ROOSEVELT, FRANKLIN DELANO 1882-1945

PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (1933-1945)

Influential Politician

One of the most influential politicians in the history of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (often referred to by his initials, FDR) was elected to an unprecedented four terms as president. His administrations created the modern bureaucratic welfare state. He set the political tone for the 1930s in his acceptance speech at the 1932 Democratic National Convention. Breaking with the tradition of accepting the nomination in a formal ceremony after the end of the convention, Roosevelt had flown to Chicago to address the delegates in person. On 2 July 1932 he declared, "You have nominated me and I know it, and I am here to thank you for the honor. Let it … be symbolic that in so doing I broke tradition. Let it be from now on the task of our Party to break foolish traditions." Toward the end of his stirring address he spoke the phrase that was to symbolize his presidency: "I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people." This "New Deal" was to reshape life for "the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid" and for other Americans as well. In bold, experimental measures Roosevelt would do nothing less than reconstruct the face of the federal government. Leading the nation through times of economic depression and world war, the thirty-second president was to become one of the most beloved politicians of the twentieth century

Background

Born into a patrician family in New York, Roosevelt, who grew up on the family estate at Hyde Park, New York, was an only child and pampered by his parents. A fifth cousin of Theodore Roosevelt, twenty-sixth president of the United States, Franklin attended the exclusive Groton School in Massachusetts before entering Harvard University in 1900. After graduating from Harvard in 1904, he entered law school at Columbia University, and the following year he married Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, his fifth cousin once removed. Unlike Theodore Roosevelt, who was a Republican, Franklin Roosevelt threw in his lot with the Democratic Party. His political career was launched in 1910, when he was elected to the New York State Senate. After campaigning for Woodrow Wilson in 1912, he was rewarded by being named assistant secretary of the navy (1913-1920). After running unsuccessfully for the vice presidency on the Democratic ticket with James M. Cox of Ohio in 1920, Roosevelt had to overcome the greatest challenge of his personal life. In 1921 he was stricken with polio, and until the end of his life he would never again walk unassisted. Most often restricted to a wheel-chair, he was able to stand only for brief periods with the help of aides and steel leg braces. After a period of convalescence Roosevelt returned to politics and was elected governor of New York State in 1928. He developed a reputation as an honest reform-minded politician and was elected to a second term in 1930.

President of the United States

At his inauguration as president on 4 March 1933, Roosevelt lifted the spirits of millions of Americans by declaring that, though the economy was in collapse, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." An accomplished politician, he immediately called an emergency session of Congress and presented to it fifteen major proposals for economic relief and reform. At the end of his first hundred days in office a cooperative Democratic Congress had passed them all. Through a vast array of initiatives he instituted cooperation among capital, labor, and government, as well as government planning and a program of federal deficit spending that many historians credit with saving an economy teetering on the brink of complete ruin. Two years into his first term Roosevelt moved to the left with a series of reforms, including a "soak-the-rich" tax scheme and the establishment of federal Social Security. Some members of the upper-class circles in which he had traveled as a young man labeled him a "class traitor."

Second Term

Beloved by many farmers, laborers, and unemployed Americans, Roosevelt was reelected in 1936 with a landslide victory over Republican Alfred M. Landon. In 1937, confident in his popularity with the American people, he made what was probably his most serious political mistake, causing an uproar with his plan to "pack" the U.S. Supreme Court with justices sympathetic to his New Deal agenda. By 1939 his attention was focused increasingly on the coming war, and by the early 1940s "Dr. Win-the-War" had, as he said, replaced "Dr. New Deal." He toiled indefatigably during World War II, and as his health grew frail he traveled abroad several times to meet with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin to coordinate military strategy and plan the postwar peace. Franklin D. Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage on 12 April 1945 at Warm Springs, Georgia.