3 lives that shaped nation

By George W. Boudreau

For more than a century, the name Roosevelt has inspired passionate responses from Americans, and many more Americans will learn why thanks to a television event this week that rivals the Crowleys returning to Downton Abbey: The Roosevelts: An Intimate History, is Ken Burns' 14-hour take on a political dynasty whose ideas, work, and vision have shaped the nation we live in.

It might have been a very different story.

Theodore Roosevelt came to the presidency in September 1901 by accident. William McKinley, the popular if dull chief executive, faced reelection in 1900, and needed a running mate after Vice President Garret Hobart had died in office. Old guard New York Republicans wanted to get rid of a wild young reformer. TR was no favorite of McKinley - Roosevelt muttered the president "had all the backbone of a chocolate éclair" - but the popular war hero was added to the ticket. Once elected, Roosevelt found himself bored, even contemplating returning to law school while in office to have something productive to do.

That changed when McKinley was shot, perhaps the most significant political assassination in American history, and in his stead came the youngest man to ever serve as president, with a young family who stretched the White House (TR officially renamed it) to its breaking points. The young leader began to change the presidency in ways unimaginable after the mediocre men who had served since the Civil War.

Reform became the watchword of the day. Roosevelt would tackle huge business conglomerates, help workers, save natural resources, break down racial barriers, create national parks, carry out a "Big Stick" diplomacy that fit his vision of America as an imperial power, and be larger in the national imagination than most of his predecessors put together.

He did so by comprehending and using his era's version of Twitter and Facebook: magazines and newspapers, whose reporters and editors adored him. His massive grin and athletic body were instantly recognizable in their cartoons and photographs. He was a media star, and a rising generation of reform-minded Americans worshiped him for it.

One of those young men was TR's distant cousin Franklin Roosevelt. A member of the upstate New York branch of the family and a Democrat, FDR was drawn to his cousin's rhetoric and causes, and began to contemplate a career path following the president's. Their family ties were cemented even further on St. Patrick's Day 1905, when Franklin married Eleanor Roosevelt, the daughter of Theodore's younger brother. The president's favorite niece was a shy, awkward young woman, who New York's upper crust only noted because she was not the striking beauty her late mother had been.

But Eleanor Roosevelt was as reform-minded as her uncle. Both were inspired by the memory of TR's father, who had worked to clean up New York politics and help the poor.

In the previous century, the village that their Dutch ancestors had helped found had been transformed by industrialization and mass immigration into a metropolis with a host of urban problems. Eleanor took up the family mantle, working to help the poor and immigrants in New York City's slums, and developing a world view that differed from most debutants. History would say this woman, who served as first lady longer than anyone else, would follow her husband into his causes; but she really led him to them.

How many socialites took their beaux to tenement houses in the early 1900s, leading him to say, "I didn't know people lived like this." She would continue to prod him through the desperate days in the 1920s when infantile paralysis robbed him of the ability to move his lower body, and in the constant struggle to regain movement. She would turn a spoiled aristocrat into the greatest reformer who ever served as president, the greatest president of the 20th century.

FDR ran for that office in 1932, during America's worst financial crisis. Their reforming ideals - helping the poor, racial minorities, laborers, and the supporting the rights of diverse groups of Americans, would be the watchwords of the New Deal and the 12-year administration that followed. Eleanor Roosevelt continued this work as a widow, helping found the United Nations in 1945 and campaigning for human rights until she died in 1962. She was widely known as "the first lady of the world."

Like Theodore, Franklin and Eleanor were master communicators. FDR spoke to the American people through radio, explaining how bank reform or major battles of World War II would touch their lives. Eleanor's newspaper column allowed Americans to know their first family, while newsreels followed her to housing projects, Army bases, and even a coal mine. She opened American eyes to diverse people and struggles. Later, she used television, appearing on news programs, game shows, and even a margarine commercial, where she talked about world famine. All three Roosevelts mastered media. Now Ken Burns uses it to tell Americans about their history.