Loading summary
Transcript80 lines
- [00:00]
A
Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland. There is plenty to discover. With your subscription. You'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com subscribe to bring the Past Alive.
- [00:32]
B
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching your insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy. Just drop in some details about yourself and see if you're eligible to save money when you bundle your home and auto policies. The process only takes minutes and it could mean hundreds more in your pocket. Visit progressive.com after this episode to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. Your new home is now ready Dr. Horton, America's builder has new homes that are ready today with new construction communities in Ellensburg and throughout the Greater Seattle area. Dr. Horton has the right home for you. At Dr. Horton, we're still building with flexible living spaces, smart home technology and two and three car garages. More communities and more homes available every day. Find your new home in Ellensburg now ready@drhorton.com Dr. Horton, America's builder and Equal Housing Opportunity Builder.
- [01:34]
A
A stone's throw from the National Mall in Washington, D.C. located on a narrow strip of land between the Tidal Basin and the Potomac river is the memorial to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. This is no modest plaque, nothing like the man's first Washington memorial as desk sized stone set quietly before the National Archives. No, this is a sweeping seven and a half acre landscape divided into four outdoor areas, each representing one of FDR's four terms in office. Water moves throughout, crashing downward to evoke the shock of the Wall street crash, Cascading over stepped granite in tribute to New Deal dams, then bursting outward in a restless spray, a reflection of a world at war. Here stand bronze figures of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, the President's beloved dog Falla, citizens waiting in breadlines, a man bent toward a radio to hear a fireside chat, and Roosevelt himself memorialized not once but twice. It is a monument to a life's achievement, but like most monuments, it functions primarily to celebrate, not to question. Which raises an uncomfortable thought. Should we question Franklin Roosevelt? Did the man have any failures at all? Well, of course he did. He was only human. But this monument, and honestly, popular American history so often seems to suggest otherwise. Hi all, it's Don Weilman here. Welcome to American history. Hit. Glad to be with you. It's commonplace in 20th century American history. To credit Franklin Delano Roosevelt with so much. He led the nation out of the Great Depression, stabilized a collapsing economy, reshaped the federal government through sweeping reform. Then he turned his attention internationally confronting and ultimately leading the defeat of fascist regimes threatening to dominate the world. The New Deal victory in World War II, elected president four times. It's an impressive resume. But in America, we polish our presidents into monuments. They begin as politicians, power brokers, human beings. Then over time, memory fades as we smooth away the rough edges, the miscalculations, the moral compromises, all in favor of a more reassuring, triumphant image that really reflects how we prefer to see ourselves. Problem is, at some point we stop asking the questions. We can learn from glossing over decisions that were misguided, off base, even deeply harmful. And yes, Franklin Roosevelt made plenty of those too. So today we'll try to do with FDR what we really should do with every president. Measure greatness alongside failure, achievement alongside consequence. What did FDR do wrong? Well, you might be surprised at the list which we'll discuss today with David Beto, Professor Emeritus of the History Department at the University of Alabama. Roll Tide. Professor Beto's newest book, among so many in his distinguished career, was released in November 25, entitled FDR A New Political Life. Greetings, Professor. Hello David. Thank you for your time today.
- [04:52]
C
Yeah, it's great to see you again. Yes, as well. Yeah, I did a thing many years ago. We were vaguely trying to, we were trying to reconstruct what, what happened exactly,
- [05:01]
A
but it was my life. Yeah, I'm looking forward to this. As a man raised by died in the wool FDR Democrats, I could probably benefit from some wider perspective. But maybe before we go there, let's talk about the. His general reputation. You see him on every list of the best of worst presidents. He's right at the top along with Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt. There's FDR briefly, if that's possible. Why? So how did he reach such a pinnacle?
- [05:31]
C
Well, I too was raised by dyed in the wool FDR Democrats. So we have that in common. I think it's interesting that I do what historians call a counterfactual. Let's assume as many people had expected FDR would not have run for a third term, that he kept the two term tradition. How would he be regarded now, even by mainstream historians? You still have double digit unemployment in 1940. That's after 11 years since the stock market crash. You have no Anti lynching bill, for example, year after year the NAACP been pushing it. The situation in Europe is not looking very good in 1940. FDR has sort of barred the door to Jewish refugees. We could go on with many examples that if we were to use that particular barometer or FDR would, you know, how would you rank him? As a great president. Yet today he is ranked as a great president. As you said, he's up there, number one, number two. Usually he's number one or number two right next to Lincoln, sometimes Washington. And he has this incredible reputation. Yet if we look at his record again, we did not get out of the Great Depression. We still have double digit unemployment on the eve of World War II. Why is he ranked so highly? I think it has a lot to do with the ideology of most historians. Most historians, including my colleagues, regard the growth of the welfare regulatory state as a good thing, as a positive development in American history. And because the fdr, that was one of his legacies, they're inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. That's part of it. I think there's a Persona of FDR that is bewitching. He's one of the more charismatic presidents in American history. And I think my parents sort of had the view. They had the same view of Nelson Rockefeller that, well, he's an aristocrat, he doesn't have to do this. He could just live there at Hyde park and enjoy his gentlemanly life. But he comes forward public service to serve the people. So he's got this aristocratic, charming manner about him.
