Next Stop, Modern Presidency
Librado Romero/The New York Times
The Roosevelt Ride, a National Park Service shuttle. More Photos »
By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN
HYDE PARK, N.Y. — If you want to get some sense of how the American
presidency has evolved over the last century, take the Roosevelt Ride.
It started running here this week near the estate where Franklin and
Eleanor Roosevelt lived and where the modern presidency began to take
shape.
During renovations the Roosevelt Presidential Library has a temporary
photo exhibition.
The ride isn't something radical. It is not a roller coaster veering
through simulated landscapes of the Depression or coursing over
virtual World War II battlefields. It doesn't rely on high-tech
innovations to make the intricacies of the New Deal more palpable. It
feels commonplace, scarcely worth noticing. The Roosevelt Ride is a
free shuttle bus.
Run by the National Park Service, it picks up passengers who arrive in
Poughkeepsie on the 8:45 a.m. train from Grand Central. And before
dropping them back in time for the returning 5:40 p.m. train the ride
provides transportation to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential
Library and Museum, to Roosevelt's family home (Springwood), to his
presidential wooded retreat (Top Cottage") and to the cottage where
Eleanor lived and extended her influence (Val-Kill). Thrown into the
mix is the imposing Vanderbilt Mansion, which came into the possession
of the American people through Roosevelt's influence. But how does the
Roosevelt Ride give us a sense of the presidency's transformation when
it mostly seems just a welcome convenience, giving day trippers the
opportunity to see more than would otherwise be possible?
Well, would anybody think a Coolidge Ride might be appealing? Or a
Hoover Ride, or a Harding shuttle bus? Earlier 20th-century presidents
wouldn't stand a chance. On one side of the bus is a photograph of
Franklin grinning broadly in a driver's seat; on the other side is
Eleanor, beaming, in relaxed control of her vehicle. Would we be
equally drawn to a smiling picture of Woodrow Wilson in a motorcar?
Not likely. The Roosevelt Ride is an attempt to lure more visitors
(the library gets about 100,000 a year), but it recognizes that the
Roosevelts already have appeal. Franklin's relationship to the public
was far different from his predecessors. And now that theme is being
emphasized with ever greater energy.
Despite Hyde Park's lawns and mansions, Springwood's elaborate
fixtures and Val-Kill's comfortable rusticity, the Roosevelts
cultivated an aura of populism. Franklin turned it into policy,
Eleanor expanded its range, and now the spirit cloaks Hyde Park,
privilege giving way before it. And the ride makes it all convenient.
Democracy has become doctrine.
Over the next few months the places on the itinerary seem to be
amplifying that preoccupation. Once these magnificent homes would have
been the center of attention for their cultivated taste and immense
expense; now the focus is on the servants. At the Vanderbilt Mansion a
new tour starts in the servant quarters and gives every visitor a mock
role, providing a downstairs perspective on high-society doings
(reminiscent of "Downton Abbey").
Tours are being developed at Roosevelt's house, where role-playing
guides might draw attention to Franklin's stuffed birds, or his
nautical print collection. But their emphasis is on the parts they
play as butler, cook, upstairs maid or Secret Service agent. It is as
if only through the servants' perspective can we get the clearest view
of the place and its inhabitants.
The way this affects our understanding of Franklin can be discerned at
the outing's centerpiece, the library. As part of a $35 million
restoration, it has closed its aging permanent exhibition that
surveyed his career; a reinterpretation will be unveiled next year. In
the meantime a temporary show, "The Roosevelts: Public Figures,
Private Lives," focuses not on statecraft, policy or politics, but
rather on private moments displayed in almost 1,000 photographs, many
of them rarely seen.
Those photos show another reason that Roosevelt can be considered the
first modern president: he believed in communicating with the largest
possible public using the latest technology. Many of these images have
become, as the exhibition points out, "icons of their era."
Roosevelt, of course, knew how to use radio; his "fireside chats" were
so effective because they literally brought his voice into homes,
where he spoke to his fellow citizens with collegial familiarity.
