpoin,t the parentage ofmost phrases. His draft
11
WHITE HOUSE GHOSTS
was infonned not only by discussions with Roosevelt but months of
close contact. Whatever he had brought· to Hyde Park was already
FDR-sponsored, if not produced. And Roosevelt was a careful partici­
pant in the speechwriti,ng process, a close editor who reworked material
to fit his own needs.
Roosevelt's charade achieved its immediate goal: Howe believed the
speech was FDR's alone. He edited it himself, dictating a shorter,
tighter version, with a new first paragraph that contained the exhorta­
tion, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
Several theories about the line's origin have been suggested over the
years. Rosenman later remarked to Eleanor Roosevelt that it echoed
Henry David Thoreau ("Nothing is so much to be feared as fear"), and
she replied that her husband had had a volume ofthe American philoso­
pher's works in his room in the Mayflower Hotel the night before the
inaugural-an account Moley disputes.
Like the phrase "new deal," the concept of fearing fear was not new.
It had echoes, from Epictetus to Cicero to Shakespeare to Daniel Defoe
to Thoreau. A 1931 edition of The New York Times had a front-page
story quoting U.S. Chamber of Commerce chainnanJulius H. Barnes
as saying, "In a condition of this kind, the thing to be feared most is fear
itself."
Moley recalled the phrase appearing in, of all places, a February
1932 department store ad, but that advertisement has disappeared.
Whether Howe saw the ad or the Times piece (possible), picked up the
concept from classic literature (unlikely: his tastes ran almost exclu­
sively to pulp detective novels), or arrived at the thought on his own will
never be known.
Roosevelt had a keen sense of public psychology. He understood that
what people needed was restored hope and a sense of order. As impor­
tant was his insight that radio, the first live mass medium, lent itself to a
previously unimagined oratorical intimacy. For the nation's first 150
years, political addresses were designed to be delivered to large, present
audiences. Speeches had to be long enough to satisfy people who had
traveled great distances to hear them, and delivery had to reach the pe­
12 ~thepe-
"Grace, Take a Law"
ripheries ofcrowds. Radio flipped things: instead of aiming addresses at
large public crowds, one could now visit individuals in the quiet oftheir
homes. FDR's lower-key, more casual style supplanted formal rhetoric.
Yet under these apparently effortless performances existed a new
political mechanism. Other presidents had had help with speeches, but
the intersection of a new medium and a new governmental style under
Roosevelt created a need that has not abated. Presidents could commu­
nicate instantaneously with greater numbers of their countrymen than
ever before, but as the scope of the federal government and expecta­
tions of it grew starting with the New Deal, presidents would have less
time to prepare their own communications.
While presidents and politicians have sought to mimic FDR's
achievement by adopting his style-and later John F. Kennedy's and
Ronald Reagan's-the successful communicators have found ways to
match his success in finding collaborators who could help them develop
and elevate their own rhetorical voices. No president after Roosevelt
tried to serve without one, and more often several, speechwriters. Their
political successes often reflected their ability to properly use these
aides.
Like so much in the Roosevelt White House, the speechwriting sys­
tem was not well ordered. FDR used a broad selection of friends and
aides to draft speeches and written messages to Congress, often draw­
ing theminto the process through their policy portfolios. And as FDR
experimented with different policies, he cycled through various advis­
ers. Howe, appointed as Roosevelt's private secretary, continued to con­
tribute to speeches to the end of his life in 1936. Other contributors
included Donald Richberg, a Chicago labor lawyer before joining the
administration; the diplomat William Bullitt; law professor Felix
Frankfurter, who would continue to consult on speeches even after he
joined the Supreme Court; retired Army Brigadier General Hugh
Johnson, who was a key official in the National Recovery Administra­
tion and later the Works Progress Administration; Brains Trusters Rex
Tugwell, an agriculture expert and Columbia professor, and Adolph
BerIe, a former child prodigy who graduated from Harvard as a
teenager and was appointed to be counsel for the Reconstruction Fi­
nance Corporation.
