This is the fourth episode in an occasional series examining influential elections in U.S. history. The most recent episode, The Elections of 1860 and 1864, was published on May 7.
When Franklin Delano Roosevelt took the oath of office in March 1933, the American people faced a paralyzing national emergency of historic proportions. The unemployment rate was 25% and much of the nation’s wealth had evaporated with astonishing speed.
It was a moment of high drama, unlike the election that put Roosevelt in the White House. When voters went to the polls in November 1932, there was little doubt FDR would defeat the hapless Herbert Hoover by a wide margin. Unclear was whether Roosevelt’s promised New Deal would pull the country out of the Great Depression. In this episode, historian David M. Kennedy explains how Roosevelt’s economic vision made him a transformational figure — even though the New Deal did not reverse the massive economic and financial collapse that preceded his first term.
“1932 was a major inflection point in the historical evolution of the American constellation of forces. It inaugurated a long period of Democratic dominance of the federal government, the presidency and both chambers of Congress. And it left a legacy, because it enabled the president of Franklin Roosevelt with super-majorities in both chambers, to legislate things that changed the landscape of American social and economic life for generations,” said Mr. Kennedy, a professor emeritus at Stanford University and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945.”
History As It Happens is available at washingtontimes.com or wherever you find your podcasts.
