FDR's Splendid Deception Author:Hugh Gregory Gallagher Franklin Delano Roosevelt ws the only person in the recoreded history of mankind who was chosen as a leader by his people even though he could not walk or stand without help. Roosevelt was paralyzed from the waist down. As the result of an attack of polio in 1921, he was forced to live the rest of his life confined to a wheelchair. He was able t... more »o stand only for short periods of time and only with the aid of braces and the support of crutches. Roosevelt stood only for ceremonial occasions. Nevertheless, Roosevelt was elected President by a landslide in 1932 in the depths of the Great Depression. He was reelected by similarly large majorities in 1936, 1940, and again in 1944. Although there were 35,000 still photographs of FDR at the Presidential Library, there are only two of the man seated in his wheelchair. No newsreels show him being lifted, carried, or pushed in his chair. Among the thousands of polictical cartoons andcaricatures of FDR, not one shows the man as physically impaired. In fact, many of them have him as a man of action - running, jumping, doing things. Roosevelt dominated his times from a wheelchair; yet he was simply not perceived as being in any major sense disabled. This was not be accident. It was the result of a careful strategy of the President. the strategy served to minimize the extent of his handicap, to make it unnoticed when possible and palatable when it was noticed. The strategy was eminently successful, but it required substantial physical effort, ingenuity, and bravado. This was FDR's spendid deception.« less