13
WHITE HOUSE GHOSTS
Moley took a nominal position as Assistant Secretary of State, off
the "White House staff so as to avoid inflaming Howe, but that role was
short-lived. Secretary of State Cordell Hull discovered at the 1933
World Economic Conference in London that Moley had been secretly
sending negative reports to Roosevelt. So when he left the department
in September 1933, he moved at once into preparation of a new weekly
news and opinion magazine, Today.
Almost immediately, Moley was summoned by Roosevelt on Octo­
ber 22 to help prepare a fireside chat for that evening on commodity
prices and the value of the dollar. Moley opposed FDR's plan but he an­
swered the call because, "in this instance, 1 was merely a draftsman."
Later he rejected suggestions that he was a mercenary pen who pro­
vided words without regard for their content. "1 was no weaver of fancy
phrases to fit whomever might call for such confections," he wrote in
1966. "If I had not believed in Roosevelt's objectives, I could not have
participated. "
But in October 1933, Moley was ready to weave. "While loyalty and
overall agreement with the New Deal quieted his discomfort, the fire­
side chat signaled a policy divergence between the two friends that
would grow over the next three years. Five days later Today debuted,*
with a Moley editorial saying that Roosevelt's character and heritage
would prevent him from ever assuming dictatorial powers. If this seems
oddly obvious seventy-five years later, it was not so at the time: that the
president could assume extraordinary authority to battle depression
was part ofthe political debate. But Moley was not being entirely truth­
ful: his notes from his initial inaugural discussions with Roosevelt in­
cluded ideas of"dictatorship" and "dictatorial powers." The inaugural
address raised the notion that Roosevelt might ask for wartime powers
if Congress did not act quickly.
Quiet invitations to the White House remained a regular part of
Maley's life during FDR's first term. By his own reckoning, he made the
train trip from New York to Washington no fewer than seventy-five
times, spending 132 days in D.C., to consult on speeches and written
*In 1937 the magazine merged with rival publication News-Week to form Newsweek.
14
"Grace, Take a Law"
messages to Congress-and that did not indude trips to Hyde Park. He
would slip in a side entrance, through the Cabinet Room and the office
of Marguerite "Missy" LeHand, FDR's personal secretary, thus avoid­
ing the media (of which he, of course, was a member).* He stayed
overnight in the executive mansion occasionally, but more often would
check into a hotel. As he avoided the official VVhite House calendar, his
visits did not attract press attention.
The editor of a news weekly moonlighting as the president's top
speechwriter would be a scandalous violation of journalistic ethics in
present times. But the battle lines were then less distinct. In May 1932,
for example, a small group of reporters picnicking with Roosevelt and
LeHand were ribbing the governor about his speeches, so FDR jok­
ingly challenged them to produce something better. The Herald Tri­
bune's Ernest K Lindley, with help from his colleagues; wrote a draft
the candidate used at Oglethorpe University later that month. The
speech's promise of "bold, persistent experimentation" became a neat
summation of Roosevelt's governing philosophy.
In December 1933, Roosevelt asked Moley to oversee the drafting of
a securities exchange bill for the following year. Moley called in a pair of
young lawyers he knew, Tom Corcoran and Ben Cohen. Corcoran
worked at the Reconstruction Finance Corporation while Cohen was a
staffer at the Public Works Administration. Both disciples of Frank­
furter, the two were an inseparable team. Corcoran-"Tommy the
Cork" -was brash and blustery, unafraid to fight, threaten, or cajole. He
played piano well and accordion better, singing along from a bottomless
. supply of Irish folk songs and sea shanties. Cohen was quieter, more
cerebral, moodier. The pair complemented each other, and became
presidential favorites as policy advisers and eventually speechwriters.
Moley got more assignments. "I'd be called in to put together ideas
against which 1 had argued passionately," he wrote. "1 was summoned,
in such cases, as a technician at speech construction, just as I'd be called
in ifl were a plumber and a pipe needed fixing." He justified it to him­
·Until the Nixon administration, the White House did not have a press room, so the re­
porters would gather in the main lobby ofthe West Wing.