Photos did something similar, by bringing those citizens closer to the
Roosevelts' world.
Much of this was packaged and controlled — and the press was
cooperative, for example, in deferring to the president's desired
image by never showing him in a wheelchair. Roosevelt was probably the
most extensively photographed president up to that time and the first
to know how important those images were for his reputation and the
success of his policies. How, though, in the midst of his great wealth
and careful oversight, did Roosevelt also seem the consummate
democrat?
We get a glimpse of an answer in the photos themselves. The most
intriguing gallery shows the astonishing early successes of
Roosevelt's political career. He was 28 when he entered politics, in
1910. He supported Wilson for president in 1912 and was rewarded with
the position of assistant secretary of the Navy, a fortunate
appointment in the decade of World War I. By 1920 he was the
Democratic Party's nominee for vice president.
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The Roosevelt Ride
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And look at him campaigning for a humble seat in the New York State
Senate: he loves it. Ten years later, on the national ticket, he is
even more exuberant. His face is illuminated with joy. It is difficult
to look at these images without feeling the young man's charismatic
radiance and the almost sensuous pleasure he is experiencing. In one
photo during a 1920 campaign stop at Columbia University, Roosevelt is
surrounded by a sea of faces, who take as much joy in his presence as
he does in theirs.
But just across the room the show's curator, Herman R. Eberhardt, has
placed another photo of Roosevelt taken in 1921. It is one of the last
shots of him standing freely, surrounded by Boy Scouts at a camp near
the Hudson River. Within weeks he was stricken by polio (some think
caught at that camp). The young politician's effortless physical
energy was permanently stripped away. Yet that vulnerability became
part of his appeal as well. Perhaps the scope of his fall from grace
made his later achievements seem all the more remarkable and his
persona all the more human.
There is some attempt here too to examine the relationship between
Eleanor and Franklin, including affairs and estrangements. But this
exhibition also reflects a larger contemporary change in perspective,
not unrelated to the amplified democratic theme.
Roosevelt's was the first presidential library, and is the only one
that was used as an office by a sitting president, beginning in 1941.
It wasn't until 1971 that a gallery paid tribute to Eleanor.
But Eleanor, who has been growing in stature in recent scholarship, is
now often seen as Franklin's leftist angel, a feminist force pushing
him toward populism. So this show nearly splits attention between
them. And plans for the new permanent exhibition place her alongside
Franklin throughout. That portrayal may end up unique in presidential
libraries.
You can also sense the shift in the center of gravity here when the
shuttle stops at Val-Kill, the home that Eleanor loved. She never
considered the main house her home, since it belonged to Franklin's
mother, and as a tour of the rooms there shows, Eleanor's bedroom was
placed between the mother's and the son's — and all had connecting
doors. It's almost a bit creepy.
So Val-Kill was a refuge. It was an extraordinary luxury, but it
eliminated the trappings of high privilege and even in its rustic
furnishings proclaimed an egalitarian spirit.
In that newly renovated cottage a visitor listens entranced to the
rapid-fire recollections of Doris Mack, a Park Service guide who knew
Eleanor well and still seems entranced by her memory. Here Franklin
has receded into the mist, overshadowed by the woman who long survived
him.
And how, I ask, did the first lady get along with her indomitable
mother-in-law? "No mother's daughter," Ms. Mack snaps back, "is ever
good enough for any mother's son."
The Roosevelt Ride
INFORMATION Reservations required: (845) 229-5320,
www.nps.gov/hofr/planyourvisit/experience-the-roosevelt-ride.htm.
Where to eat in Hyde Park:
MRS. NESBITT'S CAFE, 4079 Albany Post Road; (845) 229-6597.
HYDE PARK BREWING COMPANY, 4076 Albany Post Road; hydeparkbrewing.com.
More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/04/arts/roosevelt-ride-to-hyde-park-and-the-modern-presidency.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&nl=nyregion&adxnnl=1&emc=edit_ur_20120504&adxnnlx=1336136996-0CHWRHnpzo5YYb7nG9N5OA
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
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