Roosevelt, Franklin Delano

Roosevelt, Franklin Delano (b. 30 Jan. 1882, d. 12 Apr. 1945). 32nd US President 1933–45 Born at Hyde Park, New York, to a wealthy family, he went to Harvard and Columbia Law School. He married Theodore Roosevelt's niece, and a distant cousin of his, in 1905. Elected for the New York Senate in 1910, he was appointed Assistant Secretary for the Navy by President Wilson in 1913. Roosevelt was unsuccessful as the running mate of James M. Cox in the 1920 presidential elections. In 1921 he was stricken with poliomyelitis, and henceforth was mostly confined to a wheelchair. In the days before television, this did not seriously harm his political career, and he was elected Governor of New York as a reforming Democrat in 1928.

He was elected President in 1932 on a promise to end the Great Depression with wide-ranging government reform, and implemented this in his New Deal programme, which gave work to millions of people and hope to the nation. While its economic effects remain controversial, it did create the impression that his policies had overcome the economic crisis, and became the basis of his longevity in office. Furthermore, he was quick to recognize the effectiveness of the new medium, radio. Through his regular ‘fireside chats’ he was the first President to become familiar to a majority of US citizens. In the 1936 presidential election he won a crushing victory, gaining every state except Maine and Vermont.

In his second term (1937–41), inherent weaknesses of the New Deal became more obvious, in particular many of his policies' shortsightedness and their expensive reliance on subsidies. Moreover, the opposition of the Supreme Court to some of his policies caused Roosevelt's ire. Arguing that the law should not interfere with policies that had received an overwhelming popular mandate, he embarked upon an ill-advised, unsuccessful, and unpopular attempt to ‘pack’ the court with liberal justices. Roosevelt moved the Democratic Party towards an association with liberalism, and a related affinity with the poor, the workers, and minorities that was to last for the rest of the century.

In the last years of his second term, Roosevelt skilfully steered the USA away from policies favoured by isolationists, who had succeeded in passing a series of Neutrality Acts through Congress. After the fall of France in 1940 he made the USA a powerful supporter of Britain's war effort, most importantly through the Lend-Lease Act. Thus, in August 1940, by his Destroyer Transfer Agreement with Winston Churchill, he exchanged 50 pre-1914 US destroyers for naval bases in the West Indies, Newfoundland, and British Guyana, thus providing Britain with much-needed convoy escorts.

In 1940 he ran for an unprecedented third term against the Republican Wendell Wilkie. He met much opposition from southern Democrats, but he benefited from the upswing in the US economy resulting from the military expansion. A firm supporter of China in the Sino-Japanese War, he denied Japan war supplies, a policy which helped to precipitate the latter's action on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 which in turn triggered the subsequent declarations of war from the Axis Powers. The USA now found itself in alliance not only with Britain but also with the Soviet Union. He extended the lend-lease agreement to the latter, but was subsequently criticized for being too trusting of Stalin, particularly by conceding too much Soviet influence over a postwar Europe. By contrast, his relationship with Churchill was excellent, though he had to work hard to convince the British Prime Minister to embark on a cross-Channel attack, which eventually came to pass at D-Day.

On the strength of his wartime leadership, he won a fourth term in office in 1944. However, his health soon deteriorated, so that he died two months after participating in his last major wartime conference at Yalta. He was succeeded by Truman. Perhaps the greatest US President of the twentieth century, he fundamentally changed the nature of US politics, through extending the role of the federal government and by restoring popular confidence in that government's leadership at times of existential domestic and international crisis. In the process, the USA became a major actor in global politics which continued to shape world history for the rest of the century and beyond.