Franklin Roosevelt: Mr. Half Full
o, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” – President Franklin Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address
Historians are divided over the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt, which began this week (March 4) in 1933. Some think his New Deal prescription for pulling America out of the Great Depression failed miserably, and there is much truth to this. From 1933 to 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, under the New Deal the high unemployment, low wage-earning and meager economic-output numbers hardly changed. It was only after America entered the war, and both defense spending and production exponentially increased, that the unemployment rate dropped from around 14 percent to less than 2 percent, while the average annual income increased by some 50 percent.
But numbers aren’t everything, witness the fact that Roosevelt was elected president an unprecedented four times. Yes, contributing to his last two elections was America’s involvement in World War II, and people generally rally around their national leaders in wartime. But a much larger reason for Roosevelt’s unprecedented popularity was his personality. In tough times – and the Great Depression coupled with a world war were tough times – the people want a leader who isn’t afraid to make tough decisions and also can convince the people he has no fear of the future, and so neither should they.
Franklin Roosevelt was such a leader and was all his life. A life-long lover of exercise, he was struck by polio at age 39, yet he overcame it through sheer willpower, hard work, and, mostly, a belief that nothing could stop him from achieving his dreams. Indeed, during his recovery from polio he spent more time cheering up his family and closest friends than they did cheering him up.
Thus, if his practical solutions for ending the Great Depression didn’t always work, his solutions for enduring it and rising above it did, and they were manifest in his ever-present cheerfulness, optimism and confidence, which were on full display before the American people in every press conference, photo opportunity, personal appearance, speech and radio address. That included his famous fireside chats, in which he gave the people an honest overview of often depressing domestic and foreign issues, but also the belief that all these problems were solvable. If ever a president developed a cult of personality, it was FDR, becoming the nation’s high priest, confessor and savior.
His secret, as the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin nicely put it, was “the characteristic uplift of his head, the sparkle of his eye, his dazzling smile, and his assured calm voice [to] soothe and embolden the fragile nerves of the country at large.” Email author Bruce G. Kauffmann at bruce@history lessons.net.