FDR: The President Who Made America Into a Superpower

The United States has never had another leader like Franklin D. Roosevelt, who died 70 years ago this weekend. Serving for 12 years, far longer than any other president, he had such a profound impact on the nation and the world that he is widely recognized as one of the transformational figures of the 20th Century and one of America's best presidents. 

In "No Ordinary Time," historian Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote, "[T]he Roosevelt years had witnessed the most profound social revolution in the country since the Civil War – nothing less than the creation of modern America."

"He humanized the American industrial system," adds presidential scholar Robert Dallek, who is writing a new biography of FDR titled "Prophet of a New Order: FDR in Depression and War." "He was a major transformative leader. He didn't want to jettison capitalism or free enterprise even though there were accusations that he was a socialist. This was nonsense. But he understood there needed to be change."

By the time he left office, the United States had become a superpower, able and willing to exert its influence around the globe. It was a nation of newfound prosperity; a country where the federal government, with the people's support, had become the engine of change in nearly every sphere of national life and would build on that power for many years. In the process, FDR made the Democrats into a ruling party.

It took two generations, with the 1980 election of conservative President Ronald Reagan, for the government to pull back and for Americans to conclude that Washington had become too powerful. But the underpinning of FDR's New Deal remain in place today, including a powerful executive branch and a culture of celebrity surrounding the president, carefully enhanced and nurtured by FDR during his long tenure.

Goodwin wrote: "It may well be true that a social revolution is not possible without war or violent internal upheaval. These provide a unity of purpose and an opportunity for change that are rarely present in more tranquil times. But as the history of other countries and America's own experience after World War I illustrates, war and revolution are no guarantee of positive social change. That depends on the time, the nation, and the exercise of leadership. In providing that leadership, Franklin Roosevelt emerges as the towering public figure of the 20th century."

A biography published by the Miller Center at the University of Virginia concludes, "Faced with the Great Depression and World War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt guided America through its greatest domestic crisis with the exception of the Civil War, and its greatest foreign crisis. His presidency – which spanned 12 years – was unparalleled, not only in length but in scope. FDR took office with the country mired in a horrible and debilitating economic depression that not only sapped its material wealth and spiritual strength, but cast pall over its future. Roosevelt's combination of confidence, optimism and political savvy – all of which came together in the experimental economic and social programs of the 'New Deal' – helped bring about the beginnings of a national recovery."

A Constant Connection to Everyday People

One of FDR's most important attributes as a leader was his ability to empathize with his fellow citizens, to show that he cared for them and would do everything he could to help them This enhanced his political power by connecting him irrevocably to everyday people. It's something that presidents have tried to do ever since, but few have accomplished it as well as Roosevelt.

He had contracted polio in 1921, at age 39, and never recovered the use of his paralyzed legs. Eleanor, his wife, said this experience of struggling and failing to conquer the disease broke him out of the isolation of his background as a patrician who had lived a life of ease and privilege. In his experience with polio, he learned what it was like to struggle, and fail, but to persevere.

FDR said it was the president's "duty" to "keep in touch, personal touch, with the nation...to try to tie together in my own mind the problems of the nation." As president, FDR was an eager student of what was going on around the country, reading the newspapers, listening to members of Congress, staff members and friends, and most of all paying close attention to what his wife observed during her many fact-finding trips in the United States and visits to American troops abroad. She kept voluminous notes and reported back to the president frequently. Their marriage was troubled, but he considered her his "eyes and ears" and a partner in governing. Eleanor threw herself into this role, partly because it gave her a way to help her husband do his job and partly because it prevented their relationship from becoming too distant.

FDR also knew how to manage the news media to rally support for his agenda. He cultivated newspaper reporters, and even though publishers were often against his policies, he got favorable coverage from the journalists who actually wrote the stories about him. He would hold two or three press conferences per week and had the reporters gather around him, informally, as he sat at his big Oval Office desk. The reporters loved the access and the personal connection to the president, and they became fans of FDR.

