The radical legacy of FDR (#27)
How an American aristocrat ended up the most progressive president in U.S. history.
Public Works Programs. Social Security. The New Deal. These public policies—now considered totally normal to Americans who’ve benefitted from these programs for decades—were actually quite radical when they were first enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. President FDR launched those public initiatives and others during his historic three-term presidency in the 1930s to 1940s (he was re-elected an astonishing three times but died a few months into his fourth term).
Since it’s National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, which memorializes the World War II airstrike by Japan’s Imperial Army on the U.S. Military base during FDR’s presidency, it feels fitting to revisit his legacy as one of the most influential progressive firebrands in U.S. history. But even that legacy has its spots, too.
FDR’s been labeled the first “modern president” for his extremely proactive presidency. His foundational belief was, rightfully, that the government’s main job is to help the people—otherwise, what’s the point? He had no patience for bureaucracy, which led to many a presidential overreach, with him often trying to go around Congress and the Supreme Court so he could get the stuff that he wanted to get done. As David B. Woolner, a resident historian of the Roosevelt Institute and FDR biographer, notes of FDR’s overreach:
We were in the midst of the worst economic crisis in our history. Roosevelt’s response to this economic crisis was to engage in a series of programs designed to manage a capitalist system in such a way as to make it work for the average American. And because he wasn’t particularly ideological, he was willing to try all kinds of things.
That included trying to “pack” the Supreme Court with justices who would be favorable to his New Deal legislation which at the time kept on getting struck down (this “court-packing” strategy is something pundits have mentioned when talking about reforming today’s overwhelmingly right-leaning Supreme Court).
Nobody could’ve foreseen FDR’s legacy as a “radical reformer” given his background. He was a descendant of well-to-do European settler ancestors on both sides. On his father’s side: the famous Roosevelts, Dutch colonial settlers who came to New York (then still New Amsterdam) in the 17th Century and soon became part of New York’s upper crust. The family’s influence was cemented further by FDR’s cousin Theodore Roosevelt, better known as Teddy Roosevelt or that mustached horseback-riding man Robin Williams plays in Night at the Museum, who as vice president assumed the presidency following the assassination of then-President William McKinley in 1901.
On his mother’s side: the Delanos, a wealthy merchant family that came from early English settlers to Massachusetts. By the time FDR was born in 1882, both families were akin to American royalty. And much like the aristocracies of Europe, they mingled and bred among each other to preserve their families’ pedigrees (FDR’s father and mother were cousins, how many times removed only goddess really knows).
His father, James, was a Bourbon Democrat, which basically meant he was on the conservative side of the party. Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, coddled as an only child by his mother, and brought up by a conservative daddy, you would think FDR’s politics to likely favor his kind—America’s white legacy families of old money$ and the country’s business class. Instead, he ended up creating a lot of important public social safety programs and welfare agencies that exist in the U.S. today. For example, at the time he signed the Social Security Act in 1933, nearly 13 million people or about 25% of American workers were unemployed. Today, it’s one of the few universal programs the country has.
But the crown jewel of FDR’s achievements was his New Deal—it’s where the Green New Deal gets its name from—which was a package of programs and projects meant to stimulate the dying U.S. economy with jobs creation and work protections. This included expansive investments like the National Industrial Recovery Act, which guaranteed workers the right to unionize and created the Public Works agency, and the Works Progress Administration which provided jobs for unemployed people through public projects like building government offices and highways as well as conservation efforts for public parks.
How FDR acquired the progressive ideals that fueled his presidency despite his charmed life is hard to say, but it was probably a culmination of things. Young FDR was apparently not very well-liked—something that continued in his early years as a New York politico—and was an outcast at Harvard. Later, he was disabled from polio, which left him paralyzed from the waist down.
His condition was so severe that he’s alleged to have said, “When you’ve spent two years in bed trying to wiggle your big toe, everything else seems easy.” As president, he liked to go away with his family to swim in the hot springs in Georgia after hearing about its health benefits. Some say it could be that his personal experiences as an “outsider” in his own influential circles and his disability perhaps helped shape his views around equity.
Some historians credit his relationship with Eleanor Roosevelt, who later became his wife and First Lady, for FDR’s focus on public welfare. Eleanor who—surprise!—was a niece of Teddy Roosevelt (!) and also came from the Roosevelt clan (!!) was smart and outspoken, and developed a sense of social injustice while volunteering to teach refugee children living in New York’s horrible tenement buildings. It’s said that a lot of Eleanor’s class politics rubbed off on FDR, subsequentially influencing his policies.
