Franklin Roosevelt, the New Deal, and Grand Strategy

Franklin Roosevelt ◽

This chapter assesses President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal. By 1941, FDR and his key advisers were distilling some hard-won wisdom from their trial-and-error approaches in devising what had become known as the New Deal, and applying them to the world's burgeoning international crises. The key, for Roosevelt, was a New Deal–inspired set of ideas and institutions that animated a capacious reframing of the national interest. Internationalizing the New Deal meant reconfiguring the playing field of world politics in three broad, institutional realms: collective security, economic stability, and rule of law institutions. These three institutional pillars are usually what contemporary international relations specialists mean when they refer to “the postwar international order.” What made this institutionally focused scaffolding into “grand strategy” was the way any resulting improvement to the functioning of the international order was dependent on negotiation and diplomacy.

3. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the New Deal, and Japan

Pearl Harbor Reexamined ◽

10.1515/9780824841898-006 ◽

1989 ◽

pp. 27-36

Author(s):

Gary Dean Best

Keyword(s):

New Deal ◽

The Long Exception: Rethinking the Place of the New Deal in American History

International Labor and Working-Class History ◽

10.1017/s0147547908000112 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 74 (1) ◽

pp. 3-32 ◽

Cited By ~ 20

Author(s):

Jefferson Cowie ◽

Nick Salvatore

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Welfare State ◽

New Deal ◽

American History ◽

American Politics ◽

Class Relations ◽

The Great Depression ◽

Franklin Roosevelt ◽

The New Deal ◽

The Welfare State

Abstract“The Long Exception” examines the period from Franklin Roosevelt to the end of the twentieth century and argues that the New Deal was more of an historical aberration—a byproduct of the massive crisis of the Great Depression—than the linear triumph of the welfare state. The depth of the Depression undoubtedly forced the realignment of American politics and class relations for decades, but, it is argued, there is more continuity in American politics between the periods before the New Deal order and those after its decline than there is between the postwar era and the rest of American history. Indeed, by the early seventies the arc of American history had fallen back upon itself. While liberals of the seventies and eighties waited for a return to what they regarded as the normality of the New Deal order, they were actually living in the final days of what Paul Krugman later called the “interregnum between Gilded Ages.” The article examines four central themes in building this argument: race, religion, class, and individualism.

Franklin Roosevelt and the Modern Presidency

Studies in American Political Development ◽

10.1017/s0898588x00001000 ◽

1992 ◽

Vol 6 (2) ◽

pp. 322-358 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Stephen Skowronek

Keyword(s):

New Deal ◽

Presidential Leadership ◽

The Political ◽

American Government ◽

Modern Presidency ◽

Political Foundations ◽

Franklin Roosevelt ◽

The Relationship ◽

The political foundations of the modern presidency were laid during the New Deal years. Franklin Roosevelt was the New Deal president. The relationship between these two facts is a matter of some consequence. On it hinges our understanding of presidential leadership and modern American government generally, not to mention the political significance of Roosevelt himself.

The New Deal

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History ◽

10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.87 ◽

2016 ◽

Author(s):

Wendy L. Wall

Keyword(s):

World War Ii ◽

African Americans ◽

New Deal ◽

Rural Areas ◽

Democratic Party ◽

Social Insurance ◽

The Elderly ◽

Industrial Workers ◽

The New Deal generally refers to a set of domestic policies implemented by the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in response to the crisis of the Great Depression. Propelled by that economic cataclysm, Roosevelt and his New Dealers pushed through legislation that regulated the banking and securities industries, provided relief for the unemployed, aided farmers, electrified rural areas, promoted conservation, built national infrastructure, regulated wages and hours, and bolstered the power of unions. The Tennessee Valley Authority prevented floods and brought electricity and economic progress to seven states in one of the most impoverished parts of the nation. The Works Progress Administration offered jobs to millions of unemployed Americans and launched an unprecedented federal venture into the arena of culture. By providing social insurance to the elderly and unemployed, the Social Security Act laid the foundation for the U.S. welfare state. The benefits of the New Deal were not equitably distributed. Many New Deal programs—farm subsidies, work relief projects, social insurance, and labor protection programs—discriminated against racial minorities and women, while profiting white men disproportionately. Nevertheless, women achieved symbolic breakthroughs, and African Americans benefited more from Roosevelt’s policies than they had from any past administration since Abraham Lincoln’s. The New Deal did not end the Depression—only World War II did that—but it did spur economic recovery. It also helped to make American capitalism less volatile by extending federal regulation into new areas of the economy. Although the New Deal most often refers to policies and programs put in place between 1933 and 1938, some scholars have used the term more expansively to encompass later domestic legislation or U.S. actions abroad that seemed animated by the same values and impulses—above all, a desire to make individuals more secure and a belief in institutional solutions to long-standing problems. In order to pass his legislative agenda, Roosevelt drew many Catholic and Jewish immigrants, industrial workers, and African Americans into the Democratic Party. Together with white Southerners, these groups formed what became known as the “New Deal coalition.” This unlikely political alliance endured long after Roosevelt’s death, supporting the Democratic Party and a “liberal” agenda for nearly half a century. When the coalition finally cracked in 1980, historians looked back on this extended epoch as reflecting a “New Deal order.”

