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- [00:00]
Don Wildman
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Ryan Reynolds
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Don Wildman
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Ryan Reynolds
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Don Wildman
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Matt Lewis
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Eleanor Yanaga
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- [01:34]
Eleanor Roosevelt
Stretching along the Hudson river in New York State's Dutchess county is a sprawling 300 acre estate upon which stands a Colonial Revival style mansion named Springwood, the birthplace and home of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It's 7:30pm on Tuesday, November 7, 1944 and it has already been a long one for First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who arrived back home from New York City on the early train so that she and her husband could vote together. Now, here inside the house, she awaits her evening guests, neighbors and friends who will join the couple for a buffet meal as they await news of the election. Eleanor is nervous for her husband, but proud, she wrote yesterday, that whatever happens, I feel that on the Democratic side the President has made a good fight, and in political life I have never felt that anything really mattered but the satisfaction of knowing that you stood for the things in which you believed and had done the very best you could. Eleanor is no stranger to this waiting game. She is accustomed to her husband's pre election day round of festivities and handshaking throughout the neighboring counties. She knows the running order of the various dinners and public appearances she's had to make over the last few days, despite the raging war overseas. And she knows this because her husband, Franklin Delano Roosevelt has already been elected to president three times. And if he prevails tonight, it will be for an unprecedented fourth term.
- [03:21]
Don Wildman
Hello, and glad you clicked into American history. Hit Don Wildman here. I'm your host. The American politician, local, state or national, is in odd employment. On one hand, you've committed to a noble duty, representing the civic concerns of your region, state, or as president, the nation. But that's only half the job. Because in order to serve, you also have to be elected. You have to campaign. And when you're not doing that, you're raising money to campaign. It's a double barreled business. No wonder politicians come and go like the seasons. But of course, there are those with staying power. Some soon become living legends. But even they have to win to remain viable. If you want to understand victory in American politics, look no farther than Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the winningest president in our history, elected to four consecutive terms in the White House and then died on the job. He was also a twice elected governor of New York and a New York state senator. The man could rally the vote. He's a textbook of political triumph, electorally and legislatively. They may not be willing to admit it, but presidential candidates today in this present political season are still heavily influenced by FDR's legacy. So we figured it'd be valuable to better understand what it was that made this man such a success. What were the secret ingredients of his politics? What was the magic formula of factors? And is it still potent enough for today's presidential elections? Journalist and author Jonathan Darman joins us. He recently released the book Becoming the Personal Crisis that Made a President. We first met on this podcast two years ago on episode 14 and now we're in the 200s. Jonathan, thank you for returning from our past.
- [05:05]
Jonathan Darman
It's so great to be back. Thanks for having me.
- [05:08]
Don Wildman
I'll start out by putting you right on the spot. I'm sorry. If you could sum up the FDR legacy in brief, what would you say about that?
- [05:15]
Jonathan Darman
I think that Franklin Roosevelt is without question one of the most consequential, transformative, and I would argue, greatest presidents in our history. He's comparable only with Abraham Lincoln, maybe George Washington. And that's because you have in the 1930s and for 40s, a period of revolutionary change in Americans revolution. You have a period in the 1930s and 40s, revolutionary change in Americans relationship with the federal government. That if you were to look at it in terms of the way that people's relationship with the government changed in that period, you would say this is something that came about and you have a completely new system of government in the United States. It just happened with people, peaceful means. And that's largely as an effect of the personality of Franklin Roosevelt. And you also have in his leadership of the country during the lead up and the fighting of World War II, someone who is the sort of preeminent global leader in the fight against tyranny and fascism. So I think that Franklin Roosevelt is the President that every president has in mind when they think of what the officer can offer in terms of their ability to accomplish things, but also the awesomeness of the responsibility that they're taking on.
- [06:34]
Don Wildman
And none of that happens unless he's elected, which is really what we're talking about. He has an extraordinarily sharp acumen where politics are concerned. And that's what we're going to talk about here today. He WINS the presidency four times, as I say, in the White House from 1933 to his death in 1945. Twelve years. The only President to ever do so and ever will until the 22nd Amendment is repealed. How does he do it? How does he win so much at this elite level?
