Role of the U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on America and the World - Essay Example

Examine the great impact and influential role of the U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on America and the world During his Presidency’s Period. TABLE OF CONTENTS. 1. INTRODUCTION  2. ROOSEVELT’S BACKGROUND  3. ROOSEVELT’S POLITICAL LIFE  4. ROOSEVELT’S PRESIDENCY  5. Roosevelt’s Campaign, Nomination and Election  6. Roosevelt’s Notable Events & Major Achievements  7. Facing the Great Depression  8. The New Deal  9. A Larger Role for Government  10. Roosevelt’s Second Term and the Court Packing Plan  11. Breaking the American Isolation  12. Roosevelt’s Third Re-election  13. Entering World War II & Roosevelt’s Leadership  14. Creation of United Nations  15. Roosevelt’s Death 16. Conclusion  17. Bibliography 1. INTRODUCTION  Franklin D. Roosevelt was born on January 30th 1882 and died on April 12th 1945 at the age of 63. He was the 32nd President of the United States of America and is remembered especially because he led that country through two of the most difficult periods of the twentieth century: the Great Depression and the Second World War. He had a very long presidency, lasting three terms, which is unusual since American presidents normally only have one or two terms. He belonged to the Democrat party and introduced many reforms to including the famous “New Deal” which aimed to get people back to work after the Depression. In his work abroad he was respected for his diplomacy and he certainly is responsible for helping to bring the Second World War to an end. This paper examines each stage of his busy life and evaluates his impact on American and his role in world affairs before summing up the life achievements of this memorable man. 2. ROOSEVELT’S BACKGROUND  Franklin Delano Roosevelt, as his family name suggests, belonged to a family of Dutch descent. They traced their roots back to the early settlers of America in the region in and around New York and to a Dutch farmer called Nicholaas Claes Martenzen von Rosenvelt who came from Holland right at the beginning of the settlement period, in the early 1600s. (Coker, 2005, p. 2) Franklin D. Roosevelt’s parents were wealthy and they lived in the upper class Hudson River area. Both James Franklin and Sara Delano had inherited money and a good education from their parents and the young Franklin grew up in a happy home, very much loved especially by his mother who was much younger than her husband. After home schooling by a series of governesses until the age of 14, Roosevelt attended Groton, a private educational establishment led by the school’s founder, Endicott Peabody. This was a very privileged schooling: “At a time when most educational reformers stressed democracy and equal access to schools, Peabody attempted to build a school where the ‘best families’ of New England would send their sons to prepare them for future positions of leadership.” (Coker, 2005, p. 5) In some ways this background excluded the young Roosevelt from the hardships that other people suffered, such as poverty and exclusion from the good things in life, but on the other hand the Christian morals and hard-working ethic of Peabody’s school gave him a good moral basis for his future life. Having an educated mother who spoke several languages also allowed the young Franklin D. Roosevelt to develop an awareness and understanding of other countries which would come in very useful during his later career. Roosevelt was a good student and graduated to enter the best business training that could be found, namely Harvard University. He joined elite clubs and got involved in sports and although he was intelligent, and achieved moderately good grades: “perhaps the most rewarding activity of Roosevelt’s years at college was his work on the campus newspaper The Harvard Crimson.” (Coker, 2005, p. 9) Roosevelt studied law for a time and on March 17th 1905 he married Eleanor Roosevelt, a distant cousin, although his mother did not approve of the marriage. They had six children very quickly and moved to Albany in 1911. The marriage was not always a happy one, and there is evidence that Roosevelt was unfaithful to his wife on many occasions. 3. ROOSEVELT’S POLITICAL LIFE  Roosevelt began his political career in new York where ran for senate office and was elected in 1911. For a time he worked as Assistant U.S. Secretary of the Navy and this reflected his family’s connections with the US military. He was actively involved in this work during the period of the first world war, and this was an important training ground for him because he got to know about wartime deployment and made contact with politicians and naval personnel in Europe. He had ambitions for the presidency from a young age, and in 1920 he ran for office as Vice President of the United States, but was defeated. Just after this, when Roosevelt was 39 years old, in 1921, he suffered a sudden feveverish illness and after this he found that his legs were paralysed. At the time the disease was diagnosed as polio myelitis, but recent studies have noted that this does not usually occur in adults, and it is suspected that the real cause of his paralysis was a much rarer condition called Guillain-Barré Syndrome: “Poliomyelitis cannot be ruled out but retrospective analysis favours the diagnosis of GBS”. (Goldman et al., 2003, p. 237) Neither of those diseases could be cured in the first half of the twentieth century, and as a result, Roosevelt spent the rest of his life mostly in a wheelchair, except for public appearances, where he preferred to stand with the support of an assistant or walking aid. For most people this would have meant the end of their career, but for Roosevelt it was just something he had to live with, and it did not stop him in his political ambitions. He became governor of New York for two terms from 1929 to 1932. This was a prestigious office and would have been a suitable career goal for Roosevelt, but he still had his eye on the Presidency. The President at the time was the Republican Herbert Hoover and the situation in the country was one of severe crisis. The Second World War from 1914-1918 had cost the industrialised western world almost all of its stored resources and of its immediate consequences was a crisis in the world markets. In America the effects were somewhat delayed, and the 1920s saw some economic gains, but disruption to the world’s former patterns of supply and demand caused the American stock market to suffer a devastating crash: “By 1933, the net worth of shares on the exchange had plummeted from $87 billion to $19 billion. Corporations collapsed and banks were closed without prior notice, leaving middle-class and working-class savers penniless.” (Fleming: 2001, p. 50) This was an unprecedented occurrence, and it needed an exceptional leader to find ways of sorting the mess out and repairing the damage. 