FDR:
The progressive
as hero
In contrast to social democrats today, FDR’s style of leadership empathised with the
anxieties and frustrations of the people and boldly seized the opportunity of the
crisis for progressive ends
Patrick Diamond on Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR)
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the world’s first great crisis leader, and arguably the first great politician
of the television age. As well as an astonishingly adept communicator, FDR remains an important
ideological antecedent for modern progressivism and social democracy, particularly in the current
climate of capitalist crisis and the global politics of recession.
Roosevelt was a dominant leader because he appeared to have the answers to people’s problems
during a period of extraordinary turmoil and uncertainty in American life, a nation that, as he put
it, was by the early 1930s, “frozen by a fatalistic terror.” The United States was gripped by paralysis
and self-doubt in the face of a severe economic depression and stock market collapse. FDR rose to
the occasion, speaking directly to people and energising the nation behind the drive for recovery. He
understood that recessions are moments of opportunity as well as crisis, but only if politicians are very
bold in seizing them, as Andrew Gamble has recently reminded us.1 They have to frame narratives that
are popular and credible, accompanied by radical solutions that are capable of unifying the country.
And they have to be prepared to face great opposition, just as FDR did.
In contrast to Roosevelt’s victories, parties of the right historically have proved themselves to be more
adept at seizing the advantage and framing the narrative. This is exactly what has occurred in Western
Europe since the first banking crisis in August 2007, where Christian democracy has dominated the
political landscape at the expense of the centre-left, which has suffered a succession of serious reversals
and defeats. Social democracy has relatively little idea about how to protect people from global storms.
First, it has allowed the crisis to be redefined as a crisis of debt, rather than a crisis of financial market
failure. Second, the left has flirted with the rhetoric of capitalist collapse, when it is more likely that
the crisis will lead to the rebirth and renewal of capitalism. The issue will be how to better protect
people by promoting the resilience both of institutions and the population at large through a new
social compact.
In Britain, before the financial crisis took hold, Labour promised “British jobs for British workers,” but
this did not appear plausible or credible, particularly to skilled, ‘blue-collar’ voters. After the collapse
of the banks it acted decisively to prevent widespread financial failure, but it had no long-term plan
for institutional reform to rebalance the economy away from overdependence on financial services,
hedge funds and derivatives. Arguably, social democratic governments have been insufficiently bold in
challenging the vested interests of the markets. In the face of neo-liberal orthodoxy, they have been
reluctant to position themselves as reformers of financial market capitalism, contesting the excesses
of bankers and financiers. Yet this is exactly what the public have been demanding as a pragmatic
response to systemic failure and unjustified reward in the financial sector.
It was precisely this error that FDR battled to avoid. He served as President from March 1933 to April
1945, the longest tenure in American history. FDR may have done more to alter the course of American
society and politics than any president before or since. Roosevelt was a defining figure who understood
the importance of the politics of security, in which governments strive to protect ordinary citizens in
dark and dangerous times. In his second inaugural address in 1937, he took stock of what had changed
in America since he assumed the presidency: “We refused to leave the problems of our common
welfare to be solved by the winds of chance and the hurricanes of disaster.”
FDR: The progressive as hero
www.policy-network.net
Under FDR, the federal government assumed a new and powerful role in the nation’s economy, and in
the health, welfare and well-being of its citizens. Trade unions were granted the right to organise and
bargain collectively, and the Fair Labour Standards Act of 1938 put a floor under wages and a ceiling
on hours. Financial aid was provided to the sick, elderly and unemployed who could not provide for
themselves, and special assistance was granted to agricultural and rural America through price supports
and development programmes. By embracing an activist fiscal policy in the late 1930s, the government
took on responsibility for managing monetary and financial shocks. The New Deal programme as a
whole ensured that the economic and political benefits of American capitalism were distributed more
equally among the population.
All of this was achieved at some political cost, despite Roosevelt’s landslide victory in 1936 with 61 per
cent of the popular vote. Many wealthy Americans could not even bear to utter Roosevelt’s name and
he was commonly referred to by the rich as “that man in the White House”. But he was unwavering in
his revolve to carry through a great programme of economic and social reform, declaring: “The test of
our progress is not whether we add to the abundance of those who have much. It is whether we provide
enough for those who have too little.”
FDR was a heroic progressive president, but of course his record should not be exempt from criticism.
At the end of the 1930s, unemployment remained at very high levels; while weak purchasing power
meant that without the outbreak of the Second World War, stagnation may have engulfed the American
economy. The New Deal propped up many failing industries and sectors, and opportunities for innovation
and the renewal of America’s infrastructure were missed. That said, Roosevelt’s triumph was in seizing
the opportunity of the crisis and redefining it for progressive ends, transforming American society and
politics and emerging as a defining figure in American history.
Patrick Diamond is a senior research fellow at Policy Network, Gwilym Gibbon fellow at Nuffield
College, Oxford and a visiting fellow in the Department of Politics at the University of Oxford
1. See Andrew Gamble, Capitalist Crisis and the Politics of Recession (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)
FDR: The progressive as hero
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