- [07:02]
Jonathan Darman
It's a really great question. I think first and foremost he was a master practitioner of the game of politics. And he's someone who loved the game of politics. And I think when you look at this person who has this just appetite to keep running for the White House four times, I think you can't underestimate how much that plays into it. Just his pure love of this competition. And what's interesting to me, and this is what I've spent a lot of my time looking at, is the fact that that sort of peerless skill of FDR's as a political practitioner is not something that he had all of his life. He was in politics for most of his adult life. He went to college, went to law school, but very quickly thereafter set about running for electoral office. And he'd had the idea of running for president before even that. But if you look at his early races in the New York State legislature, he was the vice presidential candidate in 1920. He is not someone that I think anyone would say this is a generational talent. This is a peerless political natural. It's really something that develops in him over time. And my belief is that it comes very much out of his own experience in his personal life, facing the challenge of debilitating disease from polio, which really sort of upends his life and ultimately transforms his character. So really, the sort of greatness in fdr, which is I think, most visible in his political skill, is something that comes out of something that's deep in his own personal experience. Sure.
- [08:38]
Don Wildman
The beginning of his presidencies starts with, of course, the election of 1932. There's a combination of factors at work here, politically speaking. He starts off first of all with an opponent who is back on his heels. Of course, the Great Depression has happened. The bottom has fallen out of American economy. Herbert Hoover, a good man, a Quaker, has been failing at dealing with this right off the bat and flailing. Actually. He is not doing well at creating a sense of trust. As we enter into this election season, it's kind of fair to reference 2008, sort of, it's not nearly as bad. But I mean, all those presidential moves, the bankers in conference, it's this tightrope of management and public relations. I remember it well. We all do. That was the crossover from Bush to Obama. In some ways this is the same thing, right?
- [09:24]
Jonathan Darman
I think that's right. I mean, the way that we think about it in the modern context, if you're running against an incumbent president, is that you want to offer change versus more of the same. And that's essentially what Franklin Roosevelt was offering. They didn't have that phrase back then, but that's what he was offering in 1932. It's, you know, within a very 1930s America, bounds of what counts as change. Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt were both white guys. They had been actually friendly earlier in their careers when they had overlapped in Washington. But I think when you look at what draws the country to FDR in 1932, it's because it's not because he's running on this specific program that appeals to the country. He's. He's actually quite vague and contradictory in a lot of his policy proposals to the country. He's really just saying, I know you don't like this, what you're getting from Herbert Hoover's leadership in the Depression, and I'm going to offer you an alternative. And by that point, things were so desperate in the country in 1932 that people were willing to vote for that change.
- [10:30]
Don Wildman
Yeah, right. Well, we had 13 million people unemployed March 1932. That's the statistic. At the lowest point one in four Americans were unemployed. Almost every bank was closed. I mean, this is as bad as it really gets. And yet Hoover's approach is old school. You know, let this play out. Let the markets lead. How much of the election was about FDR countering that with a new plan? Was the New Deal already part of that election?
- [10:56]
Jonathan Darman
So the New Deal was a phrase that was sort of out there in the ether. And fdr, who had this sort of immersive learning style, was talking to economists and getting this idea of what it would be like to have a major government intervention in the economy. But really, when you look at what he's running on in 1932, he's not getting into the specifics at all of what's going to be this really incredibly transformative approach to the federal government. In fact, in a lot of ways, he talks about the idea that the government needs to spend less money, and that's going to be a way that you're going to help the economy in the United States. He really was someone who was not. I think today we think of FDR as one of our great sort of progressive presidents, probably the greatest progressive president because he had such a programmatic, importantly, consequential liberal program. But he wasn't someone who was driven by sort of strict ideology. He wanted to find solutions, and he. It was rooted in principle, but he really was someone who wanted to try a bunch of different things. And you see that in 1932, when he's running for president, he's not convinced that he can sell the country on this sort of remaking of its government. He's really just trying to, first and foremost, offer himself as an agent of change.
- [12:17]
Don Wildman
How much of what we are so familiar with, the short sound bites and all the position statements that are done in the. For the shortest attention span possible. How much of that was part of the game back then? Or was it different? You had editorials, newspapers, and radios, and they were taking their time explaining these things. But had that already been baked into American politics, presidential politics, to a certain extent.
