Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born in New York in 1882 and died in Warm Springs, Georgia, in 1945. He served as President of the United States between 1933 and 1945, becoming the country’s 32nd president. He was a distant cousin of former President Theodore Roosevelt and had studied at Harvard, as well as Columbia University, just like him. He was Assistant Secretary of the Navy between 1913 and 1920, but, unlike his predecessor, Franklin joined the Democratic Party.
Franklin Roosevelt was not just another president in the history of the United States. He was not only the president who managed to rescue the North American power from the most serious economic crisis it had ever experienced, following the stock market crash of 1929. He was the only US president to serve four consecutive terms, lead the nation during the Second World War, and steer the national economy into uncharted territory: Keynesianism.
Kearns Goodwin dedicates a chapter to Franklin Roosevelt in his book Leadership in Turbulent Times: Lessons from the Presidents, focusing on his approach to adversity and growth. Excerpts from this chapter will be discussed below in the style of the Minerva Strategy Blog.
“Roosevelt’s irrepressible optimism, his tendency to expect the best outcome in any circumstance, provided the keystone strength that carried him through this traumatic experience. From the outset, he said an objective: a future in which he would fully recover. Although necessity forced him to modify the timetable for attaining this goal, he never lost his conviction that he would eventually succeed” (Doris Kearns Goodwin, Leadership in Turbulent Times. Lessons from the Presidents).
The previous paragraph must be put into context, as in 1921, Roosevelt contracted an illness that left him permanently paralysed in his legs and confined to a wheelchair. The fact that one of the most powerful men of his time was in a wheelchair can make us reflect on the human condition in terms of mutual vulnerability. I have sometimes argued that we all are in a minority. This means that the experience of discrimination and prejudice in the various dimensions of identity is not alien to human life. In some of these dimensions, people find themselves in the minority and learn what life is like as a left-handed person, a person with dyslexia or an immigrant. The lesson from President Roosevelt is that, in the face of adversity, his strategy was optimism and, from there, a tireless struggle against the circumstances one faces. Indeed, some have seen the meaning of life and the core of human freedom in that struggle.
“Eleanor, of course, added the most essential dimension to the progressive strain and moral gravity of Franklin Roosevelt’s leadership. “He might have been happier with a wife who was completely uncritical”, she observed in her memoirs, adding, “that I was never able to be”. She was more uncompromising, more straightforward, more deeply involved with activists, whose thoughts challenge conventional boundaries” (Doris Kearns Goodwin, Leadership in Turbulent Times. Lessons from the Presidents).
Eleanor Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt’s wife and political and life partner, was an essential ingredient in his success. The symbiosis between constructive criticism and loyalty is a component that guarantees a fruitful relationship. Some interpretations confuse loyalty with submission, while on other occasions, criticism is levelled with the central aim of destroying the other person. Being loyal means knowing how to criticise with empathy, putting yourself in the other person’s shoes, thus strengthening the relationship. However, if the other person, after listening to us, wants to go their own way, loyalty to them means respecting their decision. John Stuart Mill must have felt something similar when he wrote in On Liberty about advising a friend who is heading towards a bridge, that no longer exists, and would cause them to fall.
“After waiting through the winter and spring of 1931 for federal initiatives from President Hoover and the Republican administration, Roosevelt resolved in late summer to “assume leadership for himself and to take action for the state of New York”. He summoned the Republican legislature into an extraordinary session to pass what was considered a radical idea, a state-sponsored comprehensive programme of unemployment insurance. He knew from the start that the Republican majority could block his proposal. Like President Hoover, the state Republican leaders believe that private enterprise, charity, and the local government were the sole institutions capable of meeting the economic challenge. Belief brought from the distant level of the state or federal government, they insisted, would only impair the enterprise of the American people and worsen the problem” (Doris Kearns Goodwin, Leadership in Turbulent Times. Lessons from the Presidents).
One of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s most significant contributions as President of the United States was the implementation of the Welfare State. This is characterised by the State taking an active role in achieving the well-being of its citizens and ensuring their material equality. Social rights, such as education, healthcare, and social security, are protected. A few years earlier, during President Theodore Roosevelt’s term, there was a precedent for this approach in the case of Lochner v. New York, where the State intervened to regulate bakeries’ hours. This was unprecedented in American constitutional history, which was guided by the idea that the State should refrain from intervening in the Economy. Interestingly, the majority of the Supreme Court overturned the regulation based on a formalistic criterion, grounded in strictly legal variables. However, in a dissenting opinion, Justice Holmes applied a finalistic approach, using economic and sociological arguments to support the measure on bakeries’ hours. Years later, the majority of the Supreme Court changed and became favourable to State intervention in the Economy. Here, we might remember Aristotle and say that it is interesting to consider how Law has form and substance.