He pioneered the use of radio, an increasingly popular medium in the United States. He held 30 "fireside chats" during his 12 years as president, addressing the country directly as if he were talking with a household after a family dinner. He didn't want to overdo it, knowing that any politician could wear out his welcome with too much exposure. But the fireside chats were eagerly anticipated and made FDR, with his pleasant, distinctive voice and boundless optimism, a welcome guest in countless homes.

"He was very charismatic," Dallek says. "He had a brilliant intuitive feel for American politics and you can't teach that; you can't teach how to be a great politician." He used his communication skills to shape public opinion and create grass-roots support for his ideas that converted to support for his legislation in Congress.

When he died at age 63 of a cerebral hemorrhage at his Warm Springs, Georgia, vacation home on April 12, 1945, immense grief spread across the country. It was only a few weeks after FDR had been sworn in for an unprecedented fourth term, and many Americans wondered if anyone could replace him. As his funeral train made its way across the nation, a man was found weeping along the route, and was asked if he had known FDR. "I didn't know him," the man replied. "But he knew me." This was a feeling shared by millions of Americans.

Establishing the Social Safety Net

Roosevelt was a believer in governmental experimentation. He argued that leadership in the modern age meant being flexible and reshaping government actions to accommodate "a changing and growing social order." He tried many new ideas and kept those that seemed to work, however imperfectly. He was a pioneer in the creation of a strong social safety net to help Americans in their time of need. Among the transformational programs he and his brain trust devised was unemployment insurance and Social Security, which he launched in 1935 to provide income assistance to the elderly. FDR and a compliant Congress also created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which guaranteed the savings of everyday people; the Securities and Exchange Commission, which regulated financial markets; the Civilian Conservation Corps, which employed 300,000 young men at 1,200 camps around the country; the Works Progress Administration, which generated many job-creation programs; the Tennessee Valley Authority and rural electrification; and the Soil Conservation Service.

"He didn't end the Depression," Dallek adds. "It was the onset of industrial mobilization for the war that did that. But he did certainly improve economic conditions in the country."

After FDR, Goodwin writes, "No longer would government be viewed as merely a bystander and an occasional referee, intervening only in times of crisis. Instead, the government would assume responsibility for continued growth and for fairness in the distribution of wealth. Big government – modern government – was here to day."

Writes historian Arthur Bernon Tourtellot in "The Presidents on the Presidency," "Franklin Roosevelt proved the presidential office equal, without constitutional alteration although with statutory enlargement, to the most desperate domestic and foreign crises. His historic significance in the development of presidential leadership is that he used with prompt and exceptional vigor the influence and fullest powers of the presidency to rescue the capitalist system in this country at a time when its real interests had been so badly and so casually served that not only did it invite economic ruin but actually had the nation on the verge of it."

Policy Ideas and Political Savvy

On foreign policy, FDR also excelled in setting goals and achieving them. FDR developed personal connections to other heads of state and government, especially British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Yet he knew that personal diplomacy only went so far because national interests were, in the end, more important than relationships between leaders. So his approach was a deft blend of personal charm, policy ideas and political savvy.

FDR, who had been assistant secretary of the Navy under President Woodrow Wilson, turned out to be a brilliant commander in chief. He edged a nervous country from isolationism to helping the allies against fascism, and stitched and held together a remarkable and rambunctious international coalition.

The Miller Center adds: "In foreign affairs, FDR committed the United States to the defeat of the fascist powers of Germany, Japan, and Italy, and led the nation and its allies to the brink of victory. This triumph dramatically altered America's relationship with the world, guiding the United States to a position of international prominence, if not predominance. By virtue of its newfound political and economic power, as well as its political and moral leadership, the United States would play a leading role in shaping the remainder of the 20th century."

In both foreign and domestic affairs, FDR took presidential power to its limits, something Barack Obama is doing again today, to some extent, with his string of executive orders and unilateral actions on issues ranging from gun control to immigration. The goal, with both Roosevelt and Obama, was to bypass a balky Congress.