- [12:40]
Jonathan Darman
You know, I mean, I'm always struck when I listen to the radio broadcasts from the early 30s, which is, you know, the beginning of the golden age of radio in the United States. People assume that you can sit there and listen to really complex thoughts and that the audience is going to take it in. And so to us today, with our sort of fried brains and our short attention span, it sounds quite complex and measured and all of that at the same time. I think the great innovation of Franklin Roosevelt Particularly when you compare him with someone like Hoover, was to learn the cadences of the radio age, which were much shorter, snappier than had been the custom in politics, where you would get up and you would give these long speeches and you would, you know, they would print the speeches in the paper the next day and people would sort of congratulate you on the beauty of the prose in your speaking. He wasn't trying to accomplish that in his radio addresses. And Hoover was someone who was just terrible at communicating with the press. Like, if you look at the Hoover presidency, there's just missed opportunity. We today who are savvy about, you know, media moments, you see missed opportunity after missed opportunity. The one that I always love thinking about is, as you were saying before, you know, Herbert Hoover was actually a genuinely good guy who had a lot of capacity for charity. And he had this White House tradition of inviting Girl Scouts to the White House at Christmas time and giving them gifts. And it's, you know, it's the type of thing we think of today as sort of a rote, humanizing moment. But the Hoovers banned the press from seeing that they didn't want him to be in that sort of undignified setting. So a reporter actually dressed up as a Girl Scout just so she could get that copy in the paper. And then she was of course, like, you know, banished from the White House. So they didn't have any of that kind of savvy, which, you know, if that had been the Roosevelt White House, there would have been a pack of reporters there at all times if there were for comparable events.
- [14:42]
Don Wildman
We're kind of working on a list here how fdr, you know, managed this candidacy that overtook the nation. First we got a weak opponent on his heels. FDR's got a proven track record at this point, excellent brand name. Roosevelt doesn't hurt. An extraordinary resume at this point in his life. New York Senate, age 28, he was there. Assistant Secretary of the Navy, 1913. He will become the twice elected Governor of New York. Barely serves the second term, but when the depression hits in 1929, he was brand new in his first term. So over the course of the next few years, this is important. Before his presidential. He had this experience on the domestic side as a governor, dealing with what needed to happen. I guess what I'm trying to say is there's a really excellent resume for running for president at this point.
- [15:28]
Jonathan Darman
Yeah. And the people who were advising him and FDR himself were very smart about curating that resume and making sure that resume got out there in front of the public. So as he said he was, he ran for governor for the first time in New York State in 1928. And that had been after he had been away from the political stage for seven years, recovering from the effects of polio. He runs in 1928, really as a favor to the man who was running as the Democrats nominee for president that year, Al Smith, who was the sitting governor of New York at that time. And Smith sort of bullied FDR into running on the Democratic ticket in New York as the gubernatorial candidate in 1928 that year because Smith thought that if you have a Democrat named Roosevelt on the ticket, that's going to boost votes for the Democrats in New York State in 1928. Smith, of course, loses in a gigantic landslide to Hoover. But Roosevelt surprises everyone by winning the governorship and doing much better than his ticketmate Al Smith. And what that does is it creates this sort of great comeback story around Franklin Roosevelt, that he had been someone who had been out of the limelight for a long time, and all of a sudden he comes back and he wins the governorship in this exciting no one saw it coming moment. So from that moment, literally the moment that he wins the governorship in 1928, people are talking about him as someone who could be the next Democratic nominee for president. And, you know, a moment that I love even before he actually assumes the office of governorship. You know, FDR is asked about that and they say, are, you know, are you going to run for president in 1932? And he says, well, I want to take any presidential talk and stamp on it with my two feet. You know, if you know anything about Franklin Roosevelt, there's not a lot of pressure coming down from his two feet. So it's a sort of classically what we would think of as a Rooseveltian or later Clintonian statement, because he's very much focused on setting himself up as someone who could be a plausible candidate for president in four years time. And really everything he does in his two terms as governor of New York is keeping that in mind. There is a sort of shadow presidential campaign that is going to allow him ultimately to run what we would call today an inevitability campaign for the Democratic nomination in 1932.
- [18:02]
Don Wildman
I'll be right back after this short break. Meantime, if you'd like us to cover anything specifically, if you have any ideas of subject matter we should be looking at, send us an email@ahhistoryhit.com we'd love to hear from you.
