Much of the fuss over Obama's Cabinet nominations is centered around positions the nominees have taken, or perceived skeletons in their past. Some want to look past those points; others see them as prologue to their performance as a Cabinet member.
I thought it might be instructive to look at a Cabinet assembled during a similarly-trying time in our history: FDR's first Cabinet.
I start with Secretary of State Cordell Hull. Hull had a long Congressional record. He was a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, with particular expertise in fiscal matters. He fought for lower tariffs; wrote the original laws for income and estate taxes, and proposed world trade agreements. His background, however, included no experience in diplomacy or foreign affairs. Indeed, his first foray into the arena was not positive.
His debut in this office was not auspicious. He headed the American delegation to the Monetary and Economic Conference in London in July, 1933, a conference which ended in failure despite the parlous state of world prosperity.
Nonetheless, he was a fast learner.
On the heels of disaster came triumph. In November of that year he headed the American delegation to the seventh Pan-American Conference, held in Montevideo, and there won the trust of the Latin American diplomats, laying the foundation for the «good neighbor» policy among the twenty-one American nations so successfully followed up in the Inter-American Conference for the Maintenance of Peace held in Buenos Aires (1936), the eighth Pan-American Conference in Lima (1938), the second consecutive Meeting of Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the American Republics in Havana (1940).
Meanwhile, given authority through the Trade Agreements Act of 1934, he negotiated reciprocal trade agreements with numerous countries, lowering tariffs and stimulating trade.
We, of course, know him best as one of the prime architects of the United Nations, and as the recipient of a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.
Then there's the Treasury Secretary, the little-remembered William Woodin.
Woodin had no political experience at all; he had been a businessman, operating the family business making railroad freight cars. On top of that, he was in parlous health, and a Republican. Nonetheless, he was the Administration's point man on perhaps its most important early act: the "Bank Holiday," which closed the nation's banks until Woodin's examiners could vouch for their health. Woodin also took the US off the gold standard. He left office due to his health after only 10 months of service.
George Dern was Roosevelt's Secretary of War. He was a Utah businessman and two-term Governor, best known for his promotion of a revised Colorado River Compact. He was also an early supporter of Roosevelt's candidacy. Dern's lasting legacy to defense was an enlargement of the army, which had shrunk considerably under prior administrations.
The Attorney General, Homer Cummings, was thrown into the breach when Roosevelt's original choice, Thomas Walsh, died on March 2, 1933. Cummings had been the convention floor manager for Roosevelt's nomination. The twice-divorced Cummings had been out of politics for a decade, working as a lawyer; his primary related experience had been as Connecticut's Attorney General from 1914 to 1924.
As Attorney General, Cummings' most crucial early act was to advise Roosevelt that the 1917 Trading with the Enemy Act permitted Roosevelt to declare the "Bank Holiday." Cummings also greatly expanded the reach of Federal laws, including making bank robbery a federal crime and extending Federal firearms regulations. He also drafted Roosevelt's ill-advised legislation to "pack" the Supreme Court.
Claude Swanson, Roosevelt's Secretary of the Navy, was perhaps the best-qualified of FDR's Cabinet members for his position.
After his term as Governor expired in 1910 he was appointed to an unexpired U.S. Senate seat to which he was later elected and re-elected until his appointment as Secretary of the Navy in 1933. During his time in the Senate he served on the Naval Affairs Committee and also on the Foreign Relations Committee. In 1932 President Hoover appointed Senator Swanson as the only Congressional member of the United States Delegation to the General Disarmament Conference in Geneva, Switzerland.
In an appointment which was motivated as much by political expediency as by consideration of ability, Senator Swanson was installed as the Secretary of the Navy in March, 1933. His congressional experience in naval affairs and his outspoken support of a strong navy would make him one of the greatest peace-time naval fleet builders in American history.
It didn't hurt that Roosevelt had been an Undersecretary of the Navy and had a long-standing interest in the Department.
Roosevelt tapped a second Republican, Harold L Ickes, to run the Department of the Interior. Ickes was the quintessential iconoclast, clashing with his own party for much of his career. He was also virtually unknown outside his base, Chicago. Roosevelt became familiar with him when Ickes rallied progressive Republicans in support of FDR. As Interior Secretary, Ickes oversaw a large share of the New Deal, serving as Director of the Public Works Administration.
Republican number three was Henry Wallace, chosen as Secretary of Agriculture, taking the job his father had held in the Harding Administration. James Schlesinger praised Wallace's Ag Sec performance in a piece from 2000:
Wallace was a great secretary of agriculture. In 1933 a quarter of the American people still lived on farms, and agricultural policy was a matter of high political and economic significance. Farmers had been devastated by depression. H.A.'s ambition was to restore the farmers' position in the national economy. He sought to give them the same opportunity to improve income by controlling output that business corporations already possessed. In time he widened his concern beyond commercial farming to subsistence farming and rural poverty. For the urban poor, he provided food stamps and school lunches. He instituted programs for land-use planning, soil conservation and erosion control. And always he promoted research to combat plant and animal diseases, to locate drought-resistant crops and to develop hybrid seeds in order to increase productivity.
Daniel Roper, the Commerce Secretary, was a Washington jack-of-all-trades, clerking for the Senate Interstate Commerce Commission and the House Ways and Means Committee, as well as serving as Assistant Postmaster General and Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service. His primary contribution as a member of FDR's Cabinet was to establish the Business Advisory Council.
The Postmaster General, James Farley, had been FDR's manager for both his gubernatorial and Presidential campaigns. The Postmaster General job was generally considered a patronage appointment; in fact, Farley simultaneously held the Chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee. Despite the ostensibly plum position, Farley did modernize the Post Office and restore its profitability.
Last, Labor Secretary Frances Perkins was Roosevelt's top labor official in New York, where she had championed workers' rights. Perkins was responsible for two landmark pieces of legislation, the Wagner Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act.
...
So if you haven't been doing the tally, here's how FDR's Cabinet looked on March 4, 1933:
Three Republicans.
One patronage choice.
One progressive.
One Washington insider.
Two chosen primarily for their candidacy support.
One highly qualified appointee in Roosevelt's pet area of interest.
One qualified appointee, though long out of the public arena.
I wasn't around in 1933, so I don't know how these nominees were viewed in their time; but, excepting Frances Perkins, there was little in their background that would lend credence to the idea that these people would change the world they saw. The one thing they had going for them was Franklin Delano Roosevelt himself.