Mason B. Williams' City
of Ambition: FDR, La Guardia, and the Making of Modern New York maps my political genome. During my entire youth in New York City in the 1930s and
early 1940s, I was molded by the titans of the book's title: President Franklin
D. Roosevelt and Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia. How could such heroes not have left an indelible imprint on
my political genome, which remains almost unmutated to this day?
They were an odd couple: Roosevelt, a patrician scion of an
old New York Dutch family, raised to be a country squire, who thought cities
were too large; La Guardia, the son of immigrants, for whom urban life
represented the vibrancy of the nation. Roosevelt, from relatively conservative
origins, who became the very definition of a liberal Democrat; La Guardia, a
natural liberal, who worked his way up through the small New York City
Republican Party (there were some liberal Republicans then!) to avoid becoming
a vassal of the Democratic Tammany Hall, a corrupt machine organization.
Both had enormous charm, charismatic in their outreach to
the people, spellbinding in their speeches. I well remember FDR's "fireside chats" over the
radio, then still an unfamiliar venue for a politician. Invariably starting with the words
"My friends," he indeed entered the nation's living rooms as a
friend, coherently explaining the reasons for his policies. (Listen here to the first of them, just days after he took
office, clarifying the bank holiday he had proclaimed.) I remember too the weekly radio talks
by the "Little Flower"—the meaning of
"Fiorello"—particularly those toward the end of his mayoralty in 1945
when the newspaper-delivery union was on strike and he resorted to reading the
Sunday funnies over the air. (Get
your laughs here watching a film of him reading "Dick
Tracy" to the kids.)
The two were born in 1882, and therefore were in their
twenties and thirties during the Progressive Era of the first two decades of
the 20th century. It
was the era of the muckrakers, who exposed political corruption, squalid living
conditions of the poor, monopolistic practices, dangerous working conditions,
and unsanitary food-processing. It
was also an era—from the presidency of Teddy Roosevelt through that of Woodrow
Wilson—of legislative and constitutional reform, e.g., the Pure Food and Drug
Act and Meat Inspection Act, the creation of the Federal Trade Commission and
Interstate Commerce Commission (both controlling monopolistic practices), and
the passage of amendments creating the income tax, direct election of senators,
and woman suffrage.
Those Progressive decades made a major mark on the political
philosophies of FDR and La Guardia, philosophies that had to await a
renaissance until after the Roaring Twenties—a decade characterized by a
diminution of governmental involvement in society and the start of the Great
Depression. Then, at the depth of
the Depression in 1933, the odd couple came together in their new roles as
president and mayor-elect to show how a strong federal government, in an until-then
little practiced complementary relationship with cities, could redefine the
nation's urban life.
Both men saw the Hoover administration's policies during the
first three-and-a-half years of the Depression as grossly inadequate to address
the meltdown, especially in their lack of attention to cities, many of which,
including New York, were teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. They advocated a much more proactive
federal government, which would pump money into the economy by vast
expenditures on infrastructure projects in the states and cities in order to
stoke employment.
They both hit the ground running. FDR had his famous One
Hundred Days in early 1933, in which a spate of acts of Congress and
executive orders reversed Hoover's cautious approach. The Little Flower, after quickly cleaning up the corruption
and disorganization of New York City's Tammany-suffused municipal government,
was the first mayor to approach Washington to propose federal funding of
municipal projects; he had elaborated a list of them for Roosevelt well before
taking office on January 1, 1934.
The fruits of La Guardia's achievements under joint
federal-city funding are legion, recognizable even to those who are not New
Yorkers: the Lincoln and Queens-Midtown Tunnels, the Triborough Bridge, the
Henry Hudson and East River (now FDR) Drives, the New York Municipal (now
LaGuardia) Airport, the renovation and improvement of a much-deteriorated
Central Park, as well as construction of myriad other parks, schools, public
housing projects, and sports facilities, and support for music and the
arts. At the Little Flower's
urging, the Roosevelt Administration thus poured hundreds of millions of
dollars into New York City's economy, creating tens of thousands of jobs,
helping to revitalize and modernize the city, and removing the specter of
bankruptcy. The city would
scarcely be recognizable as it is today had it not been for those investments.
The FDR-La Guardia relationship was uniquely robust. As Williams puts it, they had a common
purpose "beyond the simple renovation and augmentation of the common
wealth. They sought, too, to
elevate people, families, and communities by using the power of government to
meet [needs] private production could not—with the ultimate aim of promoting
happiness." Williams quotes
Roosevelt saying that La Guardia “is the most appealing man I know. He comes to Washington and tells me a
sad story. The tears run down my cheeks and the tears run down his cheeks and
the next thing I know, he has wangled another $50 million out of me.” La Guardia's clout with FDR increased
even further when he was elected president of the U.S Conference of Mayors in
1935, a position to which he was re-elected annually for the next ten years,
making him one of the most influential politicians in the nation.
My political genome writhes painfully as I reminisce. Despite the appalling difficulties that
were faced during the New Deal era, it was for me an enthralling demonstration
of how savvy, dedicated leaders can guide the progress of a nation for the
better; as a naïf, I couldn't imagine a lesser sort of politican.
Now, almost three-quarters of a century later, many of my
generation cannot fathom how and why the country has descended to its present
state: a disjunct agglomeration of feuding jurisdictions and the pols
representing them, all lacking a strong common commitment to the health and
welfare of the entire polity, especially the least fortunate among us. I cannot help harking back to a
question I asked in a previous posting
about our present fractious era:
"Is devotion to the collective good passé?" Those of us who cut our teeth during
the New Deal have reason to fear so.