”Didn’t the President even say he was sorry you lost?” asked a newshawk.
“I can’t recall his saying anything that would lead me to believe he entertained such an idea.”
The speaker grinned. He was the retiring Governor of Kansas, Alfred Mossman Landon, and all the newshawks in the executive office lobby of the White House grinned with him. After a call, by Presidential invitation, which had been prolonged into an hour’s chat, Alf Landon had just emerged, and for one day Franklin Roosevelt had the curious experience of being thrown into the shade by his political rival of 1936. Alf Landon gave Washington newshawks the impression not only of being a good loser but of being a fine fellow. Publicly and privately those who had been far from pro-Landon during the campaign loudly spoke their admiration of him. Said Scripps-Howard’s Raymond Clapper, “A man who has taken both triumph and defeat in his stride . . . without suffering the slightest noticeable indigestion.” Said the New York Times’?, Arthur Krock, “He captivated all of Washington.”
That evening President Roosevelt—squired for the first time by his new bodyguard, Thomas Quakers, successor to Gus Gennerich—attended the semi-annual Gridiron Club dinner and show. There he and Alf Landon sat at the head table, both made satirical off-the-record speeches and newshawks to their surprise agreed that Alf Landon, in wit and composure, came off by no means second best as after-dinner speaker.
For Franklin Roosevelt all this was only one of the amenities of the season of goodwill towards men, and Landon only one of many guests to be welcomed at the White House. Most numerous group of guests was the Clan Roosevelt. Night before Christmas when the President went out to light the community Christmas tree opposite the White House in LaFayette Square, he was accompanied by a round dozen members of his family (see cut). Nor were they the only family members at the White House. Only members absent were Daughter Anna, now living in Seattle with her husband John Boettiger, newly chosen to run William Randolph Hearst’s Post-Intelligencer; Son Franklin Jr., lying in a Boston hospital with streptococcus and sinus trouble; Franklin Jr.’s fiancee Ethel du Pont, and one grandchild. William Donner Roosevelt, son of Elliott’s first wife. But all the rest of the family were present, including Son Elliott’s five-month-old Elliott Jr. and Son James’s captivating Kate, ten months.
Next morning, however, when the grandchildren rushed into the bedroom of the President of the U. S. to take their stockings from his mantelpiece, when the family assembled around the Christmas tree in the second-floor hall, and later when they went to the Church of the Covenant, filling an entire row at an interdenominational Christmas service, Mrs. Roosevelt was absent. During the night she had sped to Boston to spend Christmas at Franklin Jr.’s bedside. Although doctors finally refused to let him go home for Christmas, he was still officially described as “doing fine.” all rumors to the contrary.
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