Why was roosevelt so popular among the american public?

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Many Americans are worried that the newly passed tax overhaul could lead to substantial cuts to Social Security and other entitlement programs. While these benefits are now an established part of working in America, they were once radical proposals from a president in crisis — Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Roosevelt’s accomplishments and shortcomings make up historian Robert Dallek’s latest biography. Dallek chose to profile the 32nd president because of today’s political divisiveness.

“I think it’s important for people to recall what effective leadership could look like,” he said. Dallek shared this and other insights from his book in a conversation with Elliot Gerson, executive vice president of policy and public programs for the Aspen Institute.

As a leading authority on the presidency, Dallek considers Roosevelt to be one of the greats. Roosevelt entered the White House in the middle of the Great Depression. Unemployment had skyrocketed to nearly 25 percent and workers who had been middle class found themselves peddling five-cent apples on the street. Although Roosevelt did not know exactly how to turn the tide, he understood the need to renew Americans’ faith in the economy.

“He didn’t end the depression,” Dallek said. “He did something more important. He humanized the American industrial system.” Roosevelt’s New Deal produced the Social Security Act, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Works Progress Administration, and other programs that provided relief for unemployed workers and helped restore trust in US banks. In doing so, Dallek believes Roosevelt saved the economic and the political systems.

Crucial to Roosevelt’s success as a president was his ability to connect to the public. His series of fireside chats allowed him to explain his policies and actions during the depression and later World War II. Before the American public, Roosevelt conveyed a self-assured tone that belied his inner frustrations.

Roosevelt’s 12 years in office were marked by deep cultural divisions in the country. He did his best to navigate these rifts, but his efforts to maintain the support of Democrats in the South exposed his failings. “He never went out of his way to work especially hard for African Americans,” Dallek said. “He wouldn’t support the anti-lynching legislation that kept coming up in Congress.” Roosevelt’s protégé Lyndon Johnson would later preside over sweeping civil rights legislation in the wake of mass protests and civil disobedience.

Roosevelt struggled with the isolationist and anti-war attitudes of the American people. Although personally troubled by Hitler’s aggressions, he had promised to keep the country out of another European war. Behind the scenes Roosevelt took concrete steps to expand and re-equip the military while quietly financing the Allied powers. The US remained neutral during World War II until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Roosevelt’s efforts helped the Allies defeat Hitler, though he died five months before the war ended.

Throughout his time in office, Roosevelt cemented America’s leadership role on the world stage. His ability to show personal courage during the country’s darkest times helped him build trust with voters who knew he was willing to put them first. For Dallek, this is what made him one of our finest presidents.

“Everyone who runs for president has a powerful narcissistic streak,” he said. “But the great ones move outside themselves and reach for larger things for the nation.”

Watch the full conversation below.

With the assassination of President William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, not quite 43, became the 26th and youngest President in the Nation’s history (1901-1909). He brought new excitement and power to the office, vigorously leading Congress and the American public toward progressive reforms and a strong foreign policy.

With the assassination of President McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, not quite 43, became the youngest President in the Nation’s history. He brought new excitement and power to the Presidency, as he vigorously led Congress and the American public toward progressive reforms and a strong foreign policy.

He took the view that the President as a “steward of the people” should take whatever action necessary for the public good unless expressly forbidden by law or the Constitution.” I did not usurp power,” he wrote, “but I did greatly broaden the use of executive power.”

Roosevelt’s youth differed sharply from that of the log cabin Presidents. He was born in New York City in 1858 into a wealthy family, but he too struggled–against ill health–and in his triumph became an advocate of the strenuous life.

In 1884 his first wife, Alice Lee Roosevelt, and his mother died on the same day. Roosevelt spent much of the next two years on his ranch in the Badlands of Dakota Territory. There he mastered his sorrow as he lived in the saddle, driving cattle, hunting big game–he even captured an outlaw. On a visit to London, he married Edith Carow in December 1886.

During the Spanish-American War, Roosevelt was lieutenant colonel of the Rough Rider Regiment, which he led on a charge at the battle of San Juan. He was one of the most conspicuous heroes of the war.

Boss Tom Platt, needing a hero to draw attention away from scandals in New York State, accepted Roosevelt as the Republican candidate for Governor in 1898. Roosevelt won and served with distinction.

As President, Roosevelt held the ideal that the Government should be the great arbiter of the conflicting economic forces in the Nation, especially between capital and labor, guaranteeing justice to each and dispensing favors to none.

