The Man He Became, How FDR Defied Polio to Win the Presidency, by James Tobin, http://books.simonandschuster.com/The-Man-He-Became/James-Tobin/9780743265164Simon & Schuster (paperback)The vintage photos - Franklin Roosevelt campaigning at age 38 for vice president, handsome, tall, smiling, unassisted by crutches and canes; on the porch next to his mother Sara Delano, his wife Eleanor, and five young children; and the next happy photo, FDR one year later in 1921, in the middle of a group of Boy Scouts on a camp out at Bear Mountain State Park, the place to which author Tobin traces the source of his polio, and later, a series of photos showing the damage - FDR revealed at Warm Springs, Ga, the full extent of polio's damage displayed in his shrunken legs. And finally, a frightening drawing showing the bizarre system of braces that the President wore to support his stricken limbs.
But Tobin takes us beyond the documentary drama of Roosevelt's challenges - attempting to walk, exercising until overcome by pain, and disguising his true impediments. We see how this man transformed from what my friend Mary Gardiner Jones, a Roosevelt family friend, described as "He was not serious," to what many think was the ONLY person who could have shepherded the US through its Great Depression and later, along with its Allies , into and through the depths of World War II.
This book is part medical thriller and part inspirational human history lesson. "The conventional wisdom," Tobin writes, "is that FDR became president in spite of polio. I think the evidence suggests an alternative truth - that he became president because of polio. because when his disability kept him on the sidelines, it also prepared and quietly positioned him to take on a weakened field. And in those very early days of publicity and mass marketing, in radio, print, newsreels Roosevelt had a powerful story to tell. Tobin notes that "Without that story, his odds of being nominated and elected to the presidency would surely have been considerably longer. He would have been more widely seen, as Walter Lippmann said in 1932, as merely 'a pleasant man who, without any important qualifications for the office, would very much like to be President.' ... His comeback from polio proved to everyone that he was not merely the rich and polished heir to a famous name (as described by my friend Mary Gardiner Jones) but a man of extraordinary character."
Casting FDR's personal tragedy and struggles forward into World War II, Tobin argues that the very challenges he dealt as a cripple developed the characteristics he needed to bring the US through the war - "... the particular way in which Roosevelt came back from his illness exhibited the essential habits of mind and action that he would deploy during the Great Depression and World WarII - improvisation, experimentation, and perseverance in the face of enormous trouble. Further Francis Perkins, a woman pioneer in the administration, saw as well how paralysis changed him - "I was instantly struck by his growth... H was serious, not playing now... He had become conscious of other people, of weak people, of human frailty.... He was not born great, but he became great."