- [08:00]
A
Right.
- [08:01]
C
I call him Thurston Howell III with a heart.
- [08:04]
A
There you go.
- [08:05]
C
There's actually some interesting parallels between them. Or at least that's the reputation Thurston
- [08:10]
A
Howell, it's the cigarette holder in the teeth. It's the jauntiness of the, the cap and Harvard.
- [08:17]
C
Yes.
- [08:17]
A
And the noise, the voice. It's also very importantly the bonhomie with the press corps at the time combined with a new radio presence which really is of his era. But of course that's all fueled by the charisma, as you say it.
- [08:32]
C
Well, on the radio thing it was said that FDR could have been a very successful radio announcer, that he never run for office.
- [08:39]
A
Well, he was, he was announcing his own presidency. He was narrating it by the fire. Yeah, it's really about the triumphalism of what happened as a result of his presidencies. And as I said in the opening, we don't do ourselves any justice by glossing over all the nooks and crannies of many negatives that happened during his presidency. So that's what this conversation is really about. And your book FDR A New Political Life really does study that, am I right?
- [09:08]
C
Yeah, this is a critical portrait, I think it's fair to say. But I try to understand what, what motivates fdr, where he's coming from, I look at his background and how that influenced him. And I rely quite heavily on the leading works by historians that are generally give a much more positive assessment of fdr. That's my source material, the leading studies that have been done. I rely a lot on people that knew fdr, that worked with him, like his Attorney General Francis Biddle for example. And Biddle's a very interesting example. Biddle was against Japanese internment, as were many of FDR's advisors. He has some devastating things to say in his book about FDR's attitudes towards the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Yet he dedicated his book, it was his autobiography, 1962, to FDR. So it's interesting that you have people that are, you can get some very critical information about him. But in the end, Harry Truman's another example. Harry Truman called him the coldest man he ever knew. Shortly before he died, he was interviewed, he said he was the coldest man he ever knew. He didn't care about you, he didn't care about me, but he brought the country into the 20th century. So there's a devastating thing to have said about you. I mean, FDR's reputation is the guy
- [10:42]
A
who cares about the every man you know.
- [10:44]
C
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
- [10:46]
A
So yeah, I mean we can apply the adage if great times make great men and women, then the Great Depression for one thing, was bound to produce a figure of considerable consequence. FDR meeting this moment, let's talk about the New Deal. Do we give him too much credit where that is concerned? I think you're going to say yes.
- [11:04]
C
Yeah, we give him too much credit. I mean typically in American history, depressions had lasted two to three years. Probably the most interesting parallel was in 1921, 22 you had a downturn which was actually more severe than the downturn between 1929 and 1930. But what happened? The United States got out of that pretty quickly and unemployment was back down to like 3, 4%. Yet what we are talking about in the Great depression of the 1930s, and I blame Hoover and Roosevelt for this, is their policies actually held back recovery. And as I mentioned, you still have double digit unemployment. That's not a recovery in 1941, as you're getting close to Pearl harbor. And a lot of it has to do with policies that were geared to propping up prices, propping up wages, but it was a heck of a cost for that was a lot of unemployment.
- [12:05]
A
Yeah, it was a heck of a climb back though from the kind of unemployment we're talking about. You know, in the Great Depression.
- [12:10]
C
Again, we had very high unemployment in the recession of 1921 and we're down very quickly.
- [12:17]
A
Okay, interesting.
- [12:18]
C
Yeah, it does get up to 25% by 1933, but it really is kind of just. It does go down, but then it goes back up again for a while because we have a big downturn in 1937 called the nicknamed at the time, depression number two spikes back up again, then it goes back down. So still stuck.
- [12:39]
A
By 1939, six years after the commencement of the New Deal, 9.5 million people. I'm underscoring what you just said here. 17.2% of the labor force remained officially unemployed. 1939, it's still, as you say, double digit percentages of employment. The Dow Jones average doesn't pass its 1929 peak until 1952. The net private investment totaled -3.1 billion. All told, we land again in a second recession as we're talking about 1937, which suggests that the New Deal created a rather fragile recovery. And as most people agree, it would take the World War II and the gigantic government stimulus that represents to really shore things up for real in a whole different way. So taken that FDR's address of the Great Depression has been overblown, hasn't it?
