14. Frank Hague, Franklin Roosevelt, and the Politics of the New Deal

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.

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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 New Deal

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.

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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 ◽

The New Deal

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.

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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.

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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 ◽

The New Deal

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.

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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 ◽

The New Deal

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.

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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 ◽

The New Deal

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.

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THE PROGRESSIVE ORIGINS OF THE ADMINISTRATIVE STATE: WILSON, GOODNOW, AND LANDIS

Social Philosophy and Policy ◽

10.1017/s0265052507070021 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 24 (1) ◽

pp. 16-54 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Ronald J. Pestritto

Keyword(s):

New Deal ◽

Separation Of Powers ◽

Constitutional Reform ◽

Administrative State ◽

Woodrow Wilson ◽

Legislative Power ◽

Bureaucratic Agencies ◽

Franklin Roosevelt ◽

The New Deal

The American administrative state is a feature of the new liberalism that is largely irreconcilable with the old, founding-era liberalism. At its core, the administrative state, with its delegation of legislative power to the bureaucracy, combination of functions within bureaucratic agencies, and weakening of presidential control over administration undercuts the separation-of-powers principle that is the base of the founders' Constitution. The animating idea behind the features of the administrative state is the separation of politics and administration, which was championed by James Landis, the New-Deal architect of the administrative state for President Franklin Roosevelt. The idea of separating politics and administration, and the faith such a separation requires in the objectivity of administrators, did not originate with Landis or the New Deal but, instead, with the Progressives who had come a generation earlier. Both Woodrow Wilson and Frank Goodnow were pioneers in advocating the separation of politics and administration, and made it the centerpiece of their broad arguments for constitutional reform.

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Environmental Aspects of the New Deal of US President Franklin Roosevelt

Problems of World History ◽

10.46869/2707-6776-2018-6-8 ◽

2018 ◽

pp. 104-117

Author(s):

T. Perga

Keyword(s):

World War Ii ◽

New Deal ◽

Large Scale ◽

Integrated Management ◽

Tennessee Valley ◽

The Usa ◽

History Of ◽

American Society ◽

Franklin Roosevelt ◽

The New Deal

The global economic crisis, which began in 1929, became one of the strongest in the 20th century and most of all, the crisis struck the USA. To overcome its consequences, USA President Franklin Roosevelt has launched large-scale reforms that are known in the history as the New Deal. An important part of this anti-crisis program was the improvement of the environment of the USA. In modern scientific discourse, there are different points of view regarding the motivation of these measures. In the article it is proved that President F. Roosevelt has not only pragmatic goals of creating additional jobs and reducing by thus the social tension in American society. Taking into account the aggravation of environmental problems, for the first time in the history of the USA, their solution was combined with the stimulation of economic growth. Innovative environmental projects (Tennessee Valley Administration, Public Conservation Corps) not only contributed to improving the USA environment, but also laid the foundation of integrated management of natural resources and created the basis for the development of a broad ecological movement after the World War II.

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The New Deal Was on the Ballot in 1932

Modern American History ◽

10.1017/mah.2018.42 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 2 (02) ◽

pp. 201-213

Author(s):

Eric Rauchway

Keyword(s):

New Deal ◽

Large Measure ◽

The Public ◽

Grand Design ◽

Long Term Consequences ◽

Franklin Roosevelt ◽

The New Deal

During the 1932 campaign, Franklin Roosevelt explicitly committed himself to nearly all of what would become the important programs of the New Deal. In the months before his March 4, 1933, inauguration, he made his proposed policies even clearer. Yet many Americans have forgotten this clarity of purpose, led in large measure by histories of the New Deal and biographies of Roosevelt that echo old misconceptions of this critical election. Such texts are far more likely to describe Roosevelt's campaign as so devoid of substance and full only of “sunny generalities” that at the time he took the oath of office his “plans remained largely unknown to the public.” He had “no larger philosophy or grand design.” He stood only for “action, any action, with little or no thought given to the long-term consequences.” One historian recently declared, “The notion that when Franklin Roosevelt became president he had a plan in his head called the New Deal is a myth that no serious scholar has ever believed.”

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