The Good Neighbor: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Rhetoric of American Power

312 Pages·2013·0.79 MB·English

by  Mary E. Stuckey

The Good Neighbor
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Ray E. Stuckey
The Good Neighbor
Franklin D. Roosevelt and the
Rhetoric of American Power
Mary E. Stuckey
Michigan State University Press (cid:129) East Lansing
Copyright © 2013 by Mary E. Stuckey
i
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Michigan State University Press
East Lansing, Michigan 48823- 5245
Printed and bound in the United States of America.
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series editor
Martin J. Medhurst, Baylor University
editorial board
Denise M. Bostdorff, College of Wooster
G. Thomas Goodnight, University of Southern California
Robert Hariman, Northwestern University
David Henry, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
J. Michael Hogan, Penn State University
Robert L. Ivie, Indiana University
Mark Lawrence McPhail, Southern Methodist University
John M. Murphy, University of Illinois
Shawn J. Parry- Giles, University of Maryland
Angela G. Ray, Northwestern University
Kirt H. Wilson, Penn State University
David Zarefsky, Northwestern University
library of congress cataloging- in- publication data
Stuckey, Mary E.
The good neighbor : Franklin D. Roosevelt and the rhetoric of American power / Mary E. Stuckey.
pages cm— (Rhetoric and public affairs series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1- 61186- 099- 3 (cloth : alk. paper)— ISBN 978- 1- 60917- 390- 6 (ebook) 1. Roosevelt,
Franklin D. (Franklin Delano), 1882– 1945— Oratory. 2. Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano),
1882– 1945—P olitical and social views. 3. Rhetoric— Political aspects— United States— History—
20th century. 4. Political oratory— United States— History— 20th century. 5. Neighborliness— Political
aspects— United States— History— 20th century. 6. United States— Politics and government—
1933– 1945. 7. United States— Foreign relations— 1933– 1945. I. Title.
E807.S884 2013
973.917092— dc23 2012049440
Book design by Charlie Sharp, Sharp Des!gns, Lansing, Michigan
Cover design by TG Design
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Contents
x
Acknowledgments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .vii
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
chapter one. A Neighborhood of Shared Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
chapter two. Mobilizing the Neighborhood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
chapter three. Argument in Roosevelt’s Neighborhood . . . . . . . . . 95
chapter four. Roosevelt’s Moderate Neighborhood . . . . . . . . . . . 131
chapter five. Constituting a Global Neighborhood. . . . . . . . . . . . 167
chapter six. A New Deal for the World. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
Acknowledgments
x
In a way that is probably unusual for children of the Cold War, I grew
up with World War II.
My grandfather on my mother’s side served on General George
C. Marshall’s staff during the war. As a West Point graduate and career
military officer, he and his family were, if not in the class of those who
would have gone, as the famous cartoon had it, to the Trans-L uxe to hiss
Roosevelt, also not among those who suffered most deeply during those
years. My grandmother, though, never forgot the time they didn’t get a
paycheck and the anxiety that this event produced.
My father’s family lived closer to the bone, but was probably as com-
fortable as any of their neighbors in Meridian, Mississippi. He joined
the military as soon as he was old enough. He was eventually sent to Cor-
regidor, and was there when it fell. He was put on a hellship, sent to
China via Korea, and eventually spent the rest of the war in a Japanese
vii
viii Acknowledgments
prison camp in Manchuria. My childhood was full of stories about my
father’s time in prison camp (most of them very funny) and about the
military during the Depression and war years. But the president who
dominated that era was strangely absent. Partly this was because my
father was either too young or too intent on personal survival to spare
much thought for his president. My mother was also young during the
Roosevelt years, and her parents, like many military families, especially
those in command positions, were generally silent about their own poli-
tics. But it is strange to me now, thinking back on my childhood, that the
war was so present to me and its president so invisible.
So when David Cheshier suggested this project to me, I was intrigued.
And understanding this presidency helped me understand a great deal
more than national history; it led me into my own.
My first thanks therefore go to those who share that history. My
brother, Steve, who knows more about the military aspects of the Sec-
ond World War than I ever will, cheerfully answered questions and
spent considerable time and energy helping me grasp the complications
of American strategy. He was most patient with his younger sibling’s
calls from out the blue with demands that he explain Operation This or
the strategic implications of Battle That. I’m grateful for his guidance
(and for his willingness to watch all those corny old war films with me as
well). My mother answered obscure questions with her usual generosity
and provided helpful perspective. My sister, Pamela, gave me consider-
able help in understanding some of the darker elements of that war,
especially when it came to the experiences of the Americans abandoned
in the Philippines and captured by the Japanese. That material has only
a small place in this book, for those Americans and their suffering had
only a small place in Roosevelt’s rhetoric, but it was important to me in
ways I cannot express.
Dwight Rider graciously shared the fruits of his research on the
