The Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. (Book Reviews).

The Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. By George McJimsey. American Presidency Series. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, c. 2000. Pp. xvi, 355. $34.95, ISBN 0-7006-1012-X.)

In the eyes of many members of "the greatest generation," Franklin D. Roosevelt was a near-deity, a compassionate reformer who delivered relief and recovery to a despairing people in peacetime and a masterful global strategist who juggled, balanced, and brokered his way to a successful wartime grand alliance. Historians, however, have tended of late to dwell on his perceived flaws more than on his accomplishments. Roosevelt himself was fond of telling the allegorical tale of an elderly gentleman of wealth, rescued from a near-death by drowning, who complained bitterly about the loss of his tall silk hat once the shock of his narrow escape had worn off. (Clearly Roosevelt saw himself as the savior of an ungrateful capitalist class that, by 1936, was clamoring for a restoration of the unregulated status quo.) Some scholarly criticisms of FDR's shortcomings seem rather like handwringing over lost silk hats. So his Works Progress Administration never helped more than one-third of the nation's unemployed; so the Tennessee Valley Authority's "ultimate promise failed to materialize" (p. 88); so New Deal resettlement communities did not flourish; so what? Because of Franklin Roosevelt's superb leadership skills, he restored confidence and created millions of citizens with a stake in the system, by virtue of their roles as home owners, union members, Social Security--card carriers, and not least, wage earners. With all this, who misses a silk hat or two?

Now comes George McJimsey with a one-volume study of Roosevelt's presidency, published in the American Presidency series of the University Press of Kansas. He does a fine job of compressing these sprawling, event-packed twelve years into a readable, if somewhat somewhat dry, text that devotes two-thirds of its pages to the New Deal and one-third to Roosevelt as wartime leader. Organizing his book around the trope of "pluralism" (p. xi), McJimsey stresses how Roosevelt's administration, in peace and in war, facilitated problem solving by bringing in viewpoints of various groups, while valuing and respecting local conditions and empowering folks at the grassroots level to join in a common effort. In general, McJimsey emphasizes opportunities missed during the New Deal, while giving Roosevelt high marks as an effective wartime leader.

A signal characteristic of this book is its considerable focus on Eleanor Roosevelt. William E. Leuchtenberg, whose Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal (New York, 1963) is still the yardstick, mentioned the complicated First Lady only a handful of times, but McJimsey devotes an entire chapter to her influence, alleging that "Franklin Roosevelt's presidency was also Eleanor Roosevelt's presidency" (p. 296). There have been no co-presidencies in our history, but McJimsey is right to examine seriously Eleanor's contributions and ways of achieving them. He also gives great weight to the importance of Harry Hopkins, as one might expect of a scholar who has written an excellent Hopkins biography.

Chapter 6, "Roosevelt's Political Base," stands as the best in the book. After five accurate but turgid chapters dealing with the intricacies of New Deal policy matters, readers will take pleasure in seeing the vibrant Roosevelt personality--virtually obscured in McJimsey's long discussions of personnel and policy details--shine forth. Here one gets a sense of the mix of personal qualities that accounted for his achievements as a presidential leader.

In the end, McJimsey's evaluation of Roosevelt is definitely favorable, with less emphasis on "silk hats" or missed opportunities than on Roosevelt's creative responses to twin crises of unprecedented scope. His work is not likely to supplant Leuchtenberg for analysis of the New Deal, nor Patrick J. Maney's excellent one-volume biography of FDR (The Roosevelt Presence [New York and Toronto, 1992]). But this well-crafted synthesis is certainly a welcome and useful addition to the huge Roosevelt literature.

PAMELA TYLER
North Carolina State University