IN THE BEGINNING, OF COURSE, WAS ROOSEVELT. AND THEN CAME the Brain Trust. After that we had the Great Man and the Brain Trust. The casual reader may suppose this is just a catchy collection of syllables. But it is impossible to estimate the power these few words exercised upon the minds of the American people. After all, a crowd of big business boobies, a lot of butter-fingered politicians, two big halls full of shallow and stupid congressmen and senators had made a mess of America. That was the bill of goods sold to the American people. Now amidst the ruins appeared not a mere politician, not a crowd of tradesmen and bankers and congressmen, but a Great Man attended by a Brain Trust to bring understanding first and then order out of chaos.
Actually there are no big men in the sense in which Big Men are sold to the people. There are men who are bigger than others and a few who are wiser and more courageous and farseeing than these. But it is possible with the necessary pageantry and stage tricks to sell a fairly bright fellow to a nation as an authentic BIG Man. Actually this is developing into an art, if not a science. It takes a lot of radio, movie, newspaper and magazine work to do it, but it can be done.
As Roosevelt began to lay out his plans for nomination by the Democratic Convention in 1932, one of his most pliant and faithful henchmen, Sam Rosenman, suggested that he ought to draw upon the universities for his advice rather than upon business men and politicians. Rosenman suggested Raymond Moley, professor of political science at Columbia and Roosevelt thought it an excellent
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