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University Daily Kansan, March 26, 1982
Scholar details FDR's legacy
By JIM LEHNER Staff Reporter
It's safe to say that no president will be like Franklin Delano Roosevelt. However, it'll be sometime before his influence completely vanishes, historian William E. Leuchterbush told a KU Humanities Series audience last month.
Speaking before nearly 200 people at Murphy Hall, Leuchtenburg, professor of history at Columbia University, said Roosevelt's influence had been strongly felt by nearly every president that has succeeded him.
"Roosevelt has been an incredible influence, especially on the presidencies of Truman, Kennedy and Johnson." he said.
"When Harry S. Truman was told of FDR's death, he went to Eleanor Roosevelt and asked her if there was anything he could do for her," he said. "What else were anything that we can do for you, because you're the one in trouble now."
LEUCHTENBURG is well-known for his studies of FDR. He won the Bancroft Prize and the Francis Parkman Prize of the Society of American Historians for his book, "Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932."
He's also been a leading chronicler of American history since the turn of the century, having written or edited books on pre-Depression prosperity, the Depression, the New Deal and social change in America.
He said that it was hard for the American public in the 1940s to think of someone besides Roosevelt as president.
He said that an old joke back then was that a child who had aspirations of being president had better not tell anybody, because a usual response would be "I'm going to want to do that!" People thought, he said, he always would be president.
"During Truman's term in office, he never received the minimal respect that was afforded to Roosevelt," Lechtenburg said.
TRUMAN FOUND it extremely difficult in his role as Roosevelt's replacement, Leuchtenburg, said. He regularly consulted Eleanor Roosevelt
on what FDR would have done in given situations.
"Little more than a year after Truman had succeeded Roosevelt, every one of Roosevelt's Cabinet had an account of opinion differences.
"His popularity had sunk so low that many area radio stations would play a tape of Roosevelt's voice informing the public of how things use to be."
Leuchtenburg said that the only reason why Truman won re-election in 1948 was because he sought the support of Eleanor Roosevelt.
"Upon the re-election, people still gave credit for Truman's victory to Roosevelt," he said. "The aftermath was even more rough for Truman. Critics called Truman's Fair Deal a warmed-over version of the New Deal.
"Truman once said of Roosevelt that 'heroes know when to die,' meaning that when he took over Roosevelt's presidency, the political situation was in turmilol and things were about to get worse."
LEUCHTENBURG SAID that Kennedy did not share the same opinions of Roosevelt that Trump did, and they were wrong. Historians in the same vein as FDR.
"Kennedy was not well-liked by Eleanor Roosevelt, partly because of her husband's disparaging opinion of his father, Joseph Kennedy, who was forced to resign from being FDR's foreign ambassador because of his stamina opposition to everything that Roosevelt believed in.
"However, by Kennedy's second year in office, Eleanor Roosevelt began to like Kennedy because his politics started to resemble that of her husband—strong leadership," Luchentehn said.
"This was quite a contrast to the 1960 Democratic National Convention," he said, "when Eleanor was in tears after her assassination." He gave the notification to Kennedy.
Leuchtenburg said that Kennedy found it hard to escape the shadow of FDR.
"Kennedy became a part of the myth that historians created by then correlating his death with Roosevelt's in what great achievements he would be performed if he had lived," Loehntheir said.
A MAN WHO Leuchtenburg was termed as " Roosevelt's wall" in congressman, and who kept no secrets for Roosevelt, was Lyndon Johnson.
Lyndon B. Johnson once claimed that FDR was a like a daddy to him," he said. "Johnson always surrounded himself with advisers who were from the Navy or in other places like his jail. He wanted nothing more than to be a Rove flowerler."
"However, as time went on, he wanted to be more than that. He wanted to go down in history as the greatest president of all time."
Leuchtenburg said that Johnson never was able to achieve that because he was devastated by his problems with the Vietnam War.
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William Leuchtenburg, noted historian, tells a KU audience about the influence of Franklin Roosevelt.
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