FDR (D) (1 gen 1933 anni – 1 gen 1945 anni)

Descrizione:

As a presidential election approached and the economic crisis intensified, most Americans believed that something new had to be tried — whatever that might be. Republicans, reluctant to dump an incumbent president, unenthusiastically renominated Hoover. The Democrats turned to New York governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who had overseen innovative relief and unemployment programs in his state.

Born into a wealthy family, Roosevelt was a distant cousin to former president Theodore Roosevelt. After attending Harvard College and Columbia University, Franklin Roosevelt served as assistant secretary of the navy during World War I (as Theodore Roosevelt had done before the War of 1898). In 1921, a crippling attack of polio permanently paralyzed his legs, briefly derailing his political ambitions. Supported by his wife, Eleanor, he slowly returned to public life and in 1928 he ran successfully for the governor of New York. After winning reelection in 1930, he aimed for the White House. In his 1932 campaign, Roosevelt pledged vigorous but vague action, arguing simply that “the country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation.” He won easily, receiving 22.8 million votes to Hoover’s 15.7 million.

Elected in November, Roosevelt would not take office until March 1933. (The Twentieth Amendment, ratified in 1933, fixed subsequent inaugurations for January 20.) That winter, Americans waiting for Roosevelt’s “action, and action now” suffered through the worst stretch of the depression. Unemployment continued to climb nationwide. In a telling measure of the woe, jobless rates in three major industrial cities in Ohio hit staggering levels: 50 percent in Cleveland, 60 percent in Akron, and 80 percent in Toledo. Across the country, private charities and public relief agencies reached only a fraction of the needy. The nation’s banking system verged on collapse, and several states were approaching default, their tax revenues too low to pay for basic services. By Roosevelt’s inauguration in March 1933, the nation had hit rock bottom.

Franklin Roosevelt’s ideas about how to govern did not differ radically from Hoover’s. Both leaders wished to maintain the nation’s economic institutions and preserve its social structure, to save capitalism by softening its worst downturns. Both believed in a balanced government budget and extolled the values of hard work, cooperation, and sacrifice. But Roosevelt’s personal charm, political savvy, and willingness to experiment made him far more effective and popular than Hoover. The programs of his New Deal helped many Americans get back to work and restored hope in the nation’s future.

The wealthy patrician Roosevelt forged an unlikely rapport with ordinary Americans. Millions felt a quick kinship with the new president, calling him simply “FDR.” This personal warmth proved critical to his political success. More than 450,000 letters poured into the White House in the week after his inauguration. The president’s masterful use of the new medium of radio, especially his evening addresses to the American public known as fireside chats (A series of informal radio addresses Franklin Roosevelt made to the nation between 1933 and 1944 in which he explained New Deal initiatives and, later in his presidency, his wartime policies), in which he carefully explained his administration’s policies, made him an intimate presence in home life. Thousands of citizens felt a personal relationship with FDR, saying, “He gave me a job” or “He saved my home” (see “Firsthand Accounts”).

Citing the national economic emergency, Roosevelt expanded the presidential powers that Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson had previously increased. To draft legislation and policy, he relied heavily on financier Bernard Baruch and a “Brains Trust” of professors from Columbia, Harvard, and other leading universities. Roosevelt also assembled a talented cabinet, which included Harold L. Ickes, secretary of the interior; Frances Perkins at the Labor Department; Henry A. Wallace at Agriculture; and Henry Morgenthau Jr., secretary of the treasury. In turn, these intellectuals and administrators attracted hundreds of educated, experienced, and enthusiastic recruits to Washington. Inspired by New Deal idealism, many of them would devote their lives to public service and the principles of social-welfare liberalism.

Roosevelt could have accomplished little, however, without a cooperative Congress. The 1932 election swept Democratic majorities into both the House and Senate, giving the new president the lawmaking allies he needed. The first months of FDR’s administration produced a whirlwind of activity on Capitol Hill. In a legendary session, known as the Hundred Days (A legendary session during the first few months of Franklin Roosevelt’s administration in which Congress enacted fifteen major bills that focused primarily on four problems: banking failures, agricultural overproduction, the manufacturing slump, and soaring unemployment.) , the new Congress enacted fifteen major bills to fight the depression on four broad fronts: banking failures, agricultural overproduction, the manufacturing slump, and soaring unemployment. Known by some as “alphabet soup” because of their many abbreviations (CCC, WPA, AAA, etc.), the new policies and agencies born in 1933 marked a new era of American government.



Whatever its limits, the New Deal fundamentally altered Americans’ relationship to their government. The liberal welfare state provided direct assistance to a wide range of ordinary people: the unemployed, the elderly, workers, and the poor. This required a sizable federal bureaucracy: the number of civilian federal employees increased by 80 percent between 1929 and 1940, reaching a total of 1 million. The expenditures — and deficits — of the federal government grew at an even faster rate. In 1930, the Hoover administration spent $3.1 billion and had a surplus of almost $1 billion; in 1939, New Dealers expended $9.4 billion and ran a deficit of nearly $3 billion (still small by later standards). However, the New Deal represented more than figures on a balance sheet. Across the country, it inspired new visions of America

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