Transcript of Skype Audio Interview
May 15, 2015
May 15, 2015
Do you know of any leaders who have been inspired by FDR’s leadership during the Great Depression?
I do. I guess I would answer that question in kind of two parts. I think there are probably a whole generation of leaders who were inspired because they lived through that period; for example, the person that first comes to mind is Lyndon Johnson, he actually started his political career waiting for New Deal agencies in the 1930s…and by the time he became President in the 1960s he was quite determined to expand the New Deal, and really move forward on some of FDR’s vision that didn’t get implemented: for example, health care. So there was a very direct inspiration of someone who grew up during the Depression and was in politics. And I guess you could say to a certain extent someone like JFK was certainly inspired by FDR. And then you have another generation of leaders who are a little more far-removed from FDR, and that would be people like Bill Clinton, who maybe read about FDR or was very young during the war or something like that and so there I think the inspiration is a little more the question of desiring to use the government to advance a public good which they identified with FDR. The other thing I would say is that the interesting element of FDR’s inspiration is that for many years it cut across party lines and to a certain extent it still does. Like in the 1980s, you had someone like Ronald Reagan, kind of the father of the modern Conservative movement, admiring FDR and talking about FDR as someone he wanted to emulate at the same time that he was trying to dismantle some of the elements of the New Deal programs. Likewise, someone like Newt Gingrich in the 1990s often talked very fondly or very highly of FDR. So, that bipartisan understanding of FDR or that kind of adulation of FDR has evaporated to a certain extent in the 21st century, I think you’re less likely now to see Conservatives praising FDR, but the other thing I would say about FDR as an inspirational leader is that one reason you get people from both sides of the aisle admiring him is because you can cherry pick or pick and choose what parts of FDR’s leadership and legacy inspire you. If you’re a Progressive or a Liberal you tend to focus on the New Deal. If you’re more conservative you see FDR’s wartime leadership as something that should be emulated. So I think partly because FDR was in office for so long and he guided the country through two major crises allowed people from different political orientations to look to him as an inspirational leader in many different ways. And I’d say that to a certain extent Barack Obama evokes FDR, he’s quoted him recently on immigration reform, he of course talked about him in the 2008 campaign, and Bill Leuchtenburg who’s one of the most well-known historians on the New Deal and FDR talked about how Obama’s first inaugural address certainly amplified on some of FDR’s ideas.
What do you think were FDR’s most important leadership traits?
I think first of all and probably most important in terms of his personality you were talking about someone who was supremely self-confident and I don’t meant arrogant, I mean someone who was completely sure about who they were. A lot of biographers say it’s because he had this adoring mother who almost made him feel like he was the only person in the world and every special. And what I see as his strength is that that kind of confidence allows you to surround yourself with people who are sometimes smarter than you or have different ideas than you do and you can accept their feedback and accept their conversation in a way that someone who is deeply insecure has difficulty with. So, that kind of just very self-assured attitude I think really helped him especially in the early years of the Depression. Likewise and maybe it’s because of that self-confidence he inspired confidence in other people. He was very calm but yet determined. And I think that that those qualities and that ability to project those qualities really encouraged people to look up to him as someone who could guide them through the crisis. I think the was incredibly sociable and very personal so that people felt comfortable around him and felt like they had a connection with him even if they didn’t really know him that well. He always used first names and joked around with people he had a great sense of humor and a certain joy and life, it came through in his radio addresses came through in his speeches and came through in his personal relationships with people. So the people who worked for him (with a few exceptions of course) were incredibly devoted to him. And that of course is very helpful when you’re moving through a political career as long as his. He was also I would say empathetic to a certain extent and a lot of people attribute that to the fact that he suffered polio and saw adversity and was able to see during the Great Depression the pain people were feeling and saw that as something he had to take on. Adding another important leadership quality and again this goes back to his self-confidence, he was not wedded to any political ideology other than he was a Democrat with a small d; of course, he was a Democrat and he believed in the democratic processes but he was willing to learn from his mistakes and he was very willing to experiment. So that makes him very flexible in office at a time when the American people needed somebody to be flexible. I would also say that he wore a mask so no one was quite sure what he was really thinking he tended to hold his cards very closely and that was sometimes to his and others’ benefits but sometimes it was not because he could also be very duplicitous, but again during the early years of the Depression when all of his legislation was being proposed it was helpful to have somebody who wasn’t completely transparent and again who you could read or interpret in many different ways. One of the things that happened was people tended to project on him their vision. Some people saw him as a father, others preferred to see him as a doctor, others preferred to see him as a captain of the ship of State and he could be all of those things because he was such a complicated person and he did have a mask. So he could meet with certain people and say, “Oh, I’m definitely supportive of that mission and am definitely supportive of that initiative,” but then he could meet with other people who had a completely different opinion on the same policy or topic and say, “Oh, I’m completely in agreement with you!” So both sides would think that, “Oh yes, he supports me.” I think that’s helpful in your political career; sometimes it damages personal relationships and yes, sometimes it can hurt you politically if at some point some group feels betrayed. The last thing I would say about him in terms of his leadership trait is that he had an unbelievable political acumen. He really could read for the most part the electorate, he understood how to work the Democratic party, the conventions; he just had really good political instincts and I think during a crisis that’s a tremendous strength. So those are some of the qualities that I think I would say contributed