- [13:32]
C
Yeah. And back to the whole net private investment thing, a lot of that is because people were just, were scared. There was uncertainty what was going to happen next because FDR is, you know, we got top marginal rates getting over 90% during parts of the Roosevelt administration, very high tax rates, a lot of attacks on business people. And so business people are very afraid to invest.
- [14:01]
A
Right.
- [14:02]
C
So that is a major issue that's going on during the Great Depression.
- [14:06]
A
I've always wanted to ask this general question. We talk about the New Deal and FDR's policies and sweeping reforms. Was it that new? Was the idea of the federal government stepping forward in moments of crisis, I guess putting the Civil War aside, because that's a different kind of action here. Was that unprecedented or had the federal government tried to do this, passed and then it was argued against and defeated or whatever? Was what FDR did such a breakthrough or not?
- [14:34]
C
I think it was a Breakthrough. Except for Hoover. Hoover is the guy that really got the ball rolling. Hoover did not like what had happened in the early 1920s. Had been secretary of Commerce. He's president pressing the president very hard to intervene more. And the president has this view, that's President Harding, that let's let everything readjust. Let's let, you know, sort of the old view was that there had been a boom situation, there had been over expansion, and that we need to let that readjust back down. And Hoover had the view that we needed to hold up wages. He said, look, wages are the key to prosperity. We had high wages in the 1920s. If we keep them high, we will have high wages. Now the trouble with that theory was, yes, you can keep the wages up, but then employers are going to lay off people. And that's exactly what they did. So this is the biggest, one of the biggest ironies of the Great Depression. Real wages, that's, you know, what the wage will actually purchase. Real wages are actually higher in 1932 than they'd been in 1929. In 1929, you're at the height of the prosperity, or at least the prosperity is kind of ending at that point. You know, look before the stock market crash, wages are actually lower in terms of what they really spend because you have big deflation, you have big price falls, but wages stay up. In fact, Keynes, the British economist, he discusses this. This is not new with me. He says wages are sticky. They're sticky downward. What you used to have in previous depressions is the wages would readjust. They didn't in the Great Depression.
- [16:31]
A
In order to enact so much sweeping reform, FDR had to go around Congress in the States. He had to use the executive orders, the power of the presidency we hear so much about in these days. He used it more than any previous president, correct?
- [16:45]
C
Oh, certainly more than any other previous president. And of course we have. The more notorious example of that would be Japanese internment. But then the bank holiday, that was an executive order going off the gold standard initially, although he gets Congress later to agree to that. But there's a whirlwind of executive orders and it's sad in a way because some of them were that we most praise FDR for that. Reasonable people are going to say he had to do this like, like the bank holiday possibly were unnecessary because Canada, interestingly enough, FDR was well aware it was going on in Canada because he vacationed there. Did not have a single bank failure during the Great Depression. Not a single one. Why? Because Canada had a system of banks. Their banks could branch across provincial lines. So if you had a banking failure in Saskatchewan, right, because of wheat or whatever, that wouldn't bring down the whole banking system. If you had a banking system and you know, part of Indiana where, which was heavily dependent on, say, certain agricultural goods, the local economy, the whole thing would go down. But you allowed branching. And there were many proposals put forward to allow banks to branch. And during the period before FDR became president, there was a bill proposed by Senator Carter Glass of Virginia. Glass proposed a bill to allow that. And FDR was sort of non committal. And then Huey Long, the very famous senator from Louisiana, launched a filibuster against it and FDR backed off. So if FDR and if Hoover had pushed something like that, we might have been able to avoid this banking crisis that we had, because Canada did not have. They didn't have a single banking failure. We had thousands of banks go under. It was devastating. And a lot of that was these smaller banks, local banks that were dependent on the local economy and they couldn't diversify. They were not diversified for that reason.
- [19:07]
A
So questionable approach to dealing with the banking crisis. Let's put that on the list. Also questionable, the approach to the agricultural community. The Agricultural Adjustment Act.
