Opinion | How FDR Made Republican Isolationists Look Silly with a Simple Rhyme

Late in October 1940, Franklin Roosevelt finally acknowledged that he was actually in the midst of a presidential campaign.

Republicans were hammering Roosevelt for what they claimed was the nation’s lack of military preparedness, and Democrats were alarmed enough to persuade FDR to take to the campaign trail in the final weeks before the election. The Republican nominee, Wendell Willkie, seemed to be gaining momentum. Roosevelt fought back in a speech at New York’s Madison Square Garden on Oct. 28.

Bidding for his third term, he accused Republican isolationists of obstructionism, timidity and weakness. In Congress, he reminded the audience, Republicans had voted against adding more battleships and planes and buying other critical war material. In the House, Republicans had voted 144 to 8 to reduce appropriations for the Army Air Corps. One after another, he listed the votes and pointed out the hypocrisy of his isolationist critics.

But it was the way he did it that produced a classic of political derision — and a model for how a president can make American leadership abroad a selling point rather than a problem. He named names, and it connected with voters.

In the speech, Roosevelt deployed the full force of his rhetorical talents against three leading Republican isolationist leaders: Mass. Rep. Joseph Martin, the House minority leader; N.Y. Rep. Bruce Barton, a conservative ad man who had founded the agency BBDO; and the patrician N.Y. Rep. Hamilton Fish III, who had opposed measures to rearm the nation and aid the victims of Hitler’s aggression.

In the first draft of the speech, the names — Barton, Fish and Martin — were listed in alphabetical order. But during one of their late-night writing sessions, FDR and his speechwriters, Robert Sherwood and Samuel Rosenman, hit on a more rhythmic option: Martin, Barton and Fish. Roosevelt immediately seized on the new rhyming litany. As one aide later recalled, “The president repeated the sequence several times and indicated by swinging his finger how effective it would be with audiences.”

In Madison Square Garden, Roosevelt clearly relished the moment. He ran through the list of Republicans senators who had voted against the bill that lifted the arms embargo to victims of Nazi aggression. Then he paused and smiled. Who else had voted against the bill? he asked. “Now wait,” the president said, “a perfectly beautiful rhythm — Congressmen Martin, Barton and Fish.”

He meant it to sound like the nursery rhyme Wynken, Blynken, and Nod. It worked. The second time that night he intoned the names in his distinctive drawl —Martin, Barton and Fish — rally-goers chanted the names with him. A few nights later in Boston, FDR deployed the trio again, and every time he mentioned Martin, the crowd shouted out “Barton and Fish!” The three diehards became instant household names and the chant, Martin, Barton and Fish became the soundtrack of the 1940 campaign.

In November, FDR won by nearly 10 points.

Joe Biden is not, of course, anywhere near the orator that FDR was. And he has conspicuously avoided even mentioning Donald Trump’s name, preferring “my predecessor” or “a former president.” But as Biden prosecutes his case against a new generation of isolationists, perhaps he might consider also putting a name and a face on the authoritarian apologists. Why not single out the young senator from Ohio, J.D. Vance, his fellow Ohioan and MAGA-diehard, Rep. Jim Jordan and their erstwhile party leader? Readers are welcome to offer their own euphonious options, but I like the ring of this:

Who opposes standing up to Putin? J.D., Jordan and Trump.

Who is blocking aid to Ukraine? J.D., Jordan and Trump.

Who won’t fix the border? J.D., Jordan and Trump. 

Admittedly, this will be a much more difficult lift for Biden than it was for FDR.

In 1940, Roosevelt faced a divided Republican Party, but one that was moving slowly, painfully and somewhat reluctantly away from its isolationist base. The nomination of Willkie over avowed isolationist Robert A. Taft and non-interventionist Thomas Dewey had been a shocking repudiation of the America Firsters.

But Roosevelt knew he still had work to do. He never mentioned Willkie in his Oct. 28 speech because Willkie was not really his target. Roosevelt worried deeply about public opinion, and isolationists still dominated the GOP in Congress. Roosevelt saw a chance to drive a wedge between his Republican critics and the party’s presidential nominee.

Early on, Willkie had recognized the Nazi threat and had endorsed aiding Britain. With his support, he provided Roosevelt crucial political cover. Indeed, as historian Lynne Olson notes, “Willkie’s cooperation with Roosevelt just weeks after his nomination was … staggering.”

In the summer of 1940, Willkie agreed not to make a campaign issue of FDR’s decision to send 50 destroyers to Britain. Even more controversial: Willkie broke with fellow Republicans by backing legislation to create the nation’s first peacetime draft. “The bill was political dynamite,” wrote Olson. “If Willkie had opposed it, it almost certainly would have failed. Thanks to its passage, some 1.65 million men were in uniform when America finally entered the war in December 1941.”

Willkie’s support for Roosevelt’s war efforts, however, came at a high personal cost. GOP leaders regarded him as a turncoat, and they essentially excommunicated him. He died of a heart attack in 1944 at the age of 52.

But Willkie’s ascendancy in 1940 marked the beginning of a generations-long shift in the GOP, as the party moved away from the isolationism of “Martin, Barton and Fish.” Barton was defeated in a bid for the Senate the month after Roosevelt’s speech; Fish was defeated in 1944; Martin continued to serve as Republican leader until 1958, but eventually joined the party’s internationalist wing. In 1952, Republicans would nominate Dwight Eisenhower (with Martin’s support) over the isolationist Taft, who had voted against joining NATO.

That tradition would continue for more than 70 years — until the GOP became a wholly owned subsidiary of Donald Trump. In his State of the Union speech two weeks ago, Biden highlighted the party’s radical transformation:

“It wasn’t long ago when a Republican president named Ronald Reagan thundered, ‘Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.’ Now my predecessor, a former Republican president, tells Putin, quote, ‘Do whatever the hell you want.’”

When FDR spoke, the world was on fire — the Nazis had rolled through Poland a year before, and German bombers had been pounding Britain for more than three months — but his Republican rival would become a willing partner in trying to save it. The GOP was in the process of moving toward a bipartisan foreign policy. By singling out the three America Firsters — Martin, Barton and Fish — but not mentioning the man he was actually running against, Roosevelt was able drive a deeper wedge into the GOP and highlight the growing fissure over the war.

The world is on fire now, too. But Biden now faces a GOP that is headed in the opposite direction, wholly in the grip of an open admirer of authoritarian aggression. Twenty-six of the Senate’s 49 Republicans voted against the recent aid package for Ukraine, which is mired in the third year of its war with Russia. And the trend is ominous. As Peter Wehner recently pointed out, “of the 17 Republican senators who were elected beginning in 2018 and who are age 55 or younger, 15 voted no.”

But this also means that the party remains divided and that Biden has a chance to highlight those divisions. Biden showed some feistiness at the State of the Union and a willingness to call out the opposition — albeit without naming Trump or other MAGA leaders.

But, perhaps it’s time for Biden to up his game and once again, start naming names. Trump himself has frequently (and effectively) taunted his opponents. But it was FDR who was the master of the art. And Biden could learn from him.