The Forgotten Legacy of the New Deal: Fiscal Conservatism and the Roosevelt Administration, 1933–1938

Governing America ◽

10.23943/princeton/9780691150734.003.0008 ◽

2012 ◽

Author(s):

Julian E. Zelizer

Keyword(s):

Fiscal Policy ◽

New Deal ◽

State Building ◽

Roosevelt Administration ◽

Federal Initiatives ◽

Franklin Roosevelt ◽

Fiscal Conservatism ◽

This chapter examines fiscal conservatism under the Roosevelt administration. Fiscal conservatism has been linked to liberalism since the construction of the New Deal state. Indeed, a pragmatic alliance between liberals and moderate fiscal conservatives has played a key role in some of the most durable state-building efforts in U.S. history. This alliance produced bold federal initiatives in a nation historically resistant to centralized government. Building on the work of James Savage and David Kennedy, this chapter argues that fiscal conservatism constituted a key component of the New Deal during the years 1933–1938. It looks at two members of the administration who maintained pressure on Franklin Roosevelt to balance budgets: Lewis Douglas, who served as Director of Budget from 1933 to 1934, and Henry Morgenthau Jr., secretary of the treasury from 1934 to 1945. The chapter concludes with an assessment of Roosevelt's fiscal policy in relation to Keynesianism.

The Third American Conservation Movement: New Implications for Public Policy

Journal of American Studies ◽

10.1017/s0021875800000748 ◽

1971 ◽

Vol 5 (2) ◽

pp. 155-171 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Timothy O'Riordan

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Public Policy ◽

Twentieth Century ◽

New Deal ◽

The United States ◽

Conservation Movement ◽

The Third ◽

Franklin Roosevelt ◽

The New Deal ◽

American Nation

The American nation is presently caught in the throes of its third conservation movement. It is generally considered that the first American conservation movement in the United States took place during the period 1890–1920, with particular emphasis upon the first decade of the twentieth century, and the second was associated with the New Deal and subsequent policies of Franklin Roosevelt in the period 1933–43. The aim of this paper is to compare the development and the underlying philosophies of the present conservation movement in the United States with the growth and guiding principles of its two predecessors, and to follow this analysis through with a somewhat more normative examination of various implications for public policy which come to light.

The Politics of Administrative Law: New York's Anti-Bureaucracy Clause and the O'Brian-Wagner Campaign of 1938

Law and History Review ◽

10.1017/s0738248000002030 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 27 (2) ◽

pp. 331-372 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Daniel R. Ernst

Keyword(s):

New York ◽

Federal Government ◽

New Deal ◽

Attorney General ◽

Administrative Law ◽

The State ◽

National Scale ◽

Constitutional Convention ◽

Franklin Roosevelt ◽

In April 1938 New York's first constitutional convention since 1915 convened in Albany. When it adjourned in late August, one of the amendments slated for a referendum that fall was an “anti-bureaucracy clause,” a provision that would greatly increase the New York courts' oversight of the state's agencies. Although voters rejected it, contemporaries saw the anti-bureaucracy clause as a harbinger of a national campaign against the New Deal. In September 1938 Charles Wyzanski, a former member of the Solicitor General's office, warned Attorney General Homer Cummings that the anti-bureaucracy clause was “the advance signal of an approaching partisan attack on a national scale.” Wyzanski was right: in early 1939 a bill endorsed by the American Bar Association's House of Delegates was introduced in Congress by Representative Francis Walter and Senator Marvel Mills Logan. Just as the New York provision “would have almost certainly destroyed the effectiveness of the state administrative agencies,” the New Dealer Abe Feller warned Cummings's successor, so would the Walter-Logan bill hamstring the federal government. When President Franklin Roosevelt vetoed the bill in December 1940, he declared it part of a national campaign that had begun with the anti-bureaucracy clause.