15
WHITE HOUSE GHOSTS
selfas a chance to do good: "For every time I would be asked to put clar­
ity into statements of which I thoroughly disapproved there would be·
two or three times when it was possible to modify or head off a step en­
tirely," he stressed.
The disagreements became more frequent, and Moley's Todayedito­
rials were increasingly critical. The First New Deal, which emphasized
government and business working cooperatively, was giving way to the
Second New Deal, which had a more populist, anti-corporate tone.
Moley was openly and approvingly suggesting that conservatism and
big business would soon be back in public favor. The divergence crys­
tallized at the White House five days before Christmas 1935 during a
discussion of FDR's upcoming annual message to Congress.* Roo­
sevelt, at just over 50 percent in the polls, said he wanted a "fighting
speech" to kick off the campaign year.
"Whom are you going to fight?" Moley asked. "And for what?"
But while he opposed the idea, he played technician once again. The
resulting speech evoked "battle" against the attempted return to power
of "entrenched greed" and a "resplendent economic autocracy" that
wanted "power for themselves, enslavement for the public." It tnrned
Moley's stomach. He had never before realized "the extent to which
verbal excesses can intoxicate not only those who hear them but those
who speak them." For five more months he muddled along, trying to
square the circle--either to extricate himself from Roosevelt's orbit or
persuade the president to steer a more business-friendly course. His at­
titnde became "Nunc dimittis-Now lettest thou thy servant 9,epart in
peace."
Roosevelt was already preparing for that eventnality. In May 1936,
he invited the Rosenmans for a Memorial Day weekend Potomac cruise
on the presidential yacht, the Potomac. Also aboard were Stanley High
and his wife. A Chicago native, High held a doctorate in theology, had
*\Vhatis now called the State of the Union address was simply the "annual message" until
well into the twentieth century. FDR's 1934 speech was the first to incorporate the title, but
not until 1947 did it come into general usage. (Michael Kolakowski and Thomas H. Neale,
"The President's State of the Union Message: Frequently Asked Questions," Congressional
Research Service, March 7, 2006, available at www.senate.gov/reference/resourceslpdfl
RS2002I.pdf.)
16
~J!rll"'IIIII,J!._"• •
-
"Grace, Take a Law"
served as a Methodist minister in China and, while never ordained, was
the pastor ofa church in Stamford, Connecticut. And he was a Republi­
can: He had actively opposed Roosevelt in 1932 and would return to the
GOP fold in 1940, but for a brief season he was a New Dealer. He had
. started occasionally contributing to FDR's speeches in 1935.
Moley was well on his way to becoming the first in a line of publicly
embittered former presidential speechwriters. And while the feeling
was mutual-FDR thought Moley had swung too hard to the right to
be an effective collaborator-it was not in Roosevelt's character to
make a clean break with an old friend and comrade-in-political-arms.
Moley allowed FDR to pull him back for his 1936 acceptance speech,
reworking a monstrously long Corcoran draft that included the state­
ment, "this generation ofAmericans has a rendezvous with destiny."
What Moley did not know was that FDR had also tapped Rosenman
and High to write a draft. Such competing assignments were standard
procedure in other areas of the Roosevelt White House, but rare in
presidential speechwriting-and even then, usually happened only
where Moley was concerned.
Three days before the speech was to be delivered, FDR invited the
four writers to dine with him and Missy LeHand. The president and
Moley quarreled at the dinner table. Roosevelt ribbed the writer about
his "new, rich friends" and their influence on his editorials. Moley shot
back that FDR's inability to take criticism was leading him to poor pol­
icy. The other guests were aghast-it was the only time, Rosenman
later wrote, that he ever "saw the President forget himself as a gentle­
man." Moley downplayed the exchange as typical of the kind of infor­
mal relationship he had with the president, including a "habit of plain,
even rough, talk," and said it was quickly forgotten.
Moley produced a draft that was, in his words, "Sweetness, if not
Light," invoking faith, hope, and charity. The Rosenman-High effort,
on the other hand, was closer to thunder and lightning, decrying "a new
despotism" wrapped "in the robes of legal sanction." The result was a
ragged stitch job that in one breath attacked "economic royalists" (a
High contribution) and in the next waxed about giving government
"the vibrant personal character that is the very embodiment of human
charity."