4. ROOSEVELT’S PRESIDENCY  Roosevelt was, by the start of the campaign season for the 1932 Presidential election, a well-known Democrat politician with a reputation for progressive ideas and determination to bring reforms that would spread wealth to more areas of American society. One of the reasons why he was elected is undoubtedly the failure of the Republicans to get the economy back on track, but it must also be accepted that Roosevelt had demonstrated his leadership skills while leading the local government in New York. His family name was also well known, and he had a sufficiently high profile to gain respect from both working class and middle class americans. He started the campaign for presidency with great hopes to reverse the decline in America’s fortunes and introduce more social justice, while rebuilding the economy. 5. Roosevelt’s Campaign, Nomination and Election  The election campaign was fought very hard on both sides. The main argument that Roosevelt used was that the policies of the Republicans were not working. Especially the lower classes were very unhappy with the lack of job prospects and the way that their money was not able to stretch far enough to feed their families and build a better life. Roosevelt promised, from the very start, that if he were elected he would offer something very different. He called this a “new deal” which emphasized the two-sided nature of his proposal for change. He wanted to get the economy back on track, but he needed the people to play their part in this task. When the votes were counted, Franklin D. Roosevelt had achieved 57’4% of the popular vote compared with Hoover’s score of 39.7%. This was a clear mandate for sweeping changes in the White House. 6. Roosevelt’s Notable Events & Major Achievements  The single greatest achievement that is associated with Franklin D. Roosevelt is his famous “New Deal.” It was first mentioned in a speech during the nomination campaign as candidate for the Democratic presidential campaign when Roosevelt said: “Throughout the nation men and women, forgotten in the political philosophy of the Government, look to us here for guidance and for more equitable opportunity to share in the distribution of national wealth. Those millions cannot and shall not hope in vain. I pledge you, I pledge myself to a new deal for the American people… ” (Franklin D. Roosevelt, quoted in Black, 2003, p. 239). The creation of this new deal is his greatest achievement. The fact that it largely worked must also be counted as an achievement, because Roosevelt was president at one of the most challenging times in all of America’s history and not many people had much faith in the ability of any government to solve the country’s problems at that time. A third major achievement is that Roosevelt brought America decisively into the world arena with his decisions before, and during the Second World War. 7. Facing the Great Depression  Franklin D. Roosevelt proved to be just that man. He acted very decisively from the moment that he took up office: “On March 5, 1933, the day after his inauguration, he declared a national bank holiday to prevent further financial collapse and called Congress into special session.” (Dallek, 1979, p. 35) One of the ways that he established his authority was to use the radio to talk to the whole nation. Instead of the complicated foreign exchange deals that the outgoing Republicans had used to try and address the economic crisis, he turned attention to the situation within America and proposed a number of measures that enlisted the help of ordinary American people. “Speaking to approximately sixty million people over the radio he explained the banking crisis in language everybody could understand, and urged Americans to put their savings back in banks.” (Dallek, 1979, p. 35) This sign of trust in the people was typical of Roosevelt and it is one of the reasons that the ordinary people loved him and respected him so much. He was not afraid to tell the truth and spell out what had to be done, in a partnership between the government and the people. Roosevelt and his administration set up a range of economic measures, largely through loans and grants, designed to create basic opportunities like basic housing and guaranteed work, which it was hoped would in turn help the economy to stabilize and encourage people to start building up their wealth again. The banking system was the key to America’s internal stability and that is presumably why Roosevelt started with this point. Some scholars criticize the inward-looking approach: “If American money and banking policy put the United States on the road to recovery within the first year of the Roosevelt administration, it did little to help stabilize the world economy.” (Rauchway, 2008, p. 72) History has proved that his strategy was effective, however, and it can be argued that he needed to attend to his own home problems so that America could build up the stability and strength to take an active part in world politics at a later date. The next area that he attended to was agriculture and the related are of prices and tariffs. In order to stop the flow of farming people to the cities, where there were also huge unemployment problems, Roosevelt’s government set up schemes which rewarded big investors for putting money into rural areas which badly needed regeneration and support. This transferred wealth from some of the richest people and locations to some of the poorest regions, and at the same regulated the production of basic products so that surpluses could be avoided and prices kept stable . As part of this plan, controls on imports had to be exercised, which again was not very popular abroad, or with those who preferred a free market approach to the economy. Roosevelt’s plans were in many ways a set of desperate measures for desperate times. The free market had, in his view, caused the problems, and so he looked for other ideas as a way to solve them. 8. The New Deal  Now that he was in office as President of the United States, Roosevelt had to deliver the so-called “new deal” that he had been promising in his election campaign. The essential components of this early promise contained the following points: “increasing public works, supporting agricultural prices, creating new mortgage markets, shortening the working day and week, regulating securities, restoring international trade, reforesting the countryside, and repealing Prohibition.” (Rauchway, 2008, p.1) Some of the initiatives that were created were paid for out of the profits that came from the work itself, and some of them were paid for out of taxes. Wealthier citizens did not always approve of this, and they called it the “Raw Deal” because new taxes had to be raised to cover these extra costs of work creation. (Renshaw, 2004, p. 115) 9. A Larger Role for Government  Although the New Deal was absolutely the right way to rebalance the economy and get people working, spending and saving in a more predictable way, there were other implications that came along with the benefits. Some of the original emergency measures to provide jobs and homes were expanded during Roosevelt’s presidential terms to reach further into the fabric of society. By 1940 the New Deal had expanded into areas such as “social insurance against old age, unemployment and disability; watershed management; support for unionization, deposit insurance and a strengthened Federal Reserve System.” (Rauchway, 2008, p.1) All of these measures required government offices and infrastructure to make sure that they were organized properly. The government began to play an ever more important role in all aspects of society, raising the possibility that its costs would be greater than the amount that could be regained through taxation. In solving the problem of a market that was too free, and risked the livelihoods of the population in its massive swings, there was a danger that the huge force of government intervention would eat up all the resources and stifle innovation and entrepreneurship. 10. Roosevelt’s Second Term and the Court Packing Plan  Any president who undertakes reforms and introduces new schemes is bound to find that some people will resist him. Not everybody agreed with the initiatives of the New Deal, and some of those who disagreed took their issues to court. At times the courts ruled in favour of those people and against the initiatives of the government. This annoyed Roosevelt and he made plans to stop it happening by changing the way that the rules were made for choosing judges. He proposed that the president should have the power to appoint more judges and this was a back door way of ensuring that he could personally influence how courts would deal with business and industrial matters affecting his departments and their policies. There are big doubts about whether this plan is constitutional and many people realised this, both within and outside the Democrat party. This episode is one which rightly resulted in a lot of criticism for Roosevelt. Critics point out that he made several bad mistakes in this so called “court packing plan” – he announced it without preparing his party for it, he invented a reason for the plan (needing more judges to clear up a load of cases), he just assumed the people would support him after his recent election to a second term, and finally he refused to compromise by reducing his influence to just the appointment of one or two judges (Flynn, 1948, p. 110) In the end Roosevelt had to drop his demands and this was a humiliating defeat for him. It was an example of how he wanted to control things in a way that went beyond fair and legal means, and it is a reminder that he was a man with faults who could get things severely wrong on some occasion. 11. Breaking the American Isolation  One of the consequences of the focus on the New Deal was that trade with other countries suffered. In the short term, this was accepted as a necessary evil until the problems with the economy were sorted out. As time passed, however, Roosevelt began a round of diplomatic missions to secure trade and cultural agreements with important partners. This include the Good Neighbour policy which revitalised U.S. relationships with Latin America. New treaties were also signed with former colonies and these moves ensured that the United States played a more positive and active role in its own immediate region of the globe. 12. Roosevelt’s Third Re-election  After two long and difficult presidencies, most people could expect to enter retirement with the sense of a job well done. Roosevelt had certainly served his country well and he was admired for working so hard despite his physical problems. The situation both inside America and in the world at large was, however, marked by on-going crisis. The economic situation in the United States was not good, with rising unemployment and the possibility of the Depression deepening still further and devastating the lives of the working people. For a Democrat President this is a serious problem. Towards the end of his second term Europe headed into a terrible war and this put pressure on America to decide whether, and how far, it could become involved. At first Roosevelt was very keen to keep America out of the war, and as he campaigned for his third term, he repeatedly stated that it was not his aim to get involved in the conflict in Europe. On October 29th , 1940, when Europe was already deeply engaged in hostilities, and Roosevelt was ending his election campaign he made a speech the Boston Garden and he said: “While I am talking to you mothers and fathers, I give you one more assurance. I have said this before but I shall say it again and again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.” (Franklin D. Roosevelt quoted in Fleming, 2001, p. 2) He knew that here was a big question about who could be trusted to take America into the next phase, and events in Europe made it clear that this was not going to be easy: “Coming to grips with Hitler would be a fate that would await whoever was elected in 1940.” (Black, 2003, p. 465) Roosevelt used all his experience and international knowledge to come up with a solution to these issues: “Complicated and difficult though the times were, Roosevelt saw a method of ending the Depression and becoming the indispensable conservator of peace, even as he made America ready to help subdue a satanic adversary.” (Black, 2003, p. 465) The plan that he had was to invest in armaments and support the allied war effort from a distance, and with resources and not with the lives of American soldiers. In this way he hoped to keep his promises to the mothers and fathers of American boys, help his allies in their hour of need, and at the same time inject a great boost to manufacturing industries which would create jobs and prosperity for America. As he entered his third term it seemed that this plan was going to work. Industrial output increased, unemployment fell, and America was able to fulfil its obligations to foreign allies. 13. Entering World War II & Roosevelt’s Leadership  At the start of the Second World War America maintained a clear position of neutrality but there were some secret talks with the allies about supplying aircraft and other services to support the allied war effort in a non-combatant way. Roosevelt also began to build up America’s military and naval capacity which had been gradually declining since the end of the First World War. Suspecting that events in Europe would sooner or later drag the United States into conflict, he tied these moves in with his economic reforms, and the additional jobs that were created contributed to the economic upturn of the 1930s. 14. Creation of United Nations.  The creation of the United Nations, and its physical location in New York is largely due to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s commitment to this idea as a way of sorting out differences between nations. He campaigned tirelessly within the United States and also abroad for this organisation to be instituted, but did not live long enough to see it reach its full potential. 15. Roosevelt’s Death. The death of Roosevelt came as a big shock to the American people. He was posing for a portrait on 12th April 1945 when he suffered a sudden severe headache and he died two hours later. (Renshaw, 2004, p. 179) It was most probably a stroke that ended his life. The end of the war was very near, but he did not live to see the preparations for peace being carried through. They looked back on his long leadership and were thankful for all that he had done. In two areas he had achieved supreme results. The first of these was economic progress at home: “When FDR became president unemployment was 25 per cent; when he died it was less than two.” (Renshaw: 2004, p. 2) The second major area of achievement was his international leadership at home and abroad in wartime: “historians readily agree that FDR’s presidency was a transforming moment in U.S. foreign relations and that he, along with Churchill and Stalin, led the way to allied victory in World War II.” (Dallek, 1979, p. 539) 16. Conclusion. The life of Franklin D. Roosevelt is full of paradoxes. He came from a wealthy family with a long and privileged background and yet he devoted his life to the Democrat Party and a focus on the ordinary working men and women of America. He himself was paralysed but he was one of the most energetic and high achieving politicians that America, and possibly the world has ever seen. He turned his country’s fortunes around after the Great Depression, and he helped the world to escape the fascist menace of Hitler and his allies. Roosevelt did not live to see what happened to America in the economically booming post-war years, but history has shown that the foundations he built were good. There were some mistakes and misjudgements that crept in on some occasions, and questions can be asked at times about Roosevelt’s moral judgements, in his personal life and in his dealings with constitutional dilemmas. It is certainly true that in his three terms Roosevelt did all that he could to extend the influence and power of the president within government, and this too is criticised by many people. On the whole, Roosevelt was a gifted politician, with great determination and an ability to communicate with the people. He richly deserves his place in the history books as one of America’s most successful and best-loved presidents. 17. Bibliography. Black, C. 2003. Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Coker, J.W. 2005. Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Biography. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Dallek, Robert. 1979. Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy 1932-1945: With a New Afterword. 2nd Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fleming, T. 2001. The New Dealers’ War: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the War Within World War II. New York: Basic Books. Flynn, J.T. 1948. The Roosevelt Myth. New York: Devin-Adair. Goldman, A.S., Schmalstieg, E.J. et al. 2003. What was the cause of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s paralytic illness? Journal of Medical Biography 11, pp. 232-240. Available online at: http://www.rsmpress.co.uk/jmb_2003_v11_p232-240.pdf Rauchway, E. The Great Depression and New Deal: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Renshaw, P. 2004. Franklin D. Roosevelt. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education. Read More