The line from President John F.Kennedy's inaugural address that my political generation thought would change the world was not even a complete sentence. "Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation ..."
We thought that hope and youth had triumphed and that the embodiment of those qualities had inherited, if not the Earth, at least the power to make the world a better place. Almost 50 years on, Barack Obama goes to the White House weighed down by even greater expectations. Indeed, in the pantheon of prophets of better times, he has to transcend even the man who vowed to fight the "common enemies of man - tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself". The only comparison with the explosion of optimism that he now personifies is the presidential campaign in 1932. It ended with the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Roosevelt - four election victories, the New Deal as his lasting achievement, the defeat of Germany secured and the surrender of Japan ensured before he died in office - was the colossus of 20th-century politics. His status was enhanced by the way that he triumphed over the paraplegia that would have made a weaker man vegetate in his wealth, rather than bear the burden of leading his country out of the worst recession in history. It is easy to forget that the titan who told America that it had nothing to fear except fear itself enjoyed the human pleasures and suffered the little inconveniences that mere mortals experience.
His grandson, Curtis Roosevelt, has reminded us of reality. Too Close to the Sun, the account of his childhood in the White House, includes a picture of FDR, surprised at his birthday celebration by his family dressed in togas to reflect his imperial status. He looks as embarrassed as a vicar greeted at his retirement party by a strippagram.t
Curtis Roosevelt lived with his grandfather, in Washington and the Roosevelt family home at Hyde Park, after his mother was separated from the first of several husbands. Together with his sister Eleanor (named after her famous grandmother), he became half of what the newspapers called The First Grandchildren. Their upbringing was not - in most ways - very different from the experience of other rich divorcees' children. But in the background there were always the massive, looming figures of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. All the evidence suggests that they provided the security and reassurance that comes from love. So the title of their grandson's memoir is dificult to justify. Icarus lacked family surport and care. Curtis Roosevelt certainly did not.
Both grandparents were strong characters. Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the Daughters of the Revolution when they would not agree to Marion Anderson - an African-American opera diva - singing at their annual meeting. Her steel made her emotion-ally unyielding. "My grandmother seemed to have felt strongly that too much loving attention could actually inhibit a child from achieving the independence needed as he or she matured." She believed in "fortitude, discipline and self-sufficiency". This account confirms that Eleanor Roosevelt lacked warmth and explains her husband's search for comfort elsewhere. But she is certainly the true hero of the author's childhood. FDR's virtues passed his infant mind unnoticed. He saw the handicap as a fact of life - not proof of an indomitable spirit.
The First Grandchildren became famous because their indulgent grandfather often took them with him to work. They stood beside him on the saluting base at parades and sat at the foot of his bed in early meetings that he held over breakfast. But the pictures with which the book is illustrated are more often from family albums than from the published newspaper record of the Roosevelt Administrations. Sistie and Buzzie, as the twins were affectionately known, were never used to promote cheap publicity.
When the MGM film studio announced that Shirley Temple wanted to meet the twins, Eleanor Roosevelt agreed that she could visit the White House but only on the understanding that no press were present. The young hosts, who had never been to the cinema, were awestruck. Their grandmother was her indomitable self. When she cooked hot dogs on a barbecue - as she was later to do for King George V - Mrs Temple worried about her daughter gaining weight. The suggestion of a swim in the White House pool was met with concern that the "permanent wave", by which the famous ringlets were secured, might be disturbed. By comparison with the singing and dancing prodigy, Sistie and Buzzie led sheltered lives.
Although the twins spent an extraordinary amount of time with their benevolent grandfather, it was clearly Eleanor Roosevelt who shaped their lives and made them feel loved and special, but special in an ordinary way. It was a difficult trick to perform in the 1930s White House and it will be even harder to guarantee a normal upbringing for the Obama children in the more demanding political environment of the new century. But the Roosevelts have shown the way in which it can be done. Too Close to the Sun leaves the reader in no doubt that The First Grandchildren's grandparents were good as well as great. It is reassuring to know that the two conditions are not incompatible.
Too Close to the Sun: Growing Up in the Shadow of my Grandparents, Franklin and Eleanor by Curtis Roosevelt
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