- [18:18]
Eleanor Roosevelt
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- [19:32]
Unknown
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Ryan Reynolds
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Don Wildman
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Eleanor Yanaga
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Ryan Reynolds
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- [21:08]
Don Wildman
There were many who didn't like him. I mean, he had political enemies all over the place as governor, especially Walter Lippman, commentator at the time, wrote, while a pleasant man, FDR was, quote, without any important qualifications for the office. In my mind, that's completely untrue. But I guess Walter Lippmann had insight there. What was the division in the country at that time? Do we have records as far as, you know, the polarity of the country? Was there a much wider middle, unlike today?
- [21:34]
Jonathan Darman
I mean, I think certainly there was a larger middle and the parties themselves were a lot more mixed up than we think about today. So, you know, some people wonder a lot, you know, why is it that Teddy Roosevelt was a Republican and Franklin Roosevelt was a Democrat? You know, that's the same family, and it's sort of unthinkable to us today. But really you had, in those days, you had conservative Republicans and you had liberal Republicans, and similarly, you had conservative Democrats and you had liberal Democrats. And Franklin Roosevelt and Teddy Roosevelt were both examples of the sort of progressive, good government wings of their two respective parties. So there was, I think, the country was much less politically polarized around issues and around ideology in 1932 than what we have become accustomed to today. And a lot of that, you know, just going back to the Walter Lippmann line. I mean, I love that line because it's, as you say, he's just so perfectly missing the point of Franklin Roosevelt. But he wasn't alone in that view. And I think, again, that's rooted in Lippmann was someone who had known Roosevelt for a long time. A lot of people who had known the younger, earlier Roosevelt, including Herbert Hoover, sort of saw him as a lightweight. And actually, when Roosevelt wins the Democratic nomination in the summer of 1932, Hoover thinks this is my first stroke of good luck in a while because he thinks that Roosevelt is going to be the easiest candidate for him to beat. Because he thinks, like Lippmann, he thinks that Roosevelt is not a man of great consequence.
- [23:10]
Don Wildman
Sure, you could think of George Bush, W. Bush in the same way as far as the, you know, the beginning of their presidency. Obviously things went a lot differently, but that same kind of silver spoon mentality, oh, this kid's, you know, just. Just riding on the coattails of his dad or in this case, his cousin, his second cousin, maybe all that was going on for Roosevelt, little did they see him coming. The Depression has a huge impact, obviously, and is going to become the engine for his future electoral campaigns because it's such a divisive moment in the country. As to how you're going to deal with this, I mean, you can't forget this is an enormous. There's been a Russian revolution over there in 1917. There's a great fear of the red is coming for America, Union strikes, et cetera, et cetera. He has to ride that wave in a very interesting way, bringing in these new national Cena Socialistic programs all the while. That's the magic of fdr. He somehow does find his way to the middle, despite the fact that he represents things that many Americans fear to death. You know, they're really scared of that stuff.
- [24:12]
Jonathan Darman
Yeah. There's a story that goes around early in the Roosevelt presidency about someone supposedly coming in to see FDR in the Oval Office, and he says to him, you know, Mr. President, if your program succeeds, you'll be the greatest president in our history. And if your program fails, you'll be the worst president in our history. And Roosevelt corrects him and says, if our program fails, I'll be the last president in our history.
- [24:41]
Don Wildman
Wow.
- [24:41]
Jonathan Darman
That story may or may not be true. It's like what we. My background is in journalism, what we would call sort of too good to check. But, you know, it makes its way into the press in 1933 and 1934. And I think what's to me telling about it is that everyone understands it right away. Everyone gets the joke there, because this is in the early 1930s. This is an age of dictators. You see the rise of fascism in Nazi Germany. You see dictatorships in Italy and in Spain. And this is very much something that is on the table in the United States, that if the constitutional order as it had existed up to that point, if it couldn't provide remedies to these great social upheavals and problems that the country was facing, that you were going to have to look to extra constitutional means. And I think when you look at why that doesn't happen in the United States, there are any number of reasons. But one of them, I think, comes back to this idea of Roosevelt as the Democratic politician. I say that with a lowercase D. He loves the game of politics, and he is thinking about how he can achieve great change while staying within the norms and limits, by and large, of a constitutional democracy.
- [26:02]
Don Wildman
Sure. Well, as I say, the Depression becomes the story of his presidency, obviously, but even further, because it takes a long time to get out of the Depression. I mean, it's a decade's worth of recovery that's going on. It was that bad. Nonetheless, when he runs again in 36 he. His shares of the votes increases. He goes from. Well, these are huge numbers, 88.9 to 98.5% of the electoral college, from 57.4 to 60% of the vote, popular vote. He's doing something right. And my theory has always been that he's just so damn pleasing. You know, he's so good at creating an intimacy like no other president before or since, frankly, has ever been able to use the hugeness of the office, but bring it down to the. Every person. He's very good at that. And the radio helps. When does that start, the fireside chats and all that?
