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Franklin Roosevelt and the Modern Presidency*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Stephen Skowronek
Stephen Skowronek
Affiliation:
Yale University
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Extract

The political foundations of the modern presidency were laid during the New Deal years. Franklin Roosevelt was the New Deal president. The relationship between these two facts is a matter of some consequence. On it hinges our understanding of presidential leadership and modern American government generally, not to mention the political significance of Roosevelt himself.

Type
Articles
Information
Studies in American Political Development , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , Fall 1992 , pp. 322 - 358
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

1. The notion that previous presidents could rest content to be mere clerks, but that after Roosevelt, they had to be leaders, is a central theme of Neustadt's, Richard classic, Presidential Power (New York: Wiley, 1960)Google Scholar. For an assessment of Roosevelt as the “model of the modern president” that is built on Neustadt's conception see Rose, Richard, The Post-Modern President (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House, 1991), p. 49Google Scholar.

2. Lowi, Theodore, The Personal President: Power Invested Promise Unfulfilled (Ithaca: Cornell, 1985), pp. 44–66Google Scholar.

3. Greenstein, Fred. I., “The Need for an Early Assessment of the Reagan Presidency” in The Reagan Presidency: An Early Assessment, ed. Greenstein, Fred I. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1983), p. 3Google Scholar. A more fully developed statement of the modern presidency perspective can be found in Greenstein, Fred I., “Continuity and Change in the Modern Presidency” in The New American Political System, ed. King, Anthony (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1979), pp. 45–86Google Scholar.

4. Milkis, Sidney, “Franklin Roosevelt and the Transcendence of Partisan Politics” Political Science Quarterly, 100, 3, Fall 1985, pp. 479–504Google Scholar. Milkis, Sidney, “The Presidency Policy Reform and the Rise of Administrative Politics,” in Remaking American Politics, Harris, Richard and Milkis, Sidney, eds. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1989), pp. 146–187Google Scholar; and Sidney Milkis, The New Deal and the Transformation of the American Party System, forthcoming, Oxford University Press.

5. This article elaborates more general arguments I have presented in “Presidential Leadership in Political Time” in Nelson, Michael, ed., The Presidency and the Political System (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1984, 1988, 1990), pp. 117–161Google Scholar, and in “Notes on the Presidency in the Political Order,” Studies in American Political Development, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), pp. 286–302. A fuller treatment will be presented in The Politics President's Make: Persistent, Emergent, and Recurrent Patterns from John Adams to George Bush, forth-coming.

6. As one of his great admirers observes, “As a politician per se, Roosevelt has been overrated.” Schlesinger, Arthur Jr, The Age of Roosevelt: The Coming of the New Deal (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958), p. 573Google Scholar.

7. “The party to offer [a workable program of reconstruction] is the party with clean hands.” Acceptance Speech Before the Democratic National Convention, Chicago, July 2, 1932. Roosevelt, Franklin D.: Public Papers and Addresses, 13 vols. (New York: Random House, 1938–1950), Vol. 1, pp. 649Google Scholar.

8. Ibid. p. 648–649. “Note well that in this campaign I shall not use the words Republican Party, but I shall use, day in and day out, the words ‘Republican leadership.’ ”

9. Ibid., p. 650 “The people of this country want a genuine choice this year, not a choice between two names for the same reactionary doctrine.”

10. Ibid., pp. 648, 649.

11. Especially good on Roosevelt's understanding of the need to transform if not transcend the old Democratic party is Sidney Milkis, The Modern Presidency and the Transformation of the American Party System, forthcoming, Oxford University Press, chap. 3. Also, Schlesinger, Arthur Jr, The Age of Roosevelt, Crisis of the Old Order (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957), esp. p. 377Google Scholar.

12. Hull, Cordell, quoted in Freidel, Frank, Roosevelt and the South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1965), p. 42Google Scholar.

13. See note 1.

14. “Campaign Address on Progressive Government at the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco,” September 23, 1932, Public Papers and Addresses, I, pp. 752–763.