The fact that FDR was elected four times (!!!) makes him one of the most popular presidents in U.S. history as well as the longest-serving ever (12 years! That’s basically three World Cups), and perhaps maybe also its most egotistical head of state (you’ve gotta have a pretty big head to run for POTUS four times). Because of the longevity of his presidency and the wide reforms he enacted, FDR was a looming figure for the first few who came after him, particularly President Harry S. Truman, who succeeded FDR immediately after his 1945 death, and President John F. Kennedy, whose diplomat father worked under FDR’s administration. It was especially challenging for Truman, who never expected that he’d have to step into FDR’s big shiny shoes. In the early months of assuming the presidency, Truman allegedly called up former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt a lot, asking for advice on what her late husband would do.
That’s not to say FDR’s legacy isn’t without flaws. Critics cite his inaction during the Holocaust in WWII—many Jewish refugees were also denied passage into the U.S. while literally fleeing Nazism—and his internment of Japanese Americans, who were suspected of being spies and traitors simply because of their heritage, into American concentration camps two months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Some of his economic policies were also racist, such as the explicit redlining policies by the Federal Housing Administration that FDR created, which prioritized housing middle-class whites in suburban residential areas while pushing Black residents and other people of color away into urban housing projects.
Since President Joe Biden was elected last year, there’ve been a lot of comparisons to FDR. Not because they’re comparable ideologically or politically but because they both took on the presidency during times of great crisis. While Biden contends with the pandemic and the social ills it has exacerbated, FDR, too, took office amid the Great Depression.
Because of this, a lot of people had high hopes Biden would follow FDR’s footsteps by putting out radical policies so that things could be improved to a state that was even better than things were *before* the pandemic. After all, desperate times call for desperate measures—FDR certainly believed so and, legislatively, turned out to be one of the most effective presidents the U.S. ever saw, even when he made plenty of political enemies in the process.
But, alas, Biden’s pandemic efforts are still reactionary rather than anticipatory, his party hasn’t done anything meaningful to protect voting rights, he’s picked up Trumpy immigration policies, and people are still waiting for their crippling student loan debt to be canceled. Let’s hope the tide changes with the new year.
Have thoughts about the history of FDR’s presidency that you’d like to add? Or maybe about FDR versus Biden? Reply to the email or comment on the post!
TWEET OF THE WEEK: ON THE TIMES WE LIVE IN 🐌
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SOME STUFF TO KNOW
🎄 In Utah, some people seeking public assistance may have been coerced to adopt Mormonism, the dominant faith among state lawmakers, in exchange for food and cash assistance authorized by church bishops. | ProPublica x The Salt Lake Tribune
🎄 The U.S. government has said it supports a COVID-19 vaccine patent waiver. But documents from last month’s ministerial meeting with the World Trade Organization shows the U.S. did little beyond its statement of support to actually push for the vaccine patent waiver. | In These Times
🎄 In a hearing on the case that could decide the fate of abortion rights in the U.S., Justice Amy Coney Barrett pushed adoption as the “better” solution to aborting an unwanted pregnancy. Putting aside how many kids are already inside the broken children’s welfare system, here’s insight from adoptees and adoption experts about Barrett’s harmful suggestion. | New York Magazine
🎄 Tech is digitizing the gig economy so much even tuk-tuk drivers can now pick up passengers through an app like Uber drivers. Here’s what it’s like working as a woman tuk-tuk driver in Sri Lanka. | Rest of World
🎄 LISTEN: Barbados officially broke with Queen Elizabeth II after it announced itself as a new republic, symbolically shedding its status as a former British colony for good. Here’s what you need to know about this important transition for the island nation, which just designated another queen and native Barbadian Rihanna as a national hero. | Al Jazeera’s The Take
🎄 Climate activists and researchers are pushing the U.S. military to reckon with the reality of being the single largest institutional source of greenhouse gas emissions in the world, according to a study by Brown University, even as the Pentagon admits the climate crisis is an existential threat. | Pop Sci
🎄 Leaders of African countries are speaking out about the discrimination their nations are being subjected to after the omicron variant was identified by South African scientists, even though the variant entered Europe long before the SA scientists’ announcement. | Africa News
🎄 If you enjoy year-end lists like I do, here’s an interesting recap of 21 “firsts” in 2021 including the election of Mexico’s first transgender lawmakers, Tibet’s debut of its first-ever bullet train, and NASA’s rover producing oxygen on Mars. | New York Times
🖊️ I spoke to some politicians and a few freshman members about New York City’s incredibly mixed incoming City Council cohort—featuring centrists, leftists, and Trumpers—which will also bring in the city’s first female-majority council in history. | Village Voice
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EDITORIAL CORRECTION: Previously, I mistakenly wrote that good ol’ Teddy Roosevelt was “elected” president in 1901, when in fact he was not elected. As vice president, Teddy Roosevelt automatically assumed the presidency after then-President William McKinley was assassinated. This edition of the newsletter has been updated to reflect the correction.