Ghosts in the White House

Where have you gone, Franklin Roosevelt?

About a decade ago before becoming painfully aware of my limitations as a scholar, I decided to write the definitive biography of Roosevelt that would capture the human essence of my political hero. None of the efforts by others satisfied me, and there was no doubt that such a work was needed. It would be simple matter of reading what had been done, reviewing the obligatory files in Hyde Park and sitting before the keyboard.

How could a man of perhaps sixty be so silly? The bibliography on Roosevelt and his administration is almost without end and growing, so, true to my youthful M.O. when faced with the very daunting, I didn’t try.

Instead, after reading literally dozens of biographies and histories on FDR and the greatest generation, I determined to approach the `Sphinx’ via fiction. That would be far easier, and I would permit my imagination to fill in the blanks. My notes on the protagonist’s character and events soon ran to hundreds of pages and covered everything from his boyhood birding on the banks of the Hudson to his death in Georgia just prior to victory in World War II.

Ready, the book already written in my mind, I began typing. Fifty pages into the novel, I reviewed what was done with a critical eye. It was awful, an unmitigated disaster. There was no choice but to abandon the effort. The great man had eluded me. Defeat was complete, and I surrendered unconditionally - almost.

Since then, I have written two novels about the first half of the twentieth century, and the ghost of Roosevelt is in the background. My present efforts are devoted to a novel about the internment of the Japanese aliens and citizens residing on the West Coast when the war broke out. The ghost is closer here because of the direct role played by the man. He comes off, of course, as less of hero; regardless, he still resists being drawn from the shadows.

A Christmas present, Joseph Ellis’s biography, His Excellency, George Washington, joined the reading list and is being devoured as part of a buffet of books piled high by my chair. Early on, Ellis complains that his subject did everything in his power to hide from him. From this and my own experience, I began to theorize. Many presidents are charged with deception by their biographers. Among presidents, a few simple men like Grant and Truman seem to defy the tradition but they may be the exceptions that prove the rule.

My theorizing led to this: the vast majority of humans, heroes or not, spend their lives altering, revising, embellishing, and erasing their pasts. The difference between them and the Roosevelts, Washingtons, and Lincolns is that no one cares. The nature of the beast is not revealed by the Grants but by those who would deceive us.

Paul Simon cries out for Joe DiMaggio but his lament is for all of our heroes. We thought they were different from the rest of us, but they too suffer the defect of being human – only grander. As they obfuscated their pasts, they were confident that we would seek them out. They were right. As the rest hide, the error is that no one seeks.