Roosevelt's Disability

It is not available yet, but a friend of mine put me on to an article in the latest Wilson Quarterly: "The President and the Wheelchair," by Christopher Clausen.

The summary reads "American voters never would have put FDR in the Oval Office if they had known he was paralyzed. Such is today's conventional wisdom, but history tells a different story. What's behind our determination to paint the past darkly?"

Clausen shows that FDR's paralysis due to the onset of polio was widely known before and after he took office (Time magazine wrote about it quite a bit), but that the American people (including the media) chose not to fixate on it because of their collective sense of discretion. (As an aside, I also ran into some matter-of-fact reporting about his paralysis in the excellent collection Ernie Pyle's travel dispatches from the 1930s.) We have created the myth that FDR somehow concealed his infirmity from the American people, and that was the only reason they voted for him, because we like to think that we are so very tolerant now as compared to any time in the past.

Clausen has written a fascinating article. If and when it becomes available, I will try to remember to link it again.