In 1940, FDR used his executive authority to provide 50 World War I-era destroyers and other ships to Great Britain, then under attack by Nazi Germany, in exchange for long-term rights to British bases in Newfoundland, the West Indies and elsewhere. Isolationists argued that the deal would bring the United States closer to full-scale war with Germany, but FDR went ahead, arguing that Britain could lose the war without immediate American help.

After the United States entered the war, Roosevelt notoriously created internment camps for Japanese-American citizens starting in 1942, in violation of their rights as Americans. He argued that it was necessary to safeguard against sabotage, but it remains a blot on FDR's record.

In 1937, after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected some of his programs, Roosevelt tried to fundamentally alter the judicial arrangement by asking Congress to allow him to increase the number of Supreme Court justices – in effect, to pack the court with his supporters. His plan would have expanded the court from nine to as many as 15 justices. The move failed in the Senate, but the court thereafter began to leave FDR's programs alone. So he got his way in the end.

Driving the Country Forward

By the end of his presidency, Goodwin wrote, "The society of a few haves and a multitude of have-nots had been transformed. Because of the greatest – indeed, the only – redistribution of income downward in the nation's history, a middle-class country had emerged. Half of the American people – those at the lower end of the compensation scale – had doubled their income while those in the top 20 percent had risen by little more than 50 percent. Those in the bottom half of earners had seen their share of the country's income increase by 16 percent while those at the top had lost 6 percent."

This reduced social and economic inequalities during the Roosevelt era, but these problems have recently begun to intensify again. The middle class actually got smaller between 2000 and 2013, according to a Pew Foundation study. Median income declined in most states, even though the national average for the unemployment rate dropped from 10 percent in 2009 to 5.5 percent currently. But millions of Americans are underemployed, making substantially less than they used to, or are so discouraged that they are no longer actively seeking work, which means they are not counted. Also, most Americans haven't benefited much or at all from the booming stock market.

FDR offers lessons for President Obama and the candidates who want to succeed him in 2016. "People have to trust you," Dallek says. "There's got to be credibility in what you say. Trust is absolutely essential. People have to feel you are on their side. There has to be a personal connection to you as president."

There was also Roosevelt's can-do spirit. He had an abiding faith in the presidency as the essential engine needed to drive the country forward. At the conclusion of his 1940 campaign, he told a nighttime rally in Cleveland, "There is a great storm raging now ... that makes things harder for the world. And that storm ... is the true reason that I would like to stick by those people of ours ... until we reach the clear, sure footing ahead. ... We will make it before the next term is over. ... When that term is over, there will be another president. ... And I think that in the years to come, that word 'president' will be a word to cheer the hearts of common men and women everywhere."

It didn't quite turn out that way. Harry Truman, FDR's successor, had trouble filling FDR's shoes. He had only been vice president for several weeks when Roosevelt died, and Truman quickly learned he had been left out of key policy decisions and deliberations, including the development of the atomic bomb.

And Truman faced a series of very difficult problems during his own time in office. The United States and its allies were well on their way to winning World War II when Roosevelt died, but Truman had tough choices to make in deciding the strategy to finally defeat Germany and Japan, such as his decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After the war, he had to deal with a troubled economy, both at home and abroad; labor unrest; resistance from Republicans in Congress; the challenge of an aggressive Soviet Union and China; the deepening cold war; and the Korean War with its mounting casualty lists and lack of victory. In the end, many Americans turned against him. Truman's job approval rating sank to only 36 percent when he left office, an embarrassingly low number, Dallek says.

But on the positive side, Truman and his advisers implemented the strategy of containing communism, which turned out to be effective and led to the eventual victory of the West over the Soviet Union many years later. Truman also recognized the state of Israel, desegregated the armed forces and attempted to use the federal government very aggressively to end labor-management disputes.

In some ways, these actions represented a continuation of FDR's legacy – taking the long view and doing what the president felt was best for the country despite the odds against him.