I’ve been noticing an odd pattern here at DKos in regards to community members posing as US History professors with extensive knowledge of FDR – and ultimately engaging in historical revisionism.
FDR built consensus to pass the New Deal. FDR did not demonize corporations. FDR built a bi-partisan consensus for change.
Horse-hockey.
Clearly everyone knows these arguments have often been used in response to arguments about Senator’s Edwards and Obama’s differences in style/rhetoric when working for "change."
But clearly we all could use a refresher in FDR history.
This is not meant to be a defense of Edwards, or a critique of Obama. In truth, I feel its a needed defense of FDR. Too many do the man too great a disservice in regards to his political brilliance.
This is not a definitive analysis of FDR’s political strategy. I yield no "truth" as to the effectiveness of a particular strategy. I have made my own decision in regard to which candidate and strategy to support – and I often cite FDR in defense. But clearly there are multiple interpretations.
And further, I am by no means a historian. I am a scientist by trade, but a nut for US History, particularly speeches by FDR, Lincoln, Teddy and others. And I like google.
I’ll just focus on the 1932 campaign (with an addendum of his 1936 convention speech that I love so much). This will be incomplete by many stretches, but I feel the material provided provides ample context of the political strategy of FDR and the Democratic party in 1932 to build the New Deal coalition of voters that held largely until 1965.
Hopefully it fosters good discussion and some further quotations from the community in the comments. So here it goes...
In the 1932 Presidential election, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Governor of New York, challenged President Hoover. This was to be the first Presidential election following the entrance of America into the Great Depression beginning in 1929. The Democratic Party had gained control of the US Congress in 1930 following many special election victories over vacancies and victory in the general election. FDR won the Democratic nomination in Chicago in 1932 on the fourth ballot over former candidate Al Smith.
FDR made his acceptance speech before the convention and went right for the Republican party:
Let it be from now on the task of our Party to break foolish traditions. We will break foolish traditions and leave it to the Republican leadership, far more skilled in that art, to break promises.
He opened that he accepted the party platform "100%." The platform is an amazing work even today, and should be read in full by everyone. But note the opening assault on the Republican record and philosophy:
In this time of unprecedented economic and social distress the Democratic Party declares its conviction that the chief causes of this condition were the disastrous policies pursued by our government since the World War, of economic isolation, fostering the merger of competitive businesses into monopolies and encouraging the indefensible expansion and contraction of credit for private profit at the expense of the public.
Those who were responsible for these policies have abandoned the ideals on which the war was won and thrown away the fruits of victory, thus rejecting the greatest opportunity in history to bring peace, prosperity, and happiness to our people and to the world.
They have ruined our foreign trade; destroyed the values of our commodities and products, crippled our banking system, robbed millions of our people of their life savings, and thrown millions more out of work, produced wide-spread poverty and brought the government to a state of financial distress unprecedented in time of peace.
The only hope for improving present conditions, restoring employment, affording permanent relief to the people, and bringing the nation back to the proud position of domestic happiness and of financial, industrial, agricultural and commercial leadership in the world lies in a drastic change in economic governmental policies.
FDR was consistent in message in 1932, and created a unique device to be employed:
As we enter this new battle, let us keep always present with us some of the ideals of the Party: The fact that the Democratic Party by tradition and by the continuing logic of history, past and present, is the bearer of liberalism and of progress and at the same time of safety to our institutions. And if this appeal fails, remember well, my friends, that a resentment against the failure of Republican leadership--and note well that in this campaign I shall not use the word "Republican Party," but I shall use, day in and day out, the words, "Republican leadership"--the failure of Republican leaders to solve our troubles may degenerate into unreasoning radicalism.
Never before in modern history have the essential differences between the two major American parties stood out in such striking contrast as they do today. Republican leaders not only have failed in material things, they have failed in national vision, because in disaster they have held out no hope, they have pointed out no path for the people below to climb back to places of security and of safety in our American life.
So here is a distinction. FDR was clearly partisan – but he coyly chose his language to separate Washington Republicans from voters identifying themselves as Republicans.
But in the end, FDR had no problem in linking the word "Republican" with every ail in the US at the time. And further linking Hoover and the Republican leadership with wealthy corporate interests that were still holding profits during the Depression and holding off any Federal regulation or Congressional efforts to aid working people. FDR tied the two together.
And when it came to corporations, FDR made no distinctions, and never held back. In September in Portland:
And now for a personal word. I am speaking to you as the Governor of the State of New York, who for four years has been attacked by the propaganda of certain utility companies as a dangerous man. I have been attacked for pointing out the same plain economic facts that I state here tonight.
My answer has been, as it is tonight, to point out these plain principles that seek to protect the welfare of the people against selfish greed. If that be treason, my friends, then make the most of it!
So here was FDR's brilliance: To define the enemy to liberty as corporate greed, and to tie the Republican leadership in Washington to it.
Not so much brilliant as remarkably simple.
FDR went on to a resounding victory and so did the rest of the Democratic Party.