15. Franklin Roosevelt, “The Election: An Interpretation,” Liberty, Vol 9, No. 50, p. 9.

16. Public Papers and Addresses, Vol. 2, p. 165

17. Public Papers and Addresses, Introduction to Vol. 1, p. 5.

18. Quoted in Burns, James MacGregor, Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox (New York: Harcourt Brace and World, 1956), p. 208Google Scholar.

19. Wolfskill, George, The Revolt of the Conservatives: A History of the American Liberty League, 1943–1940, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962.) esp. pp. 21–36Google Scholar.

20. On the role the Supreme Court in reconstructive politics see Ackerman, Bruce, We The People: Foundations, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991)Google Scholar.

21. Public Papers and Addresses, “Address at the Jackson Day Dinner,” January 8, 1936. Vol. 5, p. 40.

22. Roosevelt's preoccupation with Jackson as well as the other presidents who had engaged in a politics of reconstruction before him is sensitively elaborated in Abbott, Philip, The Exemplary President: Franklin Roosevelt and the American Political Tradition (Amherst: Universitv of Massachusetts Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

23. Public Papers and Addresses, Vol. 2, pp. 14–15.

24. Hoover's opinion of the TVA was contained in his rejection of a Senator Norris proposal for the development of Music Shoals, State Paper and Other Public Writings, Vol. 1, 526–527; “piece of socialism”—Memoirs of Herbert Hoover Vol. 2, p. 232. For his opinion of the NRA idea see The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: The Great Depression 1929–1941 (New York: Macmillan, 1952), Vol. 3, pp. 334–335, 430.

25. On the prominence of these themes during the New Deal see Wolfskill, George and Hudson, John, All But the People: Franklin D. Roosevelt and His Critics (London: Collier-MacMillan, 1969)Google Scholar; also Wolfskill, The Revolt of the Conservatives.

26. Perkins, Frances, The Roosevelt I Knew (New York: Viking, 1946), pp. 328–333Google Scholar.

27. Ibid.; on pragmatism as Roosevelt's discipline see Schlesinger, Arthur, The Age of Roosevelt: The Politics of Upheaval (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960), pp. 649–651Google Scholar.

28. For a diverse set of interpreters who find a hollow core at the center of Roosevelt's reconstruction see, Burns, pp. 472–475; Hofstadter, Richard, The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It (New York: Vintage, 1948), pp. 315–352Google Scholar; Tugwell, Rexford, “The Experimental Roosevelt,” in Leuchtenburg, William E., ed., Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Profile (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967), esp. pp. 71–72Google Scholar; Conkin, Paul, The New Deal (Arlington Heights, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1975)Google Scholar.

29. Public Papers and Addresses, pp. 11–16.

30. Ibid.

31. See Alsop, Joseph, FDR: A Centenary Remembrance (New York: Viking, 1982), pp. 11–13Google Scholar.

32. “Forgotten Man” Speech, Radio Address, Albany, New York, April 7, 1932,Public Papers and Addresses, Vol. 1, p. 625. Also Schlesinger, Crisis, pp. 289–290.

33. “The Election: An Interpretation”, pp. 7–8.

34. Leuchtenburg, William, Franklin Roosevell and the New Deal: 1932–1940 (New York: Harper and Row, 1963), p. 63Google Scholar.

35. Leuchtenberg, p. 90. Especially good on Roosevelt's maneuvering around the economic orthodoxy of the bankers in particular is Romasco, Albert, The Politics of Recovery: Roosevelt's New Deal (New York: Oxford, 1983)Google Scholar. For another view see Ferguson, Thomas, “Industrial Conflict and the Coming of the New Deal: The Triumph of Multinational Liberalism in America” in The Rise and Decline of the New Deal Order 1930–1980, Fraser, Steve and Gerstle, Gary, eds. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), pp. 3–32Google Scholar.