17
WHITE HOUSE GHOSTS
As he had four years earlier, FDR hid the fact of other hands in. the
speech. But this time Moley was the deceived, as the president told him
that he himself had made some changes to add "fire" to the talk.
Roosevelt and Moley went through the motions one last time in
Hyde Park in September, on the writer's fiftieth birthday. As an absurd
hide-and-seek went on-Rosenman, Corcoran, and High, who along
with Cohen became the 1936 campaign speech team, were squirreled
away on another part of the estate-Roosevelt made a halfhearted at­
tempt at recruiting Moley. The writer declined. After Roosevelt's re­
election he sent a polite telegram of congratulations. "And there the
story of personal relations ends," Moley noted in 1939. "There was no
'break,' no trouble, no recriminations, no bitterness." The two friends
met only once more, and Moley quickly became one of the president's
most pungent and vocal critics.
During the first term, the Supreme Court had struck down various
elements of the New Deal. In response, Roosevelt had made one of his
few major political errors, proposing in February 1937 a "reorganiza­
tion bill" that would, among other things have added a new justice to
the Supreme Court for every one that had reached the age of seventy
years and six months, with a total possible limit of fifteen. When the
Senate Judiciary Committee convened its first hearings into the Court
plan in 1937, Moley was the first witness to testify in opposition. Years
later he told an interviewer that when he dreamed ofFDR, it was always
of their reconciling.
Roosevelt marked up no other speech as much as his second inaugural
address. Richberg had written a first draft, but as he was a better lawyer
than speechwriter, Rosenman and Corcoran reworked it before send­
ing it to Roosevelt. Then the four men edited, tightened, worked, and
reworked the speech to the president's satisfaction.
FDR's skill as an editor lay in his ability to pare sentences and punch
up tired rhetoric. He would usually produce the sort ofhomely analogy
that so often illustrated his public pronouncements. Between the sec­
ond and third drafts, a section was inserted outlining the problems the
country faced, each proceeded by "1 see ..." For example, "1 see mil­
18 ~
"Grace, Take a Law"
lions offamilies trying to live on incomes so meager that the pall offam­
ily disaster hangs over them day by day." FDR produced the capstone to
this series, giving the speech its signature line. Rosenman had penciled
a summary line into the text, but Roosevelt erased it and wrote: "I see
one third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished."
This kind of moment was not uncommon. Roosevelt would stop,
lean back in his chair, and stare up at the ceiling. Sometimes minutes
passed in silence. Then he would dictate a passage that more often than
not remained in the speech's final draft. He sometimes prefaced this by
turning to his secretary, Grace Tully, and saying, "Grace, take a law"­
a nod to a George M. Cohan Broadway musical, I'd Rather Be Right, in
which Roosevelt, during the Hundred Days, would dictate laws to Con­
gress.
Sometimes FDR's dictations would nail the point. At other times he
would ramble, eventually losing steam and finally saying breezily,
"Well-something along those lines-you boys can fix it up." Some­
times his inserts were never meant for the speech at all, but were simply
an opportunity for the president to vent, confident that his aides would
know better than to leave the bile in the next draft. If his writers were
united in disagreement with him, he might turn to Tully or LeHand
and say with mock plaintiveness, "They won't let me say anything ofmy
own in my own speech." He often overruled his aides at these times,
though he might tell them they could remove an offending section,
adding, "I'll just ad-lib it"-and he would.
When a final text was produced, FDR marked it up for ease of
reading-underlining words to emphasize or noting pauses. "Hard­
headedness will not so easily excuse hard-heartedness," the second in­
augural said, a neat bit of phraseology too easily transposed, as FDR
did while reading the draft out loud to himself. To ensure that no such
mistake occurred during his actual delivery, the president drew a small
circle (the head) over "headedness" in his reading copy and a small
heart over "heartedness."