Nothing to Fear

The Columnist ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190067588.003.0003 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 37-58

Author(s):

Donald A. Ritchie

Keyword(s):

World War Ii ◽

New Deal ◽

World War ◽

Press Corps ◽

Douglas Macarthur ◽

The Press ◽

Franklin Roosevelt ◽

Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal provided a bonanza for the “Washington Merry-Go-Round.” The president and his cabinet members showered the columnists with strategic leaks, often to test the waters before making official announcements. This enabled Drew Pearson and Robert Allen to scoop the rest of the press corps on pending appointments and other issues. Although Pearson admired Roosevelt and his liberal policies, he resisted playing propagandist. He criticized the administration and irritated Roosevelt by revealing news the president was not yet ready to release. Roosevelt retaliated by prompting General Douglas MacArthur to file a libel suit against the columnists, and by denouncing Pearson as a “chronic liar.” Pearson used the column to attack his father’s critic, Senator Millard Tydings, which Robert Allen regarded as vindictive. The pressures of reporting eventually caused strains between the two columnists, leading Allen to quit the column after Pearson revealed damaging information about General George S. Patton during World War II.

Making America Safe for Democrats

10.1093/oso/9780190882747.003.0006 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Helmut Norpoth

Keyword(s):

Working Class ◽

Real Time ◽

New Deal ◽

Democratic Party ◽

Black Americans ◽

White House ◽

The Press ◽

Big Cities ◽

Franklin Roosevelt ◽

With Franklin Roosevelt in the White House, the Democratic Party gained a firm grip on the American electorate. This finding is based on an examination of close to 200 polls that probed party identifications, beginning in 1937; all but a few were conducted by the Gallup Organization, albeit without any resonance in the press or the halls of academe. In a manner of speaking, FDR made America safe for Democrats. At the same time, according to polls conducted in real time, key groups of the fabled New Deal coalition were less conspicuous than has been widely believed. In the big cities, in the working class, in union households, and among Jewish as well as black Americans, Republicans and Independents combined outnumbered Democrats. Other than among Americans on relief, the Democratic Party enjoyed overwhelming support in only two sizeable groups in real-time polls in the Roosevelt era. They happened to be the same groups that Democrats had been counting on long before the New Deal and the Depression: the white South and Catholics.

The Making of a Mass Movement

When the Old Left Was Young ◽

10.1093/oso/9780195060997.003.0009 ◽

1993 ◽

Author(s):

Robert Cohen

Keyword(s):

New Deal ◽

Mass Movement ◽

Columbia University ◽

Student Body ◽

White House ◽

Democratic Candidate ◽

Personal Connections ◽

Carry Over ◽

Franklin Delano Roosevelt so dominated the American political scene from the fall of 1932 through the end of the Depression decade that historians refer to these years as the Age of Roosevelt. He won the 1932 presidential race in one of the greatest landslides in American history, trouncing Hoover—who the electorate blamed for the Depression—by almost seven million votes. FDR then presided over the extensive New Deal recovery, relief and reform programs, whose popularity helped keep him in the White House longer than any other president. But Roosevelt’s great popularity with the general public did not initially carry over onto college campuses. During most of his first term, neither FDR nor his major programs captured the imagination of the American student body. Roosevelt’s presidential campaign in 1932 failed to generate much excitement on campus, and from 1933 to 1935 the cause that most inspired college youth was world peace rather than the New Deal. If the choice had been left to college students, the straw polls show, Franklin Roosevelt would not have been elected president in 1932. FDR ran far behind Hoover in the campus polls taken shortly before election day. Only 31 percent of the collegians polled supported Roosevelt, while 49 percent endorsed Hoover. Roosevelt even did badly on campuses where he had direct, personal connections. At Harvard, FDR’s alma mater, the Democratic candidate lost to Hoover by a margin of more than three to one: 1211 students there voted for Hoover, while only 395 cast their ballots for Roosevelt. Support for Roosevelt was also weak among undergraduates at Columbia University, despite the fact that several of his key advisers, popularly known as the New Deal “brain trust,” including Raymond Moley, Rexford Tugwell, and Adolph Berle, were Columbia professors. With almost two thirds of Columbia undergraduates voting, FDR attracted only 221 votes, losing not only to Hoover, who drew 307 votes, but also to Norman Thomas, the socialist candidate, who won 421 votes. This enabled Columbia socialists to boast at the Norman Thomas rally at Madison Square Garden that “Columbia Professors May Write Roosevelt’s Speeches But Columbia Students Vote For Thomas.”