What if . . . FDR had not had polio?

Franklin Roosevelt self-consciously modeled his career on that of his fifth cousin and uncle by marriage, Theodore Roosevelt. TR became president while FDR was in college. Frank, as he was known in the family, visited the White House and measured himself against Cousin Ted. He concluded that if Ted could become president, so could he.

He mapped out his strategy for achieving this goal, patterned after Theodore's. He told his friends that he would get elected to the state legislature in New York, as Theodore had. He would campaign for the national party and earn a job in the national administration, as Theodore had. In fact it would be the same job: assistant secretary of the navy. He would return to New York and become governor of what was then the largest state in the Union, as Theodore had. And he would use the governorship as a springboard to the presidency, just like Theodore.

One thing Franklin did not mention to friends, almost certainly because it didn’t occur to him, was that he would turn a severe personal setback to political success, as Theodore had.

Theodore's setback came when he was twenty-five. The sudden death of his young wife sent him west in search of solace. The experience converted the silk-stocking New Yorker into a rugged man of the frontier, a figure appealing to American voters, who eventually — in 1904 — gave him the biggest popular majority for any president till then.

Franklin's challenge came later in life, when he was thirty-nine. He had already been a member of the New York state senate, assistant secretary of the navy, and 1920 Democratic nominee for vice president. The ticket had failed, but the blame was placed on James Cox, the presidential nominee. FDR seemed to many the most promising candidate for the Democratic nomination for president in 1924. He was handsome, athletic, articulate and charming. The world was his for the taking.

Then, in the summer of 1921, he contracted polio. At that time the disease was called infantile paralysis, because it commonly afflicted young children. If a child somehow avoided it and contracted the disease as an adult, the consequences could be extreme. In Franklin Roosevelt's case, they included permanent paralysis of his legs. He went to bed after an active day outdoors and woke up the next morning paralyzed. He never walked unaided again.

The sudden change cast him into depression. Nearly everything that had given his life joy or meaning had been lost, it seemed. He couldn't engage in the physical activities he had pursued since boyhood. His political career had crashed to an end. Cripples, as disabled people were called then, were expected to have the good grace to retire from public gaze. Anyway, presidents had to project strength. How could a paralyzed man appear strong?

Franklin Roosevelt did retire, retreating to the family home in Hyde Park, New York. He built a swimming pool in which he could exercise without requiring his legs. During winter he traveled south to Warm Springs, Georgia, and continued his therapy there.

The effort improved his mental outlook more than his physical condition. The urgings of his wife, Eleanor, and ardent supporter Louis Howe gradually rekindled his interest in politics. He wrote letters to Democrats around the state and around the country. He consulted and strategized on the party's best path forward.

Yet he didn't consider himself a viable candidate. Only occasionally did he appear in public. In 1928, he gave the nominating speech at the Democratic national convention for the party's standard bearer, New York governor Al Smith. The speech involved some visual misdirection. Heavy metal braces locked Roosevelt's knees straight, and he gripped the lectern tightly to keep from falling over. To those in the audience, he looked almost like the old Roosevelt. His speech was a big hit, yet it was for Smith, not for himself.

This was just as well. The defeat of Cox and Roosevelt in 1920 had ushered in a Republican decade in national politics. Democratic candidates fared poorly. If the candidate had been Roosevelt in 1924 or 1928, as it might well have been absent the polio, he almost certainly would have been defeated, as John Davis and Al Smith were. The window of presidential opportunity would have closed against him, as it closed against them.

As things happened, after his rousing speech for Smith, Roosevelt ran for New York governor and was elected. He was governor when the stock market crash of 1929 rang down the curtain on the Republican decade. Wall Street was in his state, but no one blamed Roosevelt. Instead they blamed Herbert Hoover, who provided an easy target for Democrats eager to replace him. After reelection for governor in 1930, Roosevelt seemed as likely as any other.

The polio did something else to Roosevelt, besides keeping him out of politics during a Republican era. It gave him deeper insight into the misfortunes that are part of the human experience. Before he contracted polio, life had been kind to Roosevelt. Born into a wealthy family with a famous political name, he glided from success to success. Misfortune befell other people, not him.

But then his trial came, and it made him better able to understand what the American people were going through during the Great Depression. Millions lost jobs, homes and hope through no fault of their own — much as Roosevelt became paralyzed through no fault of his own.

Hoover, a self-made man who had worked his way from orphanhood to the pinnacle of politics, tended to think others could get ahead too, if they worked hard enough. To millions of voters, Hoover’s attitude connoted hard-heartedness. Roosevelt, by contrast, having suffered, seemed likely to lend a more sympathetic ear to people in trouble.

So he did following his 1932 nomination and election. At the core of Roosevelt’s New Deal was the belief that Americans should take care of one another in difficult times. This belief found little audience in the 1920s, when the economy flourished. If Roosevelt somehow had managed to get elected during that decade, his presidency would have been unremarkable. But in the 1930s the idea of mutual support transformed American politics. It propelled FDR into the pantheon of presidents.

Timing is everything in politics, as in much of life. Sometimes it works for us, sometimes against. And sometimes the positive takes time to appear.