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‘BECOMING FDR’ REVIEW: A DIAGNOSIS AND A DESTINY


DOCTORS FITTED HIS LEGS WITH THICK STEEL BRACES. NO LONGER PHYSICALLY
COMMANDING, HE SET OUT TO MASTER THE ARTS OF VERBAL PERSUASION.

ELEANOR AND FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT IN HYDE PARK, N.Y., IN 1927.

Photo: Fotosearch/Getty Images
By
John P. McConnell
Sept. 12, 2022 5:38 pm ET

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Franklin D. Roosevelt is known to all as the only president elected four times
and the only one confined to a wheelchair—polio’s most famous victim. Less known
is how the experience of sudden paralysis, and a seven-year effort to recover
and return to public life, molded a man who remains in the inner ring of
presidential greatness. Much more than a mere tale of toughening up, it’s the
story of a genuine enlargement of character, and Jonathan Darman is a worthy
teller in “Becoming FDR: The Personal Crisis That Made a President.”

Roosevelt was nominated for national office not four but five times: A former
New York state senator and assistant Navy secretary, he ran with James M. Cox on
the Democratic ticket that lost to Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge in 1920.
Although many glimpsed in the handsome, 6-foot-2 Roosevelt a charisma recalling
his distant cousin Theodore, in truth few thought he had the same depth or
gravitas. Born to privilege and schooled at Groton and Harvard, Franklin seemed
to society types a “feather duster”—skittering along life’s surface, pleasant
enough but not especially reflective or substantial. Skeptics saw, as Mr. Darman
puts it, “a shallow, vain man who lacked wisdom and true political skill.”


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