The electoral successes of Roosevelt, first as governor and then as president, gave the progressives the opportunity they had so eagerly sought to put their ideas into action. Though FDR was neither an expert nor an idea man — nor, for that matter, an ideologue — he relied heavily on real or self-described experts during all of his eventful years in elective office. Experts gave the country the alphabet-soup agencies of the New Deal, they packed the offices of the White House and the federal departments, they wrote the bills that were sent to Congress. Even though we have become increasingly skeptical about the power of expertise to cure societal and political ills, the persistence of their influence can be seen throughout not only the agencies of the federal government but also those of government at all levels.
The little crowd that gathered occasionally near Dupont Circle had its full share of shortcomings. Srodes mentions a lack of interest in “discrimination against minorities,” private lives that were occasionally “chaotic and destructive to themselves and others,” and a lack of sophistication about economic matters. He doesn’t mention arrogance, which unquestionably was an important part of the equation. Nearly a century after they began to gather, their idealism looks more than a little naive, but it is true that “their assumptions of our exceptionalism, of our duty to foster our kind of democracy for diverse people, of our commitment to intrude commercially, militarily, culturally” around the world remain deeply engrained, on the right as well as the left.
Perhaps because sufficient evidence simply does not exist, Srodes doesn’t manage to make as much out of the Dupont Circle location as his title and opening pages imply. Indeed, after those first pages are out of the way, the book becomes a fairly straightforward narrative of the march of the progressives toward the culmination of their faith in the New Deal. To be sure, it is interesting to be reminded that the Dulles brothers, regarded ever since their rise to high office in the Eisenhower administration as high priests of Cold War confrontation, were as young men closer to what now would be characterized as liberal positions than to conservative ones. The chaotic sexual life of Sumner Welles is a much-told tale, as is the romance of FDR and Lucy Mercer, but these stories add a dollop of spice to what might otherwise be heavy going.
On a strictly personal note, I must add that, however important the house at 1727 19th St. NW may or may not have been to the rise of the progressive movement, the disclosure that it played any role at all adds an agreeable fillip to my occasional walks through the neighborhood. I start out at Logan Circle, walk west along Q Street, north along 19th to Florida Avenue, then back home through a winding route that takes me past many of the places mentioned in “On Dupont Circle.” Sometimes I go past 1733 N St., where the young Roosevelts lived at the time, and at others past 1323 18th St., where some of the older progressives gathered from time to time. It’s a part of Washington that tourists only occasionally see, but one every bit as interesting as the places the tour buses go.
yardleyj@washpost.com
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