36. See Wolfskill and Hudson, “All But the People…” For a reading of Roosevelt's appeal to traditional values that tends to wash out the radical thrust of his proposals see Frisch, Morton, “Franklin Delano Roosevelt,” in Frisch, Morton and Stevens, Richard, American Political Thought: The Philosophic Dimension of American Statesmanship (New York: Scribners, 1971), pp. 219–236Google Scholar. See also note 81.

37. Public Papers and Addresses, Vol. 5, p. 16.

38. Ibid., pp. 230–236, emphasis added.

39. Public Papers and Addresses, Vol. 5, “Campaign Address at Madison Square Garden,” October 31, 1936, p. 568.

40. Burns, pp. 280–297; Nelson, Michael, “The President and the Court: Reinterpreting the Court-Packing Episode of 1937,” Political Science Quarterly 103, 2 (11 2, 1988), esp. p. 288CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41. Public Papers and Addresses, “The Goal of the National Industrial Recovery Act,” June 16, 1933, p. 246.

42. As Donald Brand has written of Roosevelt's ambitions for the NRA, “The first new deal is the radical new deal.” Brand, Donald, Corporatism and the Rule of Law: A study of the National Recovery Administration (Ithaca: Cornell, 1988), p. 288Google Scholar.

43. Himmelberg, Robert F., The Origins of the National Recovery Administration: Business, Government and the Trade Association Issue, 1921–1933 (New York: Fordham, 1976), pp. 196–207Google Scholar; Brand, pp. 82–95. Hawley, Ellis, The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), pp. 19–52Google Scholar.

44. On the basis of this principle of everybody doing things together, we are starting out on this nationwide attack on unemployment. It will succeed if our people understand it—in the big industries, in the little shops, in the great cities, and in the small villages”. (Public Papers and Addresses, “The Third Fireside Chat,” July 24, 1933, p. 299)

45. Freidel, Frank, FDR: The Launching of the New Deal (Boston, Little Brown, 1973), p. 418Google Scholar; Burns, p. 180; Leuchtenberg, pp. 55–56; Brand, p. 85.

46. Fraser, Steven, Labor Will Rule: Sidney Hillman and the Rise of American Labor (New York: Free Press, 1991), pp. 282–293Google Scholar.

47. Brand is especially good in identifying the transformative implications of the NRA with its public purposes, rather than in the push and pull of the interests; see esp. pp. 261–290.

48. Schlesinger, The Coming of the New Deal, p. 162; Wolfskill and Hudson, p. 213.

49. On government “partnership” and government “rights,” Public Papers and Addresses, “Second Fireside Chat,” May 7, 1933, p. 164.

50. Quoted in Schlesinger, The Coming of the New Deal, p. 98.

51. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495 (1935).

52. On the problem of state capacity in industrial regulation see Skocpol, Theda and Feingold, Kenneth, “State Capacity and Economic Intervention in the Early New Deal,” Political Science Quarterly, 97, 2 (summer 1982), pp. 255–278CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53. Schlesinger, The Coming of the New Deal, pp. 103–110; Leuchtenburg, p. 70.

54. Schlesinger, pp. 110–135, 152–160; Hawley, pp. 53–129, 100; Brand, pp. 99–149.

55. Schlesinger, The Coming of the New Deal, pp. 136–151; Brand, pp. 229–260. On the relationship between worker insurgency and political reform in the New Deal see Plotke, David, “The Wagner Act Again, Politics and Labor, 1935–37,” Studies in American Political Development, Vol. 3 (1989), pp. 105–156Google Scholar; Feingold, Kenneth and Skocpol, Theda, “State Party and Industry: From Business Recovery to the Wagner Act in America's New Deal,” in State Making and Social Movements: Essays in History and Theory, Bright, Charles and Harding, Susan, eds. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1984) pp. 159–192Google Scholar; Michael Goldfield, “Worker Insurgency, Radical Organization and New Deal Labor Legislation,” American Political Science Review, 83, pp. 1257–1282; Feingold, Kenneth, Skocpol, Theda, and Gold-field, Michael, “Explaining New Deal Labor Policy,” American Political Science Review, 84, 4, 12 1990, pp. 1297–1315Google Scholar. For an alternative view of the stakes at issue see Orren, Karen, Belated Feudalism: Labor, The Law and Liberal Development in the United States (New York: Cambridge, 1992)Google Scholar.