"I see mil­
The president's phone rang at around 3 am on Friday, September 1,
1939. Both the hour and the fact that the call went directly through to
19
WHITE HOUSE GHOSTS
Roosevelt indicated its gravity. It was William Bullitt, the U.S. ambas­
sador to France, calling from Paris. He was relaying a message from
Anthony Biddle, the U.S. ambassador to Poland, who had been unable
to reach Washington directly. Biddle's message: German bombs and
shells had started falling on Poland.
The years between the outbreak of war and the United States entry
into the conflict presented special problems for Roosevelt, who had to
lead an electorate that had competing opinions about how to handle the
international situation. "'Stay out of war.' 'Help England and France.'
Anybody who wants to understand the American people today must
take those two desires into full account," the pollster George Gallup
wrote in The New York Times on April 30, 1939. The strains of these
competing impulses found voice in increasingly vocal isolationist and
interventionist movements, the former arguing that Europe's problems
were ofno concern to the United States, while the latter advocated U.S.
aid to Britain and France-for example, by repealing the neutrality laws
that forbade the United States from selling arms to belligerents.
The trick for Roosevelt during these years was to orient the country
to resist the Fascist menace without getting so far ahead ofpublic opin­
ion as to lose it. It was a time of transition and tension in terms of his
speechwriting: whether in building a new speechwriting staff or in
pushing his own government rhetorically farther than its diplomats
preferred.
On Sunday evening, September 3, Roosevelt was giving his first
fireside address since June 1938.* He aimed to calibrate American reac­
tion to the war, warning that an ocean separating the United States
from the fighting did not place the nation beyond the conflict's reach,
while also pledging that the country would remain officially neutral.
"This nation will remain a neutral nation, but I cannot ask that every
American remain neutral in thought as well," he said. "Even a neutral
has a right to take account of facts. Even a neutral cannot be asked to
close his mind or his conscience."
*Roosevelt's fireside chats took on such importance that in later years popular imagination
had the president at the microphone monthly if not more often; in fact, after 1933, he never
gave more than three fireside talks in any of his remaining peacetime years in office.
20
I liS IIF I
, 1
1[' or
"Grace, Take a Law"
Roosevelt had himself added that qualification during the initial ed­
iting process ofa draft that originated in the State Department. The oc­
, casion also illustrated a shift in FDR's speeches. From 1939 onward, his
focus was increasingly international and war-related, away from domes­
tic issues. And it would not be the last time that Roosevelt-or any pres­
, ident-punched up a State-drafted speech to point the country in the
proper international direction.
men Roosevelt gave the commencement address at the University
ofVirginia onJune 10, 1940-the day that Italy declared war on France
and Great Britain-the State Department prepared a lengthy insert for
his speech. But Roosevelt himself-picking language from a cable sent
by French premier Paul Reynaud-again found a cutting image to
dramatize the occasion. Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles ar­
gued that it would be diplomatically imprudent and got Roosevelt to re­
move the phrase. But the president reconsidered and on the train ride
down to Charlottesville handwrote the line back into his speech: "On
this tenth day ofJune, 1940, the hand that held the dagger has struck it
into the back ofits neighbor."
By the end of that summer, the list of former Roosevelt speechwrit­
ers well outnumbered the roster of available talent: Howe was dead;
Moley had become an FDR critic, as had Hugh Johnson; High was ex­
pelled from the New Deal ranks in early 1937 after cornrilitting the car­
dinal sin of using his insider status and information for an article in the
Saturday Evening Post; Corcoran had offended too many people to
maintain his utility ("Nearly all the Democratic national political lead­
ers in the country had become bitter at him," Rosenman later wrote);
and while Cohen would occasionally contribute, he was not as effective
without his partner. Rex Tugwell and Don Richberg had long since left
the administration.
Bullitt contributed briefly during the summer and fall of 1940 but,
preferring to work alone, was never part of a speechwriting team. Librar­
ian of Congress Archibald MacLeish contributed occasionally, starting
that year. Rosenman had been a fixture since the 1936 reelection cam­
paign and would remain through the balance of Roosevelt's presidency.
But one key aide had joined the speechwriting group: Harry Lloyd
Hopkins. Iowa-born, he had worked in New York State social services
21