- [26:55]
Jonathan Darman
It starts from the earliest moments of the presidency. I completely agree, by the way, 100% with what you say. If you look at the sweep of the Roosevelt presidency, he makes plenty of policy mistakes and he gets things wrong, like, quite frequently, actually. But what he's great at is forming this bond with the American people and speaking to them in a way that they have confidence in his leadership. And it's really, I think in a lot of ways, it's. In our polarized, fractionalized media environment, it's impossible for us to even comprehend.
- [27:34]
Don Wildman
But there's a very specific thing I'm talking about, and I think. I know you agree it's a fine line. It's just that most people just don't have it, period. To be able to walk into a room and play the room and yet connect with an individual is a dynamic that challenges every human being on every level of society. Never mind the presidency where you have the biggest pulpit or whatever you call it, to have to deal with millions of people to talk to at once and yet still have that in mind. It's a subconscious ability that few people have. It's. There's emotional qualities to it. There's all sorts of psychological aspects to this. And that is really, I believe, his major badge of honor as far as presidencies are concerned.
- [28:13]
Jonathan Darman
I agree. And you're right. It is a unique psychological phenomenon, I think, among presidential candidates and presidents. I previously worked on a book about Ronald Reagan. I was really struck that there's this similarity between Reagan and fdr, where we think of both of them as these great communicators who are, as you say, really great at forming a connection. Both of them, their children described them as men who were essentially impossible to know. Interesting and really hard. I mean, this is very true of Franklin Roosevelt. He really kept his own counsel about his own feelings, and large, large parts of his personality were kept secure and away from even the People who were nominally closest to him, his wife, certainly, and his children. And there's this pain if you're the child of a Roosevelt or the child of a Reagan, that this guy who has this incredible ability to make complete strangers feel like he's looking into their soul is someone that they will never know. So it's, to me, what makes the study of not so much the presidency but presidents fascinating is it's this unique window on a very particular kind of human specimen.
- [29:27]
Don Wildman
Right. There's so many nooks and crannies to the story that are so fascinating, and I'm resisting the impulse to go into them because we're trying to tell the story of how this man gets elected time and time again. There's a chicken and egg situation here. He's a born political animal with remarkable instincts, deep experience, that's one thing. But for his entire presidency, he faces extraordinary challenges. So that's the other side of it. Great men meet great times. Depression goes into World War II. I mean, there has never been a president who has faced larger challenges, is there?
- [30:00]
Jonathan Darman
No, that's right. And the sort of gathering storm clouds of World War II, to use a familiar historical cliche, becomes the predicate for FDR's breaking of what had been the norm up to that point and seeking the third term. We've talked a lot in this country in recent years about the difference between norms and customs, on the one hand, and actual constitutional restrictions, because our recent generation of political leadership has at times really struggled with some of those norms. I think when you look at the example of the third presidential term, you see that norms in the United States in our history are always quite precarious. So even before the situation in Europe really completely deteriorates, there is conversation about, is Franklin Roosevelt going to run for a third term? He had been at that point already, as he said, through his leadership, through the Depression and through the advent of the New Deal programs, such a consequential president that it was hard for people to imagine anyone else, A, in the White House, but B, leading the Democratic Party. And the Democratic Party by the late 1930s was quite fractured. So FDR, who really wanted to see the New Deal enshrined, I think, was uncomfortable with the idea of really handing over the reins to some others in the Democratic Party who were in, in some cases, quite opposed to the New Deal program. So that's in his head. And then war breaks out in Europe in September of 1939, and the real moment where it becomes clear to FDR that he's going to run again for a third term is in the late spring of 1940 when Germany launches the battle of France and France falls. Italy enters the war attacking France as well. And it's clear that the sort of future of what worker then called the democracies in Europe is in great peril and that the United States could be this sort of island in a fascist driven world. I think FDR at that point thinks, okay, I'm going to forsake this norm once and for all, and decides that he will accept his party's nomination in 1940.
