284 RüdigerKunow
disappearance such that disabled conditions as surface appearances can
be made to disappear, and a newly independent, enterprising person
emerges. Before turning to this dialectic in more detail, it is first
necessary to sketch the cultural-political context in the U.S. in which
non-normativeembodimentsappear/disappear.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the first and to date only U.S.-
AmericanPresidentwith a(moreorless)publicly presentdisability.As
a result of polio contracted in the early 1920s, FDR's legs were
paralyzed, but this did not act as a damper on his political ambitions.
Whenhiscandidacyforpresidentwasimminent,heorratherhisstaffof
advisors ventilated possible reactions of the electorate to his disability.
In a lead article in the July 25, 1931 number ofLiberty: A Weekly for
Everybody, staff writer Earle Looker asked provocatively, "Is Franklin
D. Roosevelt Physically Fit to Be President?" (qtd. in Costigliola 125).
This was a rather disingenuous question, just as the whole article was
disingenuous, because Looker was a Roosevelt sympathizer, and the
piece had been launched by FDR's entourage as a testing balloon to
soundwhetherornothisnon-normativephysicalitywouldworkagainst
their candidate in the upcoming presidential race (126-29).^117 The
signalstheyreceivedwerepositive.Journalistsweremostlysympathetic
to him (while their editors were less so) and even used the metaphor of
bodily paralysis allegorically to describe the condition of the nation
during the Great Depression. On this basis, they suggested that their
favoritewastheidealmanofthetimes:"Liketheeconomy,FDRhadto
bearparalysis;hehadalsomadeasignificantrecovery;andheknew,or
so he claimed, what it took to regain full health" (131, 142). Turning
Roosevelt's disability into a political synecdoche was a clever and
successful move, a disability rhetoric of a historically novel kind, even
though much of it remained "mere" rhetoric: neither FDR nor the
economymadesignificantrecoveries,andittookAmericaninvolvement
in World War II to puta definite end to the nation's economic paralysis
whileRoosevelt'sconditiongotworseovertheyears.
(^117) My narrative here follows Costigliola's although I do not share his rather
indulgentattitudetowardRoosevelt'sroleduringtheYaltaConferencewhenhe,
"the sick man of Yalta," through his lack of concentration and focus, made it
easyforStalintopushhisownagenda(PostandGeorge53).