56. Hawley, p. 71; Schlesinger, p. 121.

57. Leuchtenburg, p. 146; Freidel, Frank, Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Rendezvous With Destiny (Boston: Little Brown, 1990), p. 154–155Google Scholar.

58. Public Papers and Addresses, Vol. 4. “Gains Under the NRA and Recommendation for a Two-Year Extension,” February 20, 1935, p. 82.

59. Ibid.

60. Schlesinger, Arthur, The Age Of Roosevelt: The Politics of Upheaval (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960), pp. 271–272Google Scholar; also Wilson, William, “How the Chamber of Commerce Viewed the NRA: A Reconsideration,” Mid America XLIV (1962), pp. 95–108Google Scholar.

61. Alsop, Joseph and Catledge, Turner, The 168 Days (Garden City: Doubleday, 1938), p. 7Google Scholar.

62. Public Papers mid Addresses, Vol. 4, pp. 200–222.

63. Schlesinger, The Politics of Upheaval, pp. 468–496; Irons, Peter, The New Deal Lawyers (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), pp. 17–199Google Scholar.

64. Brand, p. 286; Burns, p. 219; Schlesinger, The Coming of the New Deal, p. 405–406.

65. Leuchtcnberg, pp. 143–167; Schlesinger, The Politics of Upheaval, pp. 385–442; Burns, pp. 220–226.

66. Ellis, Richard,The Union At Risk: Jacksonian Democracy, States Rights and the Nullification Crisis (New York: Oxford, 1987)Google Scholar.

67. Patterson, James T., Congressional Conservatism and the New Deal: The Growth of the Conservative Coalition in Congress (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1967), pp. 251–287Google Scholar; Shannon, J. B., “Presidential Politics in the South—1938, II,” Journal of Politics, I, 3 (08 1939), pp. 278–300Google Scholar.

68. Alsop and Catledge, pp. 138–145; Bruce Ackerman, We the People: Foundations pp. 266–294.

69. Patterson, pp. 278–300; Frank Friedel, Roosevelt and the South; Frank Friedel, Rendezvous, 287.

70. Polenberg, Richard, Reorganizing Roosevelt's Government, 1936–1939: The Controversy Over Executive Reorganization (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

71. Patterson, p. 287.

72. Overacker, Louise, “Labor's Political Contributions,” Political Science Quarterly, V. 54, no. 1, (1939) pp. 56–78 1939CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

73. Leuchtenburg, pp. 188–189; Schlesinger, The Politics of Upheaval, p. 594.

74. Alsop and Catledge, pp. 163–176.

75. Polenberg, pp. 79–122.

76. Public Papers and Addresses, Vol. 5, p. 144.

77. Public Papers and Addresses, Vol. 5, pp. 144, 668–681.

78. Patterson, pp. 215–229. Polenberg, pp. 55–161.

79. Polenberg, pp. 184–185; Patterson, pp. 300–302. Arnold, Peri, Making the Managerial Presidency (Princeton: Princeton Unversity Press, 1986), pp. 93–117Google Scholar.

80. On the broader implications of this dynamic for the evolution of the modern presidency see Moe, Terry, “The Politicized Presidency,” in The New Direction in American Politics, Clubb, John E. and Peterson, Paul E., eds., (Washington, D.C., 1985), pp. 235–272Google Scholar.

