Maureen Dowd: What Might Have Been

Maureen Dowd has missed her calling. Her lastest column shows she has what it takes to write Harlequin romance novels.

Her style is that of a pulp fiction princess. She's wasting her talents at the New York Times.

F.D.R.'s 'Gorgeous Hussy'

By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON — My family, alas, must bear the cross of inventing modern lobbying.

It was all the fault of my cousin, Peggy, an irresistible, dimpled Grace Kelly type who ensorcelled Tommy Corcoran - against the wishes of Franklin Roosevelt.

Tommy was the brainy young lawyer for F.D.R. who constructed much of the early New Deal with Ben Cohen and sold to Congress the economic safeguards that protected the little guy. The two became, as David McKean wrote in "Peddling Influence: Thomas 'Tommy the Cork' Corcoran and the Birth of Modern Lobbying," "perhaps the best legal team in the annals of American government."

Peggy Dowd and Tommy met in 1933 when she was sent to his office at the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. "You're Irish," her boss told 22-year-old Peggy. "Maybe you can handle him." He talked with a cigar in his mouth and barked orders, and went through secretaries quickly.

In a scene straight out of a Jean Arthur movie, Peggy told her new boss: "Take the cigar out of your mouth or I won't take dictation from you."

Tommy, shocked, obliged.

She became the New Deal's amanuensis. Everyone was charmed by Peggy, who was bright and generous, except F.D.R. and Felix Frankfurter, who thought their protégé should not marry the daughter of an immigrant Washington mailman. Peggy told my mom that F.D.R. teasingly referred to her as "our 'Gorgeous Hussy,' " the title of a 1936 Joan Crawford movie about a Washington innkeeper's daughter who had a notorious friendship with Andrew Jackson.

Tommy asked Peggy to marry him, and arranged a meeting to introduce his bride to the president. Mr. McKean describes the awful scene that came next: "Peggy bought a new dress and hat for the occasion, and she and Tommy arrived at the White House family quarters at the appointed time. But after they'd waited for well over two hours, Harry Hopkins came into the reception area to tell them that the president could not, in fact, see them. Corcoran was furious and later claimed that the incident contributed to his decision to leave public service."

Along with other superconnected superlawyers, like Abe Fortas and Clark Clifford, Tommy elevated lobbying to a lucrative gentleman's profession. Mr. McKean writes that the raffish Tommy might talk in code on the phone - I heard a few of his cryptic lobbying calls when I worked summers at his law firm - but never did anything illegal: "If occasionally he skirted the edge of propriety, he made sure to leave no footprints."
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"He talked with a cigar in his mouth and barked orders, and went through secretaries quickly."

That's good, Maureen. Very good.