FDR: Gold Thief and Renegade, For Him or Against You

In the introduction to their compendium FDR's Fireside Chats, Buhite and Levy say that the founding fathers would hardly recognize the office of the presidency as it functions today. The change has occurred due to the actions of certain powerful and charismatic presidents who used tough times and powerful politics to give them the power they felt was appropriate (x). But no president did more to use the media to persuade the public to identify with him than FDR. In his famous fireside chats he fought several enemies with recurring underlying mantra, "whoever is against me and my policies is really against you, the people".

The founding Fathers envisioned that Congress would be the body that generally set policy for the country. The president was to be an administrator charged with appointing judges and acting as a balance for the occasionally illogical whims of the representative congress (Buhite and Levy ix-x). In "Outlining of the New Deal Plan", FDR assures the American people that nothing has changed in this regard. Congress has simply charged agencies with carrying out the economic plans that will bring revival. The fact that the president originated those plans, or that the agencies fall under his control, or that the judiciary has not yet had time to question their constitutionality, is beside the point. It is still the same old constitution being used in a very different way.

Yet to many established economists and business people, it looked as if the gov

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Of course economists and business executives point out that raising wages generally decreases the number of jobs available. It is a short-run point of view, but the argument has merits. Yet when the Fair Standards Labor Act was finally passed, "after many requests" on the president's part, FDR pulled no punches in classifying such comments as unpatriotic. Do not let any calamity-howling executive with an income of $1,000.00 a day, ...tell you that a wage of $11.00 a week is going to have a disastrous effect on all American industry. Fortunately for business as a whole, and therefore for the Nation, that type of executive is a rarity with whom most business executives most heartily disagree. (On Party Primaries). The illusion of identifying with the common man was one that FDR created very well, despite his aristocratic background. "I want to be sure that neither battles nor burdens of office shall ever blind me to an intimate knowledge of the way the American people want to live and the simple purposes for which they put me here" (On Economic Conditions, April 14 1938). The Fireside Chats go to great lengths to use terms and concepts that the people will understand. Here the enemy FDR is fighting i

Category: History - F