“At one of his earliest press conferences, Roosevelt compared himself to a
quarterback in a football game. The quarterback knows what the next play will
be, but beyond that he cannot predict or plan too rigidly because ‘future plays
will depend on how the next one works.’ The New Deal will never be
understood by anyone who looks for a single thread of policy, a far-reaching,
far-seeing plan. It was a series of improvisations, may adopted very
suddenly….”
-
Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition
The New Deal is plainly an attempt to achieve a working socialism and avert a social
collapse in America; it is extraordinarily parallel to the successive 'policies' and
'Plans' of the Russian experiment. Americans shirk the word 'socialism', but what
else can one call it?
-H. G. Wells
The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those
who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1937