- [19:18]
C
The Agricultural Adjustment act was a. There were two big things for the first New Deal. That was the first wave, called the first New Deal. One of them was the Agricultural Adjustment act. And the other one was the National Recovery Administration, the Agricultural Justice Administration. As you indicated, what that was geared to is reducing production, encouraging farmers, paying farmers, giving them incentives for plowing crops. Under people would say, you know, every third row plowed under to killing livestock. Thousands of piglets were killed. This was the whole goal of the Triple A, was to reduce production. And the irony is some people pointed out that this is all occurring at a time when you have people that, you know, starving, you're destroying foodstuffs. But that was the goal of this. Now, it had some unintended consequences. In the south, for example, they tried to reduce cotton production, for example. These still had these fairly big planters in the south. And they were paid subsidies to reduce cotton production, given incentives to have less acreage being used to produce cotton. And so they were supposed to. These planters were supposed to share these benefits with their tenants and sharecroppers because a lot of poor whites and African Americans are tenants and sharecroppers. But that wasn't really enforced. And so what they ended up doing in many cases is expel them from the land, kick them out we don't need your labor anymore. We don't need as many sharecroppers. We don't need as many farm tenants because we don't need the goods. You know, we gotta reduce production. And this was criticized by a lot of black newspapers, such as the Chicago Defender.
- [21:23]
A
Yeah, there's something else called the National Recovery Administration. This was news to me. I didn't even know about this. This agency, which had inspectors that had an unprecedented access to negatively impacting small business owners. Correct. This is a interesting agency. I don't know what they did.
- [21:40]
C
This is the most ambitious attempt to plan the economy, I would say, ever, even since then. And what the NRA did is it was an agency that was self regulation, I guess you could say, where you would have hundreds of NRA codes. They had codes for strippers, for example.
- [22:03]
A
Really?
- [22:03]
C
I guess it wouldn't be the strippers themselves. It'd be the people who run burlesque enterprises.
- [22:08]
A
The proprietors of it.
- [22:10]
C
Yes, the proprietors. And they would have things like, for example, the basic idea, again, was to raise prices and raise wages and minimize the numbers of hours that people could work. And so they would actually require this. They'd say, okay, we've decided the minimum wage for all workers is going to be this amount. We've decided that the maximum price that people can charge or the minimum price that people can charge is this amount. So people actually went to jail violating this. There was a code for tailors, and this had actually been made by the tailors themselves. But who tended to control it? The wealthiest ones. Right. The ones that lived. The ones that had the best known brand names. So if you were somebody off the main drag and you wanted to compete, your only way to compete was to charge a lower price. And one of these guys was a guy named Jake McGinn. He was a tailor and he charged 35 cents for pressing a suit when the standard price set under the NRA by his fellow tailors was 40 cents. He went to jail for charging 35 cents for pressing a suit when the, you know, the official price was 40.
- [23:41]
A
Wow.
- [23:41]
C
That actually happened. And I was giving the example the strippers, but they actually limited the numbers of strips per night in burlesque. Shows that again, from a historian that is much more positive about FDR than me, named William Luchtenberg. He uncovered that information.
- [24:01]
A
Wow. Talk about an ironic way to address the Great Depression by the opposite of government stimulus. When we come back, let's talk about the 1937 court packing scheme, which was such an interesting time and also has such themes that resonate today. This episode brought to you by Best Western Hotels and Resorts. Ah, spring. Trees blossoming, flowers blooming. Not having to defrost your fingers and toes when you get inside. Oh yeah, and spring break freedom. Warmer climbs and memories just waiting to be made. And at Best Western, spring break isn't just what it used to be. It's better this spring. Stay three nights and get a fish. $50 Best Western Gift card. Life's a trip. Make the most of it at best Western. Visit bestwestern.com for complete terms and conditions.
- [24:58]
B
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Shifting a little money here, a little there, and hoping it all works out well? With the name your price tool from Progressive, you can be a better budgeter and potentially lower your insurance bill too. You you tell Progressive what you want to pay for car insurance and they'll help you find options within your budget. Try it today@progressive.com progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates price and coverage match limited by state law not available in all states. Ondeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team or bridging cash flow gaps on Deck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five star Trustpilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding. You can count on a apply in minutes@ondeck.com depending on certain loan attributes. Your business loan may be issued by Ondeck or Celtic Bank. Ondeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval. TikTok Shop tiene una norme variedad de productos. Cono fertas que no esperas buenos precios para los dias descarga TikTok Aura.
- [26:11]
A
Foreign. We are speaking with professor and author David Beto about FDR's failures as opposed to his so often spoken of successes. David 1937 we hear about this vaguely in the news these days. The idea of packing a court. And whenever it's discussed, we always hear FDR referred to why. So what was happening at that time and. And what was the plan that he had in mind?
