APRIL 12, 1945
COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF
Shortly before 1:00 p.m. on April 12, 1945, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was seated in the living room of the Little White House at his beloved Warm Springs, Georgia therapeutic spa. Three days earlier, Lucy Mercer Rutherford arrived from Aitken, South Carolina, accompanied by portrait artist Elizabeth Schoumatoff. Meanwhile, when the butler came in to set the table for lunch, FDR glanced at his watch and remarked, “we have fifteen more minutes to work.” However, the president suddenly put his hand up to his head and said, “I have a terrific pain in the back of my head.” Within moments, the wartime commander-in-chief lost consciousness. Consequently, at 3:35 p.m., White House physician Cmdr. Howard G. Bruenn, USNR, pronounced the president dead. FDR was the only president that most of the sixteen million Americans in uniform had ever known.
EXCEPIONAL AMERICAN
American exceptionalism found an unlikely champion in the privileged son of a comfortable Dutch New York legacy. Firstly, he was a man of contradictions; charming if cunning; principled if political, and pragmatic if progressive. Secondly, he could inspire but disappoint. He tried and failed to pack the Supreme Court. As congenial and remote as Ronald Reagan, FDR counted millions of admirers and few intimates. He never abandoned his Southern Democratic Party base. Nor did he pass any significant civil rights legislation. But people of color worshipped him. FDR would fight a global war of survival with no quarter asked and none offered. He endured a terrible physical disability. However, that gave him an exceptional empathy for Americans that they could hear, see, and feel. He also had native intelligence, intuition, and insight. Consequently, he gave the United States the right man, at the right time, to do what was right.
GLOBAL LEADER
With the Atlantic Charter, his Declaration of War on December 8, 1941, and later the United Nations Declaration, FDR adroitly changed the dynamic of America. By replacing expansionism with intervention, which was a moral prerogative, the president brilliantly ended the traditional American cultural debate between expansionism and morality. The United States and the United Kingdom renounced territorial expansion, stood for liberty, and pledged the self-determination of former colonies as a wartime and postwar objective.
NATIONAL SAVIOR
The commander-in-chief then assembled an extraordinary wartime coalition between government, media, and industry to win the war and secure a new world order. Often misunderstood today as a socialist, FDR was really an advocate of liberal democracy, capitalism and, most of all, the United States of America. He never wavered, sought nothing less than total victory. Moreover, he demanded the unconditional surrender of the fascist Axis nations. Therefore, he is forever associated with Abraham Lincoln as a national savior during a grave national calamity.
NEW WORLD ORDER
As the greatest champion of American exceptionalism, FDR put America first by assembling a wartime coalition, arming his nation, and convincing Americans and the peoples of the world to fight for the survival of human civilization against fascism. He thus ended the incongruous efforts of the so-called America First movement to isolate our nation and undermine our defense. By taking the offensive and realigning the debate, FDR put in motion an enlightened global political, economic and security vision led by a progressive, trustworthy, and dynamic United States of America. Today’s leaders have much to learn from FDR’s example. There is much more to discover about the exceptional FDR in America Ascendant, The Rise of American Exceptionalism, by Dennis M. Spragg, available from all fine booksellers.