- [32:25]
Unknown
I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Eleanor Yanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and latest groundbreaking research from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, kings and popes who were rarely the best of friends. Murder, rebellions and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History. Hit on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [32:55]
Matt Lewis
Deep in the ocean, an Orca pod is on the hunt. But these aren't your average Orcas. These guys are organized marketing team.
- [33:04]
Jonathan Darman
Did you get those social media posts.
- [33:06]
Ryan Reynolds
Scheduled for the seal migration?
- [33:08]
Matt Lewis
Aye aye, Captain. We even have an automated notification for all pod managers when they go live. They use Monday.com to keep their teamwork sharp, their communication clear, and their goals in sight. Monday.com or whatever you run, even orcas go to Monday.com to dive deeper.
- [33:31]
Don Wildman
It's pretty clearly rationalized. I mean, was there that moment when he gets up and says, look, I'd rather not do this, but you know, I have to do it. Their third term is necessary to keep the continuum going.
- [33:41]
Jonathan Darman
Yeah, and it's always hard with Roosevelt. You know, what's, what he's saying publicly and what. Or even what he's saying privately. You have his words. And then what does he really mean? So he does make a big, a big deal of it publicly, saying, you know, all that is in me longs to return to my home in the Hudson River Valley. But given the dire situation in the world, I'm going to, I'm going to offer myself as a candidate for the country one more time because I think it's my duty to lead now, you know, you can critique that decision because it is a fundamental American idea that we don't have kings. We think that our system can produce leaders in a moment who will respond to the times accordingly. So, you know, it certainly is an idea that is arguable of could someone else have emerged in 1940 as the leader that America needed? But I think from the perspective of history, when we look at the strength of the march of fascism in Europe, when we look at the virulence of isolationism and potential trends toward authoritarianism here in the United States, it's to my mind, without question, that we got very lucky that Franklin Roosevelt was able to overcome that obstacle and seek a third term in 1940.
- [34:58]
Don Wildman
And I believe that it was his charisma, largely that ability and desire to create a connection with the people that enabled the trust that he would have had to depend upon at that point. Because against the backdrop of such fascism, people, of course, were accusing him of tilting towards his own form of that, you know, he's virtually a dictator compared to George Washington stepping gracefully aside. Here we are, you know, launching off into who knows what as we allow this guy to take over again. But it was. He could fall back on that trust that he had gained through so many years of talking directly to them. I think that's a really important thing to keep repeating through this conversation and compare to today's leaders, who are not that good at that. It's a weird thing. They've got so many means to do it, but they seem to lack the ability to create that same bond.
- [35:47]
Jonathan Darman
I think that's right. I think that when he's running in 1940 and then into the year that follows his election to the third term, he does this very sort of complicated dance where on the one hand he's saying, we're going to stay out of the war, but he is making it clear on which side his sympathies lie and on which side he thinks the country's sympathies should lie. And that's something that I think when you look at his unique abilities as a communicator, you really see how he could pull that off. Because imagine we see it today. It is something that really trips up our contemporary leaders, is this idea about, well, we support our allies, but we're going to draw red lines. I mean, these are the kinds of things that really get presidents tied in knots. And for fdr, you know, it provided a lot of moments of real peril. And he helped himself at times by being having sort of an elastic relationship with the truth. So when he's running in 1940, in the final days of the campaign, which is always when presidential candidates get sort of carried away in their rhetoric, he's aware that the country really doesn't want to enter the war. So he says at One point in a speech, he says to the mothers of the United States, I promise you, your boys are not going to go to fight in any foreign wars. You know, when we look at then, what happens with the United States entering the war ultimately after Pearl Harbor, I guess you can give him a pass because of the use of the word foreign in that formulation. The war gets brought home to the United States. But when he said those words, he knew how the public was going to hear it, which was he was saying, we are going to stay out of the war. And I think in his heart, he knew that was actually not true.
- [37:36]
Don Wildman
Well, we could probably just wrap this up by saying he was a damn good lawyer is what he really was. He could parse a phrase, he could figure out. You know, he could play the chess game. But it also seems like another uncanny example that the US Seems blessed with leadership. For the worst dilemmas we face, It's. It happens time and time again. It's crazy.