81. It might be worth pausing here to consider a contrary position outlined by Morton Frisch (“Franklin Delano Roosevelt” op cit) which downplays the radicalism of Roosevelt's actual proposals by emphasizing the compatibility of what the New Deal actually accomplished with older American traditions. This argument is elusive. It downplays the implications of the quest for mastery that Roosevelt openly avowed in 1936 as well as the concrete proposals he ventured in 1937 to realize that objective. The issue between us is complicated by the abrupt change in presidential rhetoric in 1937 when Roosevelt offered familiar progressive nostrums to justify court packing and government reorganization. Moving from that rhetoric to an assessment of what Roosevelt actually got eases the way to the conclusions that the Court and Congress gave Roosevelt what he really wanted, and that what he really wanted was quite compatable with the Constitution's design. But why should we dismiss the rhetoric of 1936 in favor of the rhetoric of 1937, and why should we read Roosevelt's intentions from what he got rather then from his initial proposals and his actions on their behalf? It seems to me that what Roosevelt said he was going to do in 1936 is just what he tried to do in 1937, but that the proposals that would have gained him the mastery he sought flew in the face of the basic constitutional design. Thus, the rhetoric of 1937 belies the radicalism of the proposals themselves: Roosevelt's tenacity in pressing judicial reform after the Court had capitulated to New Deal polities tells us more about what he was really after than the Court's capitulation itself; and the compatibility of the progressive rhetoric of 1937 with the actual result (and the result with the basic constitutional frame) misses the real historic significance of the rejection of the president's designs. The fact that Roosevelt failed to mount a constitutional argument in defense of those proposals, and instead resorted to washed out progressive nostrums, indicates a historical weakening of the reconstructive stance in the modern period as well as a weakening of the reconstructive posture Roosevelt himself had adopted in 1936.

82. Public Papers and Addresses. Vol. 5, p. 672. Compare the similar presentation of the NRA in note 39.

83. Polenberg. pp. 28–29.

84. On the ideology of the President's Committee on Administrative Management and its relationship to the President's political aims see Karl, Barry, Executive Reorganization and Reform in the New Deal (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1963)Google Scholar. Roosevelt's political ambitions concerning reorganization are treated most thoroughly by Sidney Milkis, The Modern Presidency and the Transformation of the American Party System. On the search for a way to package an assault on judicial intransigence see Alsop and Catledge, pp. 13–65.

85. Speech at Democratic Victory Dinner, March 4, 1937, Public Papers and Addresses, Vol. 6, pp. 120, 123.

86. Alsop and Catledge, p. 74; Also consulted on the Court-packing controversy are Nelson (see note 40); Baker, Leonard, Back to Back: The Dual Between FDR and the Supreme Court (New York: Macmillan, 1967)Google Scholar; Leuchtenberg, William E., “The Origins of Franklin Roosevelt's Court Packing Plan,” The Supreme Court Review, Kurland, Philip, ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), pp. 347–400Google Scholar; Leuchtenberg, William E., “Roosevelt's Supreme Court Packing Plan,” in Essays on the New Deal, Hollingsworth, Harold and Holmes, William, eds. (Austin: University of Texas, 1969)Google Scholar; Leuchtenberg, William, “FDR's Court-Packing Plan: A Second Life, A Second Death,” Duke Law Journal 1985, 3, 4 (06–12, 1985) pp. 673–689Google Scholar.

87. Public papers and Addresses, V. p. 669.

88. Alsop and Catledge, p. 127.

89. Ibid., pp. 229–233.

90. Polenberg, pp. 147–161; Leuchtenberg, Franklin Roosevelt, pp. 275–283; Public Papers and Addresses, Vol. 7, pp. 179–181; Arnold, pp. 112–115.

91. That Roosevelt did in fact continue unprecedented, if still oblique, challenges to the constitutional separation of powers is documented by Corwin, Edward, The President: Office and Powers (New York: New York University Press, 1957), pp. 250–252Google Scholar.

92. On the tension structured into the relationship between the modern plebiscitary presidency and the original constitutional presidency see Tulis, Jeffrey, “The Two Constitutional Presidencies,” in Nelson, Michael, The Presidency and the Political System (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1988), pp. 85–114Google Scholar.