Washington: Rites of Passage

By Hugh Sidey

The title of Ben Cohen's speech last Friday night was "The New Deal Looks Forward." It was as if Franklin Roosevelt were still in the White House and his staff members were rolling up their sleeves for another job.

Friday was the 44th anniversary of Roosevelt's first inauguration, and some 750 of the men and women who went into power with him, or joined later, or were otherwise specially touched by those years, gathered at Washington's Mayflower Hotel in commemoration. Cohen, 82, one of F.D.R.'s ubiquitous counselors and troubleshooters, sounded the theme of marching on. Indeed, the New Deal in flesh and emotion and philosophy does seem to go on forever. It may have been the most dramatic change in Government in our history. "It was," explained Thomas G. ("Tommy the Cork") Corcoran, "the institutionalization of compassion."

For a night they drank and laughed and told stories, old people grown young again, those who had hustled into Washington with their cardboard suitcases, frayed clothes, new law degrees and fresh hope.

On that March 4 in 1933, Corcoran, then just 32, was standing in the cold about a hundred feet out in the audience below Roosevelt. He was a young lawyer working for President Herbert Hoover in the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, trying to save the banks. At 1 o'clock on that day Roosevelt's voice echoed over the Capitol Plaza: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Corcoran stood there knowing that the banks would soon be closed and wondering whether it would give Americans a sense of confidence or panic them. It was one of the great leadership gambles of history. Corcoran, from his inside position, had wrestled with the personal problem of whether to take his money out of his bank or leave it in. He told the story with relish--how he met the devil halfway, took half of his money out and left half of it in the bank.

West Virginia's Senator Jennings Randolph joined exuberantly in the nostalgia bath. At 30, he had been a new Congressman, seated up on the inaugural stand just 35 feet from Roosevelt. Randolph is the only legislator from F.D.R.'s first 100 days who still is in Congress. He recalled how he had been invited to the White House a few nights later with other new Congressmen. When someone suggested Roosevelt was moving too fast, the President doubled his fist and struck his desk twice. "I still can see how his knuckles got white," said Randolph. "Roosevelt answered, 'But gentlemen, do you realize that we must act now. By acting now we will make mistakes, but if we do not act now, we may not have another opportunity to act at all.' "

They all recalled with relish how Walter Lippmann, the prominent pundit, had dismissed Roosevelt as "a pleasant man who, without any important qualifications for the office, would like very much to be President." The thing that had saved Roosevelt, the New Dealers insisted, was that he did not have the least idea how things got done. He just decided what needed to be done and left it to others to achieve the impossible. Thus unburdened with technicalities, F.D.R. made it to cocktail time each day with his hope still intact. The country got the message.

What fun it had all been. Rex Tugwell, at 85 the oldest of the Roosevelt originals, marveled at their ability to laugh in those dismal times. Then he chuckled over the memory of seeing Tammany Democrats dressed in their long coats and plug hats but so broke they could not pay their hotel bills. "We didn't understand the seriousness of the problem," mused Tommy the Cork, still young at 76, "but we knew the joy of functioning."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.