Roosevelt emerged spectacularly as a “trust buster” by forcing the dissolution of a great railroad combination in the Northwest. Other antitrust suits under the Sherman Act followed.

Roosevelt steered the United States more actively into world politics. He liked to quote a favorite proverb, “Speak softly and carry a big stick. . . . ”

Aware of the strategic need for a shortcut between the Atlantic and Pacific, Roosevelt ensured the construction of the Panama Canal. His corollary to the Monroe Doctrine prevented the establishment of foreign bases in the Caribbean and arrogated the sole right of intervention in Latin America to the United States.

He won the Nobel Peace Prize for mediating the Russo-Japanese War, reached a Gentleman’s Agreement on immigration with Japan, and sent the Great White Fleet on a goodwill tour of the world.

Some of Theodore Roosevelt’s most effective achievements were in conservation. He added enormously to the national forests in the West, reserved lands for public use, and fostered great irrigation projects.

He crusaded endlessly on matters big and small, exciting audiences with his high-pitched voice, jutting jaw, and pounding fist. “The life of strenuous endeavor” was a must for those around him, as he romped with his five younger children and led ambassadors on hikes through Rock Creek Park in Washington, D.C.

Leaving the Presidency in 1909, Roosevelt went on an African safari, then jumped back into politics. In 1912 he ran for President on a Progressive ticket. To reporters he once remarked that he felt as fit as a bull moose, the name of his new party.

While campaigning in Milwaukee, he was shot in the chest by a fanatic. Roosevelt soon recovered, but his words at that time would have been applicable at the time of his death in 1919: “No man has had a happier life than I have led; a happier life in every way.”

Learn more about Theodore Roosevelt’s spouse, Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt.

Assuming the Presidency at the depth of the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt helped the American people regain faith in themselves. He brought hope as he promised prompt, vigorous action, and asserted in his Inaugural Address, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Born in 1882 at Hyde Park, New York–now a national historic site–he attended Harvard University and Columbia Law School. On St. Patrick’s Day, 1905, he married Eleanor Roosevelt.

Following the example of his fifth cousin, President Theodore Roosevelt, whom he greatly admired, Franklin D. Roosevelt entered public service through politics, but as a Democrat. He won election to the New York Senate in 1910. President Wilson appointed him Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and he was the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 1920.

In the summer of 1921, when he was 39, disaster hit-he was stricken with poliomyelitis. Demonstrating indomitable courage, he fought to regain the use of his legs, particularly through swimming. At the 1924 Democratic Convention he dramatically appeared on crutches to nominate Alfred E. Smith as “the Happy Warrior.” In 1928 Roosevelt became Governor of New York.

He was elected President in November 1932, to the first of four terms. By March there were 13,000,000 unemployed, and almost every bank was closed. In his first “hundred days,” he proposed, and Congress enacted, a sweeping program to bring recovery to business and agriculture, relief to the unemployed and to those in danger of losing farms and homes, and reform, especially through the establishment of the Tennessee Valley Authority.

By 1935 the Nation had achieved some measure of recovery, but businessmen and bankers were turning more and more against Roosevelt’s New Deal program. They feared his experiments, were appalled because he had taken the Nation off the gold standard and allowed deficits in the budget, and disliked the concessions to labor. Roosevelt responded with a new program of reform: Social Security, heavier taxes on the wealthy, new controls over banks and public utilities, and an enormous work relief program for the unemployed.

In 1936 he was re-elected by a top-heavy margin. Feeling he was armed with a popular mandate, he sought legislation to enlarge the Supreme Court, which had been invalidating key New Deal measures. Roosevelt lost the Supreme Court battle, but a revolution in constitutional law took place. Thereafter the Government could legally regulate the economy.

Roosevelt had pledged the United States to the “good neighbor” policy, transforming the Monroe Doctrine from a unilateral American manifesto into arrangements for mutual action against aggressors. He also sought through neutrality legislation to keep the United States out of the war in Europe, yet at the same time to strengthen nations threatened or attacked. When France fell and England came under siege in 1940, he began to send Great Britain all possible aid short of actual military involvement.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Roosevelt directed organization of the Nation’s manpower and resources for global war.

Feeling that the future peace of the world would depend upon relations between the United States and Russia, he devoted much thought to the planning of a United Nations, in which, he hoped, international difficulties could be settled.

As the war drew to a close, Roosevelt’s health deteriorated, and on April 12, 1945, while at Warm Springs, Georgia, he died of a cerebral hemorrhage.

For more information about President Roosevelt, please visit Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Museum

Learn more about Franklin D. Roosevelt’s spouse, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.