- [37:54]
Jonathan Darman
Yeah, I think that's right. And it's. To me, it's a consoling thing in these moments, like the ones we're living through now, where the problems feel quite bleak and the political leadership class can at times seem quite lacking. For me, one of the things that I really took away from looking closely at FDR's life was that if you were someone in 1932 who was deeply concerned about where America was heading and Franklin Roosevelt was what was on offer to you as the potential leadership of the country, you wouldn't have seen in him, necessarily, based on everything you knew about him and his reputation. We talked about the estimation of people like Lippmann. You wouldn't have seen, ah, this is someone who is clearly going to be the greatest leader of the 20th century. So that greatness comes in surprising places, and it comes on very quickly. I mean, if you look at the Roosevelt example, he goes from someone that people think of as a sort of political lightweight to someone who has this ability to inspire affection and trust from the majority of the country in really just a span of a few months. So even in these moments today where we think we don't see leaders who are of the caliber of a Lincoln or of an fdr. I think we can take consolation that that leadership can come on in surprising moments from places that we don't expect to see it.
- [39:26]
Don Wildman
Jonathan, we talk so much about the grandeur of FDR's time in the White House, his great accomplishments. What about his failures? Where did he fall short?
- [39:35]
Jonathan Darman
Oh, yeah. I mean, I think there are Tons of failings. I mean, you can look first and foremost at what today we would call the sort of moral failings. So we were talking about the leadership during World War II. I think there is no way, when you look at the internment of the Japanese population in the United States, just this sort of blatant violation of what we think of as American norms around civil liberties. There's no way to excuse it. And you know, a lot of people would fault him for his sort, apparently at times indifference to the plight of European Jews in the lead up to World War II and even during the war, after the United States enters the war, that he is aware in a lot of ways of what the Nazi regime is doing to the Jewish population of Europe. And yet he is not driven with a sense of moral urgency on that issue in the way that he might have been. So that certainly is a failing. I think that there are failings on civil rights, which was an important emerging issue in the Democratic party in the 1930s. He was someone who was very aware that the Democratic party in the 1930s had a strong base in the segregationist, the white segregationist political establishment of the South. And he was very careful not to upset those politicians in a way that I think we can judge harshly today. So there are a lot of things that he gets wrong in his presidency.
- [41:05]
Don Wildman
He wanted to increase the size of the Supreme Court, which resonates through to today. Isn't it 1937? And they had been blocking his New Deal projects. Never got away with that.
- [41:13]
Jonathan Darman
That's right. It is something that resonates today. And if you look at the history of the court packing scheme, one of his failings there is really just in the sort of political mismanagement of it. He gets reelected in 1936. He has this idea that the Supreme Court is blocking all of his New Deal programs and is going to be this ultimate obstacle to the kind of change he wants to bring to the country. And so he goes about with this court packing scheme and he doesn't. This is an interesting psychological case. He doesn't really sell it to the public. He does it from this place of anger and, you know, sort of seeking retribution, and it fails spectacularly. It's a moment of great political vulnerability in FDR's presidency. So, yeah, he has failings as a politician even too.
- [42:00]
Don Wildman
Yeah, but he is the defining presidency of the 20th century. I grew up the son of FDR Democrats who are proud of that. And that's not because they were working class people necessarily. They were teachers. And so forth. I mean, it was he appealed to people of all stripes. I think that he plays through, of course to Reagan, who was a big supporter of his earlier in his life, and of course Biden. I mean, all of these presidents throughout time have either been influenced by or rejecting those policies of fdr. It's been the ballast in the boat, I guess you could say. Jonathan Darman is an author and journalist who writes about American politics and history. He previously came on the show to discuss becoming FDR in episode 14. Look back at that one, it'll be just as compelling in a conversation. Thank you so much, Jonathan. We'll talk to you again in a couple of years.
- [42:47]
Jonathan Darman
Great. I look forward to it.
- [42:51]
Eleanor Roosevelt
Hello folks.
- [42:52]
Don Wildman
Thanks for listening to American History Hit.
- [42:54]
Eleanor Roosevelt
Each week we release new episodes, two new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursdays.
- [43:00]
Don Wildman
All kinds of great content like mysterious.
- [43:02]
Eleanor Roosevelt
Missing colonies to powerful political movements to some of the biggest battles across the centuries. Don't miss an episode by hitting like and follow. You help us out, which is great, but you'll also be reminded when our shows are on.
- [43:15]
Don Wildman
And while you're at it, share with.
- [43:17]
Eleanor Roosevelt
A friend American History Hit with me. Don Wildman. So grateful for your Support.
- [43:22]
Don Wildman
Bye for now.
- [43:40]
Unknown
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