FDR had re-branded the Democratic Party, getting himself elected, and many others that carried the Democratic Party banner in 1932.
And by running his 1932 campaign on the detailed party platform and the specific proposals of the New Deal, FDR established a mandate for the New Deal.
He did not get a mandate for simply winning. He did not get a mandate for bi-partisan language. He did not get a mandate for running on vague promises, telling members of his party of more progressive intentions once he safely won the White House.
Many in his party knew FDR was a liberal, a progressive, and would govern as one (several conservative Democrats, like Al Smith, openly criticized him for his positions even during the general election). But FDR had the conviction and the gall to campaign exactly as he would govern. He made it absolutely clear. And he followed through once in office because he won resoundingly, and had the coattails in the Congress to get it done.
And he scared the bejesus out of every remaining Republican in the US Congress. That’s a mandate.
FDR kept at it through his time in office. I want to extensively quote his 1936 acceptance speech (The "Faith, Hope, Charity" one) because it is so good, and goes to the heart of what I've addressed here:
And so it was to win freedom from the tyranny of political autocracy that the American Revolution was fought. That victory gave the business of governing into the hands of the average man, who won the right with his neighbors to make and order his own destiny through his own government. Political tyranny was wiped out at Philadelphia on July 4, 1776.
Since that struggle, however, man's inventive genius released new forces in our land which reordered the lives of our people. The age of machinery, of railroads; of steam and electricity; the telegraph and the radio; mass production, mass distribution - all of these combined to bring forward a new civilization and with it a new problem for those who sought to remain free.
For out of this modern civilization economic royalists carved new dynasties. New kingdoms were built upon concentration of control over material things. Through new uses of corporations, banks and securities, new machinery of industry and agriculture, of labor and capital - all undreamed of by the Fathers - the whole structure of modern life was impressed into this royal service.
There was no place among this royalty for our many thousands of small-businessmen and merchants who sought to make a worthy use of the American system of initiative and profit. They were no more free than the worker or the farmer. Even honest and progressive-minded men of wealth, aware of their obligation to their generation, could never know just where they fitted into this dynastic scheme of things.
It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction. In its service new mercenaries sought to regiment the people, their labor, and their property. And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man.
The hours men and women worked, the wages they received, the conditions of their labor - these had passed beyond the control of the people, and were imposed by this new industrial dictatorship. The savings of the average family, the capital of the small-businessmen, the investments set aside for old age - other people's money - these were tools which the new economic royalty used to dig itself in.
Those who tilled the soil no longer reaped the rewards which were their right. The small measure of their gains was decreed by men in distant cities.
Throughout the nation, opportunity was limited by monopoly. Individual initiative was crushed in the cogs of a great machine. The field open for free business was more and more restricted. Private enterprise, indeed, became too private. It became privileged enterprise, not free enterprise.
An old English judge once said: "Necessitous men are not free men." Liberty requires opportunity to make a living - a living decent according to the standard of the time, a living which gives man not only enough to live by, but something to live for.
For too many of us the political equality we once had won was meaningless in the face of economic inequality. A small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people's property, other people's money, other people's labor - other people's lives. For too many of us life was no longer free; liberty no longer real; men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness.
Against economic tyranny such as this, the American citizen could appeal only to the organized power of government. The collapse of 1929 showed up the despotism for what it was. The election of 1932 was the people's mandate to end it. Under that mandate it is being ended.
The royalists of the economic order have conceded that political freedom was the business of the government, but they have maintained that economic slavery was nobody's business. They granted that the government could protect the citizen in his right to vote, but they denied that the government could do anything to protect the citizen in his right to work and his right to live.
Today we stand committed to the proposition that freedom is no half-and-half affair. If the average citizen is guaranteed equal opportunity in the polling place, he must have equal opportunity in the market place.
These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power. In vain they seek to hide behind the flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the flag and the Constitution stand for. Now, as always, they stand for democracy, not tyranny; for freedom, not subjection; and against a dictatorship by mob rule and the over-privileged alike.
Let us never forget that ours is the party of the working men and women of this country. The Republican Party is the party of special interests and "economic royalists."
The working class again calls out for help against the tyranny of corporate greed. It is this institution of government that shall be their support. And only one party believes in government, and has proven itself capable of governing.
But simply being the administrators of that government is not enough. For there are those that seek to keep government from the will of its people. And they wont go down without a fight. FDR showed us the way to win; let us continue, following his lead.
I'll leave you with FDR again in Portland in 1932, in regards to criticism from NY electric power companies:
To the people of this country I have but one answer on this subject. Judge me by the enemies I have made. Judge me by the selfish purposes of these utility leaders who have talked of radicalism while they were selling watered stock to the people and using our schools to deceive the coming generation.
My friends, my policy is as radical as American liberty. My policy is as radical as the Constitution of the United States.
I promise you this: Never shall the Federal Government part with its sovereignty or with its control over its power resources, while I am President of the United States.