Franklin Delano Roosevelt photographed by Vincenzo Laviosa around 1932 • WIKIMEDIA COMMONS Franklin Delano Roosevelt won four successive presidential elections in 1932, 1936, 1940 and 1944 – an unprecedented feat, which the 22 th amendment to the Constitution, which came into force in 1951, prohibited his successors, now limited to two terms. From his first inauguration to his death in office, he led a generation of Americans through the hardships of the Great Depression and then World War II. He remains a model to which all the presidents elected after him claim to belong – even if, for some of them, it is to better deny his social, economic or political heritage. A privileged childhood Franklin D. Roosevelt was born on January 30, 1882 into a New York high society family. He had a privileged childhood and studied in renowned establishments. Although he worked as a business lawyer for a few years, his vocation was political:in 1910, he was elected to the New York State Senate. Franklin is a Democrat, unlike his distant cousin Theodore, Republican president from 1901 to 1909. Franklin nevertheless considers Theodore as his model; he also married the latter's niece, Eleanor, in 1905. Victorious in the presidential election of 1912, the Democrat Wilson appointed Roosevelt Assistant Secretary of the Navy, a post which enabled him to play an important role after his country entered the First World War in April 1917. election of 1920, he is a candidate for the vice-presidency. The defeat of the Democrats is severe, but, at less than 40 years old, Roosevelt is a man full of future. In August 1921, however, he was brutally paralyzed. Doctors diagnose poliomyelitis; until his death, he will only be able to move around using crutches or a wheelchair. At the cost of considerable effort, he manages to return to politics, helped by Eleanor, who asserts herself as a leading personality. In 1928, he was elected Governor of the State of New York. During the stock market crash of October 1929, Roosevelt was no more lucid than the majority of his contemporaries – a “little flurry”, he wrote to an aide. But the economic situation deteriorates rapidly, and the Great Depression, in a few months, becomes global. In the United States, where agriculture has long suffered from a crisis of overproduction, industrial production is collapsing, bank failures are on the rise, and mass unemployment is rising inexorably. Herbert Hoover, the Republican president elected in 1928, proved unable to revive activity. A hundred days that change everything At the head of one of the states most affected by the crisis, Roosevelt took emergency measures to help the unemployed. At the beginning of July 1932, after a hotly contested competition, he was appointed by the Chicago convention to represent his party in the presidential election. In his speech on this occasion, he committed to a "New Deal [i.e. a "new deal"] for the American people". The candidate, who surrounds himself with a group of experts baptized by the press as the "Brain Trust" , delivered a series of voluntarist and, at times, contradictory speeches. He beat Hoover by a wide margin on November 8, 1932. When Roosevelt was sworn in on March 4, 1933, the economic crisis was at its peak. In a resounding speech, he calls on his fellow citizens to overcome fear. He immediately takes emergency measures that restore confidence; "Capitalism was saved in eight days," says his adviser Raymond Moley. During the 100 days that followed, the executive and Congress worked together to forge an impressive set of reforms in the fields of agriculture, public works, emergency social assistance, the organization of industry or financial regulation. The president inaugurates a new mode of communication, addressing his fellow citizens during radio "fireside chats". If the Supreme Court invalidated, on grounds of unconstitutionality, several emblematic reforms of the New Deal, it did not break their momentum. Under the joint effect of the “100 days” and the devaluation of the dollar, recorded by the president in January, activity resumed. The Social Security Act , passed in 1935, is the most enduring achievement of the New Deal:the foundations of unemployment insurance and old-age insurance are laid. It was not until the 1960s that the architecture of social protection was completed by a third pillar, admittedly still unfinished:that of health insurance. It was not until early 1938 that Roosevelt converted to Keynesianism – a school of thought that advocated state intervention in the economy. Triumphantly re-elected in 1936, Roosevelt squandered a large part of his political credit by engaging in an uncertain fight against the Supreme Court and by deciding prematurely to return to budgetary orthodoxy, which did not fail to provoke a return of the crisis. It was not until early 1938 that he converted to Keynesianism – a current of thought which advocates state intervention in the economy, according to its founder John Maynard Keynes – and the revival of economic activity. by the deficit. His second term also saw the reorganization of an executive with extended attributions through the proliferation of federal agencies. In terms of foreign policy, Roosevelt had to deal with majority isolationism; its room for maneuver is narrow. Aware of the threats posed by Japan and Nazi Germany, he endeavored to preserve the peace and support Great Britain and France – their orders for equipment contributed to the recovery of the late 1930s. In the United States, where the trauma of the French defeat is deep, the outgoing president appears to be the most capable of facing the peril. Fight to the end After his re-election in November 1940, he deployed all the resources of his skill to prepare public opinion for the start of the war and to help Great Britain, then, from June 1941, the Soviet Union. On December 7, the attack on the base of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese made him a warlord:by speaking, he galvanized the energy of his fellow citizens; it organizes, sometimes in confusion, the industrial mobilization; he weighs with all his authority in military and diplomatic choices; he participated, with Churchill and Stalin, in the conferences which prepared the post-war period and the creation of the UN. Although his state of health deteriorated, he was re-elected in 1944. Death surprised him on April 12, 1945, at the very end of the war. The Roosevelt years are not just a series of successes – apart from the hesitations of economic policy, it is only worth mentioning, for example, the internment of Japanese Americans in 1942. But Roosevelt leaves a considerable legacy :he succeeded in making Americans accept the idea that the security of the United States was better guaranteed by the exercise of its international responsibilities rather than by isolationism. He defined the contours of the "post-war consensus", based on a powerful, protective and regulatory federal state, a macroeconomic policy of Keynesian inspiration and the collaboration between Big Business (big companies) and Big Labor (the big unions). He finally built a lasting electoral coalition, from which the Democratic Party benefited for several decades. Find out more Franklin D. Roosevelt , by Yves-Marie Péréon, Tallandier (Texto), 2015. 1929 In the aftermath of the October stock market crash, the American economy sank into the Great Depression.1933 During the 100 days following Roosevelt's inauguration, Congress passed a series of economic and social reforms.1935 The Social Security Act , the most enduring achievement of the New Deal, laid the foundations of the welfare state in the United States.1945 Roosevelt dies in Warm Springs, Georgia, after reporting to Congress the results of the Yalta conference. Essential freedoms In the spirit of the Constitution and the ideals of the New Deal, Roosevelt, in his State of the Union address of January 1941, spoke of the "four freedoms":freedom of expression, religion, to live free from want and to live free from fear. Illustrated by the painter Norman Rockwell, they are one of the sources of inspiration for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. DISCOVER OUR SERIES"THE GREAT PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES" 1/10 - George Washington (1732-1799)2/10 - Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)3/10 - Andrew Jackson (1767-1845)4/10 - Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)5/10 - Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)6/10 - T. Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924)8/10 - Harry Truman (1884-1972)9/10 - Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969)10/10 - John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)
