FDR

by Jean Edward Smith

Random House $35, 880 pages

Certain historic figures, including many presidents of the United States, invite constant reappraisal. The discovery of documents, or the wish to offer a revised interpretation in response to contemporary events, will always justify a new book. Regrettably, neither of these conditions explains the decision of Jean Edward Smith, a distinguished senior historian - the biographer of Chief Justice John Marshall and President Ulysses S. Grant - to write and publish his new biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

FDR, Smith’s very large, new book is gracefully written. Except for relatively minor details, however, it does not add to the information already available on the only president to serve more than two terms. Readers would do well to consult Conrad Black’s recent excellent biography - or the one-volume history published by Harvard historian Frank Freidel. On Roosevelt’s early life, Smith repeats much that is available in Geoffrey Ward’s magisterial two volumes, Before the Trumpet. It seems Random House believes there is a perpetual market for books on FDR.

FDR is an enigmatic figure. While other 20th-century presidents such as Ronald Reagan are subject to major reappraisals today, this is not happening to Roosevelt. The hostile biographies of him, once common, are now rather rare. The friendly biographies, such as this, tend to resemble each other. They still largely repeat interpretations given in the 1950s by Arthur Schlesinger Jr in his three volumes of The Age of Roosevelt.

Smith has given an admirable account of FDR’s domestic policies. He pays considerable attention to those who served him to initiate the New Deal, the economic programme that took the United States out of the Great Depression.

He is less impressive, however, in his analysis of Roosevelt’s foreign policies, especially the crucial years of 1940 and 1941, when the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour brought America into the second world war. Roosevelt’s prejudices about Europe and Asia are never adequately examined or explained. He made numerous errors with regard to the North Africa campaign and his unanticipated demand for unconditional surrender by the Germans. This led even some who had reason to feel beholden to him, such as Churchill and de Gaulle, to wonder about his motives and policies. His enemies, Germany and Japan, never understood him. And new research on Stalin and the Soviet Union, much of it discovered in the Russian archives opened since 1989, suggest that they, too, may have seriously underestimated him.

Jean Edward Smith does not explain why this complex and secretive individual presented himself so anachronistically. He retained his unique accent, dressed as a gentleman of an earlier era might have done, and never sought to conceal his well-born birth. An Edwardian of sorts, he saw no reason to accommodate himself to the habits of a less fastidious age. He did not think to present himself as ordinary Frank and to draw attention to his similarities with thousands of other American men of his time. Though socially privileged, however, he did empathise with the suffering of unemployed workers and bankrupt farmers.

Roosevelt adored politics. He found it a welcome release from the crippling polio that confined him to a chair or wheelchair for much of the time - a condition never revealed by news photographers, who respected his privacy. Admired by many in the press who relished his humour, but attacked by political foes who found fault with his policies, he never lost his attractiveness to the great American public. They elected him four times to serve as president, always in times of adversity.

Roosevelt was one of the most interesting and charismatic men to occupy the White House. His wife, Eleanor, may still rank as the most original and accomplished first lady. A strikingly new dual portrait of this very unusual couple is called for. It would also be fascinating to learn more about the other women in Roosevelt’s life, such as his formidable Victorian mother. We also desperately need more imaginative research on his neglected children, his adored daughter and his often wayward four sons.

The two Roosevelt presidents, Theodore and Franklin, Republican and Democrat, were New Yorkers of a kind uncommon today. They are as different from the Bushes - Yankees masquerading as Texans - as Jefferson and Jackson are from the Clintons, husband and wife. FDR belonged to an America that is extinct today.

When I talked to Schlesinger, the great liberal historian, before he died in February, he agreed that the time had probably come for a fundamentally new appraisal of FDR. This book, whatever its merits - there are many - does not provide that.

Stephen Graubard is the author of ”The Presidents” (Penguin).