Pacific war with me as well, and I look forward to reading his book
when it appears.
I have had, and am grateful for, the help of a number of academ-
ics as well. I have been spouting off about all things Roosevelt for a
long time now, and many people have been party to those conversa-
tions. Nate Atkinson spent many an hour discussing the politics of the
1930s and 1940s, and provided enormously helpful insight and advice.
Brandon Inabinet was always helpful, as were the various participants
in the Southern Colloquium on Rhetoric. I’m especially indebted to
Acknowledgments ix
Tom Goodnight, Leslie Harris, Tony de Velasco, Carol Winkler, and
James Darsey. While never formally one of his students, David Zarefsky
teaches me a lot about rhetoric and about writing, so much so that I
consider myself one of his more pestiferous advisees, and am endlessly
grateful to him. Any improvement I’ve made over the years in these areas
is due largely to him and to his influence. Conversations with Tom Hol-
lihan, Robin Rowland, and Sean O’Rourke deepened my understanding
of civility. Nancy Kassop and Louis Fisher helped me understand the
“sole organ” doctrine. Jason Puckett, one member of Georgia State Uni-
versity’s valiant team of librarians, is always helpful, and is nice about
even the most preposterous requests. Jay Hakes, director of the Jimmy
Carter Presidential Library and one of the most knowledgeable people
I’ve ever met when it comes to the presidency, shared conversation and
a good lunch or two as well. I learn a great deal from him.
I benefited from the help of terrific research assistants and advisees:
Kris Curry and Reynolds Patterson were diligent, smart, and helpful.
An argument or two with Steve Stuglin sharpened my thinking, and
conversations with Stephen Heidt have helped make me a better critic
and a better student of the presidency. I’m grateful to and proud of all
of them. A person has to work pretty hard to stay ahead of these kinds
of students.
The research for this book was supported by a Summer Research
Grant from the Department of Communication at Georgia State Univer-
sity (GSU), and by a Scholarly Support Grant from the GSU University
Research Services and Administration. I deeply appreciate all the ways
the department and university support me and my work.
Prior to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, there were no systematic collec-
tions of presidential documents. The presidential library system remains
the most important resource available to scholars of the modern presi-
dency. The Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library in Hyde Park,
New York, is a place of both beauty and historical significance. Unlike
most presidential libraries, this one is actually also the site of many of
the important events of the Roosevelt presidency, and is also the only
presidential library at which a serving president actually worked. I love
being and working there. It is undergoing the first restoration since the
library (built to FDR’s own specifications) opened in 1941. Researchers
and visitors get no hint of the organizational chaos that this undoubtedly
caused; the research room is open, and nearly all documents remain
available. I’d especially like to thank Director Lynn Bassanese, who,
x Acknowledgments
ably assisted by Michelle Fravenberger and Kirsten Carter, gave me the
best museum tour in the history of the world. She provided important
help and information, and is a source of strong support for the library’s
research mission. I appreciate her generosity and her good humor. Bob
Clark and his inimitable team of archivists run their research room in
the best spirit of the Roosevelts. It’s a welcoming environment and a
great place to do research. Thanks go to Kirsten Carter, Matthew Han-
son, Virginia Lewick, Sarah Malcolm, and Mark Renovitch for their
help and their patience.
Some documents are available online through the library’s web site.
I obtained early looks at the issue of Japanese internment, the question
of executive power, the Holocaust, and the Hundred Days through the
materials made available there.
An early version of part of chapter 3 was presented at the Alta Con-
ference on Argumentation in the summer of 2011, and I’d like to thank
Robin Rowland for his interest in and help on that work. That essay,
“Enemies, Foreign and Domestic: FDR and the Forms of Democratic
Debate,” was published in Reasoned Argument and Social Change:
Selected Papers from the 17th Biennial Conference on Argumentation, ed.
Robert Rowland (Washington, D.C.: NCA, 2012). A similar version will
appear as “FDR, the Second World War, and the Enactment of Demo-
cratic Leadership,” in a forthcoming volume of Controversia. I presented
part of the argument on executive power at the American Political Sci-
ence Association in August 2011. Some versions of my arguments on
the Great Debate were presented at the Rhetoric Society of America’s
conference in 2012, and will appear in print in Martin J. Medhurst’s
edited volume, A Rhetorical History of the United States, Vol. 8, World
War and the Cold War. A slightly different take on the overall argument
was published as “FDR, the Rhetoric of Vision, and the Creation of
the National Synoptic State,” in Quarterly Journal of Speech 98 (2012):
297– 319. Ray McKerrow and the anonymous reviewers provided impor-
tant help in improving the argument both as it appears there and in the
more detailed iteration here.
I can never say enough about Marty Medhurst. His own scholar-
ship speaks for itself, and his contributions to the discipline have been
legion. The whole field is deeply beholden to him. My own debt to him
is extensive and can never be fully repaid. Thank you, Martimus, from
the bottom of my heart.
Nothing benefits an author more than careful reviews. Robert J.