- [26:39]
C
Okay, well I gave you these examples. They're called the first New Deal. And the two biggies, these are sort of forgotten now, but these were the two big things that people thought about when they thought about the New Deal in 1933. The NRA and the AAA. These were both struck down by the US Supreme Court as an unconstitutional delegation of executive power. You know, to the President, he said, you're giving him too much power. My God, you know, you're giving the President the power to set prices, set wages through these appointed boards in cooperation with big business. It became very unpopular among a lot of people. And the Supreme Court said, no, you can't do that, and struck both down as unconstitutional and struck down other New Deal initiatives. So FDR was very upset and his argument was, who are these nine old, you know, who are these members of the court, these old men on the court? Why are we listening to them? So FDR had this bright idea that he announces in 1937, he says, and he gives a speech and nobody took it seriously. I mean, no one took the argument seriously. Because here's what his argument was. He said, you know, the courts are overworked, these judges have too much work, and I want to make it easier for them. So we're going to increase the size of the court. I think he wanted to add like five members to the court. That was his argument. And nobody took that seriously. And even a lot of FDR supporters said, well, why not be honest about it? You know, because you just, you're upset at the court's rulings. So he goes to Congress and at this time, the Democrats have an incredible majority. They've got like, I think it's over 80% of the Senate. I mean, it's incredible numbers because they'd won some big victories in the 1936 election. They've got veto proof majorities. Who turns on FDR? Court packing. Certainly a lot of conservatives are against it, but the Republicans stay in the background. And the people that really lead the charge are New Dealers like Burton Wheeler, a New Deal senator, saying, this is too much. The Supreme Court, you're going too far. So you actually get a new rebellion on both the left and the right. And the Senate is able to defeat poor packing.
- [29:10]
A
Interesting.
- [29:10]
C
And FDR makes it his main priority in 1937 when the head of the NAACP is going to him quite desperately and saying, we need a bill to do something about these lynchings that have been occurring. A bill that had been proposed year after year. And FDR's priority is poor packing. He doesn't even really do much New deal stuff in 1937. He's focused on this issue so heavily that it just dominates everything else, including he dominates anything having to do with foreign policy as well. In 1937, the Supreme Court keeps resisting him.
- [29:50]
A
These four conservative justices that are really the block he wants to kind of address that and outflank that by the excuse really, of they've got too much work, he's going to add a new member to the court for every member that's over 70 years old. Did I hear that right?
- [30:08]
C
Yeah, basically that's what he wants to do.
- [30:09]
A
Okay.
- [30:10]
C
And again, this is a little dig at them because he's saying, well, they're all old people. They're all old and they need help. That's his argument.
- [30:19]
A
But really what he was up to was trying to get these things passed that were going to run into tangles that he didn't want to have. But ironically, the Democratic Congress rejects this and isn't going to back him on this idea. And that was the end of that, right?
- [30:35]
C
Yeah, that was the end of it. And part of the reason it was the end of it is although this is even happening before this. But people on the, some of the justices are changing their positions also. You know, you're getting, you know, they're starting to die and they're starting to retire. And by the end of his administration, I think he's appointed nearly the entire court by the end of his stick
- [31:01]
A
around for four terms, at least three terms, and you're going to have your chance to do that.
- [31:05]
C
What is interesting, though is FDR's overreach was so great that some of these court decisions, this is sometimes forgotten, were unanimous, like the position, the decision to strike down the NRA was unanimous, including the liberals on the court. And FDR was like, what's going on here? I thought these people were on my side. And a lot of them, though, were more divided, 5, 4. But some of them were unanimous.
- [31:34]
A
Well, you're speaking to a really important subplot of this whole thing, which is, you know, how much pushback was there at the time in the 30s against these reforms. And there was quite a bit. And because of the way this story has reported, been reported over the years, and I am part of this, I have often spoken in these terms, very general, glossy terms of how great this was that we were able to emerge from this great Depression. And we all credit, you know, knee jerk towards FDR for being the guy at the, at the scene. But it was a much more difficult period than people today understand. Never mind the economic, you know, strife. There was also a lot in the news about the nature of America and how the government ought to be acting, you know, in very much a real time. In the end, this idea of packing the court, I mean, none other than Louis Brandeis, who's the most liberal justice there signs a letter alongside his conservative colleagues accusing the president of infringing on the court's independence. The very kinds of things we hear about today very much alive right back in the middle of the 30s.
- [32:36]
C
Yeah, FDR was very, they're very close parallels. When he heard about the Supreme Court decision striking down the nra, he said, how did old Isaiah rule? And Isaiah was the nickname he gave to Brandeis, who FDR thought was he was simpatico. And he said Isaiah ruled against it. That's how universal because, you know, one thing about Brandeis is Brandeis was pretty consistent in opposing bigness. He didn't like bigness, and that included he was a little leery of too much power in the federal government as well as well as big business.
- [33:10]
A
Maybe I'm wrong to call him so liberal. When we come back after this next break, I'm going to summarize where we've come to at this point in the conversation, but we'll move on quickly afterwards to the most extraordinary thing, which is, well, maybe not the most extraordinary thing, but the fact that he lasts for four terms, but barely.
- [33:31]
B
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching your insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy. Just drop in some details about yourself and see if you're eligible to save money when you bundle your home and auto policies. The process only takes minutes and it could mean hundreds more in your pocket. Visit progressive.com after this episode to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states.
- [34:22]
A
DAVID One of the most amazing things about FDR to this day is that he's elected to presidency four times. We did a whole episode on this. I invite people to look for it. It's, you know, how, how controversial this really was for, for FDR to challenge the George Washington Rule, which is you never go past two terms. But he breaks that precedent. And mostly that's because of World War II. Right?
- [34:46]
C
Well, that's what FDR would say. But I think FDR liked the job. He wanted to stay in the job. And everybody there were younger people that had similar views, but he was always dissatisfied with all the, all the alternatives. And it's interesting, in 1940 and to some extent, 44, FDR keeps everybody waiting and he's telling all of his close advisors, he's saying, I don't want to run, I want to step down. I just want to go back to Hyde Park. There's a very close advisor named James Farley who he's telling that to. And Farley wants to run for president himself. He, he was an FDR confidant. Farley was, you know, is my source on this because he has several meetings with the FDR because he wants to run for president. So he's going to fdr, trying to get a sense of, you know, are you going to run or not? And FDR is saying, I don't want to run. I don't want to run. But he wouldn't make the announcement. He would never make the announcement. And then finally FDR is going to the convention. And FDR says, well, what should I say? What should I say to these people at the convention? And Farley tells him, tell them what General Sherman said. You will not run, and if nominated, you will not serve. You know, you're not running, right? And FDR said, I couldn't do that. And Jim. And. But then he gives a speech to the delegates where he said, I don't want to run. I hope you pick somebody else, but it's your choice as the delegates. And the delegates were just standing there at the convention. This is at the convention very different than today, looking dumbfounded, like, what do we do? FDR has told us, nominate whoever we want. But nobody was really running because FDR discouraged them all from going out there because they weren't sure what, you know, what was going to happen. And then the voice from the sewers came. This is called the voice from the sewers. The Democrats had hired a guy who was the head of this. He was a sewer commissioner. He was in the basement of the convention hall with a microphone that went into the convention hall loudspeakers. And he starts saying on the microphone, you know, he gets the word, we want Roosevelt. We want Roosevelt. Michigan wants Roosevelt. And then the delegates start to join in hearing this voice from the sewers. And they all holler and holler. And FDR is nominated overwhelmingly. Yes, this is what he does. And then he gives a speech and he says, I've had many sleepless nights worried about this. I don't want to do this. But like a good soldier, I'm going to serve. I will do it, but I'm reluctant. And it was all orchestrated. It was just shamelessly orchestrated. But that's how he pulls it off the first time. And the Second time is 19:44, when the extenuating circumstances war is not over. So he'll get Democrats going to nominate him, but his health is disaster. FDR as a incompetent doctor who was very good, had some medicine to treat FDR sinuses and they said fdr, he took care of FDR sinuses and he took care of the doctor. And the doctor was eventually promoted to be Surgeon General of the Navy. But anyway, he's a health disaster. His daughter Anna is so distressful, this doctor, that she convinces FDR to have a expert at Johns Hopkins, a cardiologist, see him and he says this man could just die any second. Wow, health disaster. But they cover it up. Yeah, he dies soon after getting elected, but he's sort of a walking dead
- [39:00]
A
man these days with television, you know, relentlessness of media, all of those secrets that were kept behind closed doors with FDR would have been, you know, right out in the open and would have changed the game a great deal for him politically, I'm sure. Nevermind personally. Moving on. David, I want to talk about his civil rights record which is really spotty. I mean, my God, getting renewed attention these days that after Pearl harbor there is this extraordinary thing that happens. It's hard to even wrap oneself around the officialdom of this, how it was justified, but it really was. And it was driven primarily by the executive branch. Executive Order 9066, February 1942 allows for the forced relocation and incarceration of Japanese Americans citizens, American citizens, all out in the West. How much was he being called to do this versus his own engineering of this?
- [39:53]
C
He was a central figure. Now you gotta remember that that Executive order is not signed until more than two months after Pearl Harbor. The initial response after Pearl harbor, including from newspapers in Los Angeles, places like that, is these are American citizens. No, we're not going to send American citizens to internment camps. We're not going to do that. That is an issue. Even the guy that's in charge of the internment, General DeWitt said, well of course we don't do that to American citizens. Maybe to non citizens will do stuff a like we did to German and Italian aliens, some of them anyway. But we're not going to do that to Americans. That's the initial attitude. But what happens is FDR refuses to give a reassuring speech, which he could have. He could have said we believe in the four Freedoms. He'd given a speech a year earlier called the Four Freedom Speech. We believe in them so much, we apply them to our Japanese American citizens. He doesn't do that. He just sort of lets everything drift and people start coming forward calling for internment. But there really isn't mass public hysteria. In fact, polls show that most Americans are satisfied pre internment polls show with general conditions that the way we're treating the Japanese, there's no big demand for it. FDR is so enthused about internment that he wants to intern Japanese Americans in Hawaii. And if you look at the executive order, it's vague. It says other persons. Doesn't even say Japanese. It says in designated zones shall be removed. The Department of the War has the power to do that, blah blah blah. It doesn't even, it doesn't even say that. But FDR wanted to intern them in Hawaii. And after the executive order he says, I've always believed this. And how would that have worked? Well, they're over a third of the population. The plan was to send them to one of the smaller islands. Right. To transport them from the main islands to this smaller island. And who stops it? Well, basically the local commanders drag their feet. They're good bureaucrats. Bureaucratic delay. Then some hard realities come up. Like for example, we need transport ships. Midway's going to come soon. Are we going to really use the transport ships to transport these Japanese Americans to one of the smaller islands? It's really an incredible letter that I cite and it's online where FDR lays all this out. This is what, well, he lays out. I really would like to do this, but it doesn't happen. So he is at the center of it. And a lot of it is FDR really has a kind of negative view towards Japanese Americans. Had written op eds in the 1920s where he said California is right to do what they're doing. They denied Japanese non citizens from owning land. That's good. They prohibited interracial marriage with Japanese Americans. And he says that's California's doing the right thing. We don't need this mixie.
- [43:26]
A
Attorney General Francis Biddle is quoted with this. The Department of Justice, as I had made it clear to Roosevelt from the beginning, was opposed to and would have nothing to do with the evacuation. I do not think he was much concerned with the gravity or implications of this step, nor do I think that the constitutional difficulty plagued him. Boy, that remark speaks so much about how FDR was being perceived even by his own people. Right?
- [43:55]
C
Yeah. And Biddle's not the only one against it. J. Edgar Hoover, not a great civil libertarian. Hoover doesn't like it. He's against it partly because I don't think he wants anything to do with it and he doesn't have anything to do with it. He hands it all over to the Army. Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes is against it. Harry Truman is against it. Believe it or not, Truman wrote later that it was the wrong thing to do. And I said so at the time. Now amending that a bit is Truman had a chance to say something at the time and he didn't, that I know of. But he says he was against it. So it's remarkable the numbers of people in the administration who were against it.
- [44:34]
A
This does not get apologized for until Ronald Reagan during his presidency finally makes that pronouncement. It's a, a real stain on this country that is still being processed really by generations afterwards. His nomination of Hugo Black as a Supreme Court Judge, 1937. Shortly after that nomination, the Pittsburgh Gazette accused Black, Hughes, Hugo Black of joining the Ku Klux Klan for two years, quitting only in 1925 and getting a golden grand passport with that organization. As a result, FDR distances himself from Black, but Black defends himself on the basis that he had made his name by representing an African American man who was given extra prison time for a sentence. Point is, this is a huge controversy, big blow up in the middle of the 30s, which is so important for FDR. But it also will resonate forward to how we can perceive FDR as not necessarily the man for everybody. He's not a great civil rights president, correct?
- [45:35]
C
Oh no, not at all. I mean, one example is, as I said, the anti lynching bill which had actually passed the house in the 1920s, had big support. And Walter White, who's the head of the naacp, not the breaking bad guy, he keeps going back to FDR year after year saying, could you please indicate some support for this? And FDR never does it. And FDR's excuse is, well, I can't because I got other priorities. And this goes on so long. And here let me give you a very revealing incident. FDR's vice president was fairly conservative, southerner Texan John Ance Garner. Garner had never really been favorable to anti lynching laws, but he was, he got outraged eventually because of just some high profile lynchings and he was actually thinking of running for president in 1940. And he says, we gotta get an anti lynching bill. FDR found out about this and he's talking to Farley, his speechwriter and so forth, and he says to Farley, did you hear about Garner? Did you hear that Garner now is against, you know, for an anti lynching Bill Garner? And he starts laughing, laughing uncontrollably. And what does that say at the time? NAACP still trying to go to FDR to get him to act. And he never does. If FDR really was like, oh, I'd like to get this, but I can't for whatever priority, wouldn't that convince him that, well, now is the time? Garner was highly respected. He was former speaker of the House. Garner is highly respected in the Congress, including by a lot of people that don't like FDR at all. So that gives you an idea of a kind of attitude. I'm being a little hard on him, although I've been told by others I'm not hard on him enough. But there really isn't. There's a coldness there that is just unmistakable.
- [47:49]
A
I hear you.
- [47:49]
C
And it's cynicism that is unmistakable.
- [47:52]
A
I mean, it's interesting, you know, growing up in my generation born in the early 60s, I came up on the tail end of so much Democratic power in both houses of Congress. And, you know, FDR and Kennedy, big, big figures, but they were real politicians. These guys were power brokers. And fdr, especially in office for so long, it really behooves us to back up and take a more general view of the 20th century through that lens instead of necessarily glossing over and making these headlines out of triumphalism, which is really not helpful to anybody in the long run of life. That is what your book does. It takes apart this sort of myth and examines FDR from that standpoint, you know, from whatever political affiliation you come from. That's a really healthy thing to do as an American. There was a time when the presidency was a much smaller office than it became in the 20th century. It was the likes of FDR and others who grew that into a mega office that we now deal with. What does this all mean to you, though, in your estimation of this presidency? Does he now sink way down on that list of worst to bests, or is he still, you know, where do you put FDR in your mind?
- [49:07]
C
I don't know if I'd have a specific ranking, but he would be. I put him in the failed category. Let's just put my cards on the table. I write a chapter and I call him a failed president. And what are the examples? The Great Depression. But there are other examples. In World War II, for example, helping Jews. FDR did really very little to help Jewish refugees. The most famous case that a lot of people have heard of is the SS St. Louis, which had, which is 1939, it had Jewish refugees. And the captain was not able to land in Cuba. He didn't get the landing papers, or he had them, but the Cubans denied him. So he comes to the off the coast of Florida. And FDR actually sends a Coast Guard cutter to intercept the ship to prevent it from getting too close to shore, you know, and less people could swim for safety. So he doesn't do anything there. And during the war, a lot of Jewish leaders, dissident Jewish leaders are saying, look, there are dissident Axis powers. Romania was one. Hungary, they want to out. They know Hitler's losing, and they're willing to say, okay, take the Jewish refugees, just pay for the transportation costs. Hungary offered 70,000, and it was something like $100 per refugee. But FDR's approach, and the Allies in general, was we are not going to negotiate with any element in the Axis, including these dissident Axis powers. We see that occur also, of course, with the famous plots against Hitler. FDR showed no sympathy at all to those efforts because he had the view that these were just a bunch of Prussian German militarists and they are the ones that helped bring Hitler to power and so forth. So these guys were like, tortured and, you know, it was pretty bad news. But their one thing that they wanted was to encourage these coups was not to modify the unconditional surrender doctrine which FDR applied to anything, including negotiations with rest of Axis powers, including after Mussolini was overthrown, the Italian government there that had overthrown Mussolini. They wanted to surrender, but they did not want to do an unconditional surrender. So the negotiations dragged on and on. And in the meantime, German troops pour into the Italian peninsula, and we have Anzio, we have the tough slog north. That could add a fairly, potentially a quick surrender there. But the Italians just didn't want to sign a document that said unconditional. They turned their backs on fascism. They'd shut down the fascist party and everything, but they didn't want to agree to that because they thought that was too humiliating.
- [52:14]
A
David Beto is the professor emeritus of the history department at the University of Alabama, and we've been discussing. His most recent book came out in November 25, entitled FDR A New Political Life. But go on any book site and you will see a lot more from this man. Thank you, David. It was great to meet you.
- [52:30]
C
Thank you.
- [52:30]
A
We'll talk again soon.
- [52:32]
C
This is fun. Thank you.
- [52:35]
A
Hey, thanks for listening to American history hit. You know, every week we release new episodes, two new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursdays, all kinds of content from mysterious 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. And while you're at it, share it with a friend. American History hit with me. Don Wildman so grateful for your support.
- [53:10]
B
I've tried all sorts of ways to make a website with AI and honestly, it's not as easy as it looks. The results can be unpredictable and the moment I try to tweak something, everything breaks. Then I found WIX Harmony. It blends vibe coding with classic drag and drop so you can generate pages, sections or or even complex components in seconds. Then fine tune every pixel without breaking your site.
- [53:33]
A
The best part?
- [53:34]
B
Everything runs on enterprise grade infrastructure. Try it for free@wix.com Harmony.