A series of programs focused on relief, recovery, and reform, Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal is arguably the most radical set of policies set forth by any American president. The New Deal completely shattered every expectation of what a government is supposed to do for its people, and it forever changed how the country views leadership and liberalism on a national level.
Furthermore, the New Deal demonstrated the government’s ability to directly manipulate the nation’s economy on a large scale, which led to a fear-fueled bipartisan backlash against what had never been attempted (and accomplished) before by an American administration. In sum, even some eighty years later, the New Deal is still considered to be a radical departure from American history and governance.
Politicians and pundits (both in the time of the Great Depression and today) believe Herbert Hoover was a president who defended a laissez-faire approach to governing and who committed himself to a small government, even at times of national distress (specifically the stock market crash in 1929), out of fear that involving the federal government in fixing prices, manipulating the value of the currency, or controlling businesses/jobs were all steps toward a socialist nation.
Thus, after a less than mediocre response to the Great Depression, the incumbent suffered a humiliating defeat in the 1932 election to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Nothing motivates a country quite like a crisis and fear, and when the two meet, people tend to vote for radicals who quickly rise to power (often those who make the best-sounding promises).
Consequently, the way the country votes for government officials is much like a violent pendulum, swinging back and forth from conservative to liberal, from small government to big government, in a feverish attempt to protect their country. Roosevelt’s administration was the antithesis to Hoover’s and started with a tenacity that was much-needed and a determination that instilled new hope in the people. In his first inaugural address, FDR spoke candidly about approaching issues created by the depression and started his presidency by asserting his “firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”.
In his first one hundred days in office, Roosevelt introduced a number of policy changes designed to fix the depression and prevent future depressions. His approach was threefold: helping (or paying) poor people in need, creating programs that were intended to fix the economy in the short run and put people back to work, and designing a system to regulate the economy and reform finances. Yet, by 1934, FDR’s predecessor was his harshest critic. “In numerous speeches, articles, and books, such as The Challenge to Liberty, [Herbert Hoover] maintained that the New Dealers had abandoned ‘the heritage of liberty’ in leading the country on a futile quest for ‘security’” (114).
Although criticizing the extent of federal power in The Challenge to Liberty, Hoover did not mention by name Roosevelt or the New Deal. Instead, his argument is almost philosophical as he made points about the nature of liberty itself. In one excerpt, Hoover likened liberty and freedom to an image of how one is controlled by traffic directions which led to his thesis that there is an incredibly thin line between Liberty and Regimentation (a line which, according to Hoover, Roosevelt crossed with his New Deal).
The American System has steadily evolved the protections of Liberty. In the early days of road traffic, we secured a respect for liberties of others by standards of decency and courtesy in conduct between neighbors. But with the crowding of highways and streets we have invented Stop and Go signals which apply to everybody alike, in order to maintain the same ordered Liberty. But traffic signals are not a sacrifice of Liberty, they are the preservation of it. Under them each citizen moves more swiftly to his own individual purpose and attainment. That is a far different thing from the corner policeman being given the right to determine whether the citizen’s mission warrants his passing and whether he is competent to execute it, and then telling him which way he should go, whether he likes it or not. That is the whole distance between ordered Liberty and Regimentation.
Hoover carried on to accuse FDR’s administration of “false Liberalism that interprets itself into government dictation” and, after noting his own belief that “true Liberalism seeks all legitimate freedom first in the confident belief that without such freedom the pursuit of other blessings is in vain”, he ultimately concluded that “[solutions to difficulties] cannot be achieved by the destructive forces of Regimentation”. To Hoover, the concept of liberty was interchangeable with the notion of freedom, and FDR was attempting to control the two, ultimately resulting in a Rooseveltian regiment. To Roosevelt, the concept of liberty was a great necessity to the average man and he often coupled it to the notion of security. The idea that liberty is more closely linked to security than it is to freedom from government intervention is still important in the way we think about liberty today.
Hoover’s censure and extreme disappointment in the president was not the only instance in which a politician publicly demonstrated severe disapproval for the New Deal — it was a bipartisan effort. “Many of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s policies threatened deeply held values and altered traditional patterns of power, and so they elicited heated responses from the right and the left”.
In 1936, a document outlining flaws of the New Deal was published by the American Liberty League. “The league was created in August 1934 by people who had originally supported FDR but now believed he had become too anti-business and had surrounded himself with radical advisors”. In this complaint that is filled with overwhelming negative language, written by millionaires for millionaires, the concluding argument was that Democrats “owe no duty of loyalty to the New Deal”. However, to emphasize that point, the ALL quite literally listed all of the reasons the New Deal could not be trusted.
The New Deal has prostituted the administration of the relief of the unfortunate to the ends of partisan politics. The New Deal has spent huge sums upon public works, despite grave doubts as to the desirability or usefulness of the projects. The New Deal has instituted a series of boondoggling enterprises which are as ridiculous as they are unwise… The New Deal has sought to make the Legislative Branch of the government subservient to the will of the Executive… The New Deal, in the words of Mr. Roosevelt himself, has set up “new instruments of public power,” admittedly dangerous in the hands of men who might misuse that power… The New Deal represents the attempt in America to set up a totalitarian government, on which recognizes no sphere of individual or business life.
This was a group who wanted Roosevelt out of office and was willing to quite publically condemn the president on every matter that made up the New Deal. By mixing true statements about the programs with notably argumentative statements and incredibly combative terms (ie “boondoggling enterprise”), this document was a representation of just how unusual the New Deal was and how the direct government intervention in the economy was something that was feared by many.
Along with labeling Roosevelt’s New Deal as totalitarian or as a regimentation, another notable complaint was that FDR was attempting to gain more political power than what was immediately granted by the Constitution. In February of 1937, Roosevelt attempted to reform the Supreme Court by proposing a law involving its purging. This law would allow him to appoint new Supreme Court justices if sitting justices reached the age of 70 and failed to retire.
Although constitutional, it appeared to many as a blatant grasp for power that Roosevelt’s plan to “pack the court” brought on an impressive backlash. Although court packing was defeated in Congress, FDR eventually sparked a new era of Supreme Court jurisprudence in which the government regulation of the economy was allowed. This change in judicial attitude is reflected in the crowning achievement of the New Deal (or to some, the crowning achievement of its Socialist plot), the Social Security Act. As outlined by Benjamin Cardozo in Helvering v. Davis, “the hope behind this statute [SSA] is to save men and women from the rigors of the poor house as well as from the haunting fear that such a lot awaits them when journey’s end is near”.
This act included unemployment insurance, aid the disabled, aid to poor families with children, and, naturally, retirement benefits. Up until the point, there was no guarantee that the government would continuously have money to spend on something as frivolous as a stipend for those who need it. In fact, the government was notorious for not having enough to spend.
However, the Social Security Act was, and is, not funded through traditional tax revenue, and while states still had a jurisdiction over distribution, social security still marked a significant change in how much trust the American people had for their government. Roosevelt was revolutionary for his time. Before FDR took office, it was not usual for the government to help much, if at all, in times of economic distress. After the New Deal, the question shifted and was no longer if the government should intervene in the lives of citizens, but how it should. He sought to lift the American economy out of the Great Depression and satisfy the demands of the crumbling nation.
The popularity of FDR and his programs brought together urban progressives and middle-class homeowners with unionized workers and immigrants, groups that had not yet been united before. Yet despite its radicalism, according to many economists and historians, what brought the Depression to an end was not the New Deal, but a massive government spending program called World War II. Nevertheless, above all else, the New Deal forever changed the expectations that Americans had, and have, of their government.
