07 February 2004 20:03
Raw power and grand purposes -
P RESS barons are supposed to dedicate their lives to publicising and profiting from the printed word, rather than
actually writing any such words themselves. Coining the odd headline or drafting the occasional leader is meant to set a
limit to their literary ambitions. Conrad Black, who has long run Hollinger International (which publishes the British
Daily Telegraph and the Spectator as well as the Jerusalem Post), has broken that stereotype by writing a comprehensive,
often combative, and sometimes cantankerous biography of US President Franklin Roosevelt. The story Black tells is at
once deeply familiar and quite peculiar. A cosseted, spoiled, rich boy (whose mother dressed him first in skirts, then
in kilts) marries an ungainly, prickly cousin, abandons the love of his life (until an interlude before his death),
serves in official rather than military capacities during World War I, then is irretrievably crippled by polio. After
that, he is elected governor of America's richest state, then wins the presidency an unprecedented and unequalled
four times in a row, in the process saving capitalism from the Depression (in the 1930s) and the world from Nazi and
Japanese tyranny (during World War II). No reputable press baron would dare to confect a narrative as ludicrously
unlikely as that one. Black's is by no means the only impressive recent biography of an American political leader;
in addition, Roosevelt has recently attracted even more attention than usual. However thorough and lively this biography
may be, it does not stand comparison with, say, David McCullough on John Adams or Edmund Morris on the other Roosevelt
(Theodore). Nor, as an account of the period, does this work rank with David Kennedy's Freedom from Fear. None the
less, Black's achievement remains daunting, whether judged by his skill in picking the most compelling way to tell
his story, by close and careful scrutiny of all facets of Roosevelt's life, or by his deft vindication of the claim
that his subject remains ''the most important person of the 20th century''. Black includes regular,
defensive flicks at academic historians (despite his own seriousness of purpose and 27-page bibliography). In a way,
this biography is meant to mirror its subject; the analysis is meant to be penetrating, intelligent, adept - and, above
all, worldly. Black is sufficiently assured to judge, editorialise, digress and speculate throughout. He name-drops
twice only, when inserting personal anecdotes recounted to him by the late Queen Mother and Churchill's daughter.
Other press barons intrude only in cameos, although Black does permit himself the indulgence of imagining that William
Randolph Hearst ''would have been a stylish vice-president''. Black's worldly, knowing approach
to Roosevelt is epitomised in the way the author is both repelled by, and revels in, Roosevelt's exercise of power.
Even before he has finished with his subject's studies at Harvard, Black sees fit to note: ''Even as a
child and schoolboy, Franklin Roosevelt was frequently duplicitous. As a political leader, he was compulsively
devious.'' Later, that critique is honed into the distinctly odd judgment that Roosevelt was ''as
ambitious a visionary, and as artistic, if more scrupulous, a Machiavellian as Hitler''. Even further on,
Roosevelt is chastised for ''sadistic magisterial puppeteering''. Here, Roosevelt emerges as
''an agile predator. He knew when to emerge, to reveal his design, and to execute it.'' Black's
preferred image has Roosevelt as a sailor, constantly tacking, relying on dead reckoning, one ''who alone knew
his destination and had an uncanny talent for reaching it''. That metaphor is more flattering, but essentially
similar, to Roosevelt's own estimation of himself as a juggler, or de Gaulle's appraisal of him as an
artist-cum- seducer. Black's history-writing should probably be judged by his treatment of the critical, daunting
crises of his political career. On the first, whether the New Deal actually cured the Depression, Black concludes that
Roosevelt's first two sets of reform and rehabilitation programs were ''adequately
successful''. Roosevelt's attempts to stack the US Supreme Court are criticised as
''mishandled''. Asking himself whether Roosevelt allowed the Japanese strike on Pearl Harbor, Black
suggests that the president ''acquiesced knowingly in a policy that would result in a Japanese
attack''. (He does insist that Roosevelt had a right to have expected Pearl Harbor to be prepared to defend
itself.) On the last, big conundrum, whether Roosevelt sold out East Europe to the Russians, Black's view is that
Roosevelt was neither swindled nor incompetent at the Yalta conference. Not all of Black's assessments are as
positive. Internment of Japanese-Americans was ''discreditable'', relations with de Gaulle were
''badly misjudged'', political use of the tax-collection apparatus was
''capricious'', running for the Senate from New York (in 1914) constituted ''the most
inexplicable error of his political career'', while one convention speech (1940s) is dismissed as merely
''pious trumpery''. In addition to the central, heroic narrative, Black slips in some charming
asides in passing. He notes that Roosevelt, as pre-war president, used to skive off for an average of 45 days each year
on commandeered naval vessels (in large part to fish and play poker with cronies). Black has found out that more than 50
per cent of the first two million Americans conscripted for war were rejected as unfit. He has a fine line in pen
portraits, especially his summary of Roosevelt's political adviser, Louis Howe: ''asthmatic, simian,
small and stooped''. (Cordell Hull, though, is accorded a most ungracious, summary dismissal.) He also, quite
rightly, pays keen attention to Huey Long as a potentially serious threat to Roosevelt. Black might have erred in
devoting over half this book to World War II; the path there is perhaps too well-worn, the cast too well- known. Black
is at his best in depicting Roosevelt in his natural habitat, as a politician concerned to enlarge and preserve his own
power as much as a statesman determined to achieve more noble, durable ends. That appraisal, the study of raw power
deployed for grand purposes, is the exceptional feature in a consistently excellent book. Mark Thomas is a Canberra
reviewer and writer.
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