Little White House

secrets

"He never let his left hand know what his right hand was doing."
- On FDR

cousins

"This man used to the limit the powers granted to him by God."
- Eleanor Roosevelt

never make the first move

A strategy embraced by FDR and Steve Jobs.

pop!

"Meeting Roosevelt was like uncorking your first bottle of champagne."

- Winston Churchill

FDR's blood pressure before he died was 240/130. A healthy range is 115/75. 

75

FDR speaks at the 75th anniversary Battle of Gettysburg Civil War reunion.

An earlier reference to Gettysburg here.

psychology

In his run for the Presidency against Herbert Hoover in 1932, on economics Franklin D. Roosevelt

had a breezy and disconcerting ability to put forward contradictory policies without the slightest embarrassment. So while he pledged to increase federal relief for unemployment, supported higher tariffs, government development of power projects, increased regulation of securities markets, and the separation of commercial and investment banking, he also criticized Hoover for fiscal extravagance, accused him of encouraging inflation, and promised to balance the budget and commit himself to "sound money." But voters did not care about consistency, they wanted bold action. In November 1932, Roosevelt got 22.8 million votes against Hoover's 15.7 million, the greatest electoral sweep since Lincoln beat McClellan in 1864.

- Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance, 2009, p. 442

F.D.R. ranks 3rd best out of 42 Presidents; Hoover ranks 34th. Details here. 

An earlier reference to F.D.R. here.

liar

In 1906, Winston Churchill coined the phrase "terminological inexactitude" to intimate but not to exactly say that a fellow Member of Parliament was a liar. Some decades later, the description was revived and applied affectionately to the stories President FDR would sometimes share.

An earlier reference to Churchill here.

Porcellian

The Porcellian is Harvard's most prestigious and exclusive club. Black-balled, FDR was denied admittance.

An earlier reference to FDR on this blog here.

Denial

A way of coming to terms with a difficult fact.

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Paralyzed psychiatrist turned conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer from 1997:

Denial is not in great favor today. It is considered unhealthy, an almost cowardly psychic constriction. The mantra today is that all must be dealt with, talked out, coped with, opened up, faced squarely.
This may work for some. But it has become something of a religion. And if its priests are so correct about the joys of catharsis and the perils of denial, how do they explain how the champion denier of our century, Franklin Roosevelt, lived such a splendid life?
Roosevelt's denial of his disability was more than just a denial of crushing adversity, more than a jaunty, smiling, damn-the-torpedoes refusal to dwell upon--indeed, fully acknowledge--his physical reality. It was a denial of self, a strange notion for us living in this confessional age when self--self-exploration, self-expression, self-love--is paramount. Roosevelt's life had a grand outer directedness. He was not searching for the inner Franklin. He was reaching for a new America. It was the outer Franklin he cultivated, and it is that Franklin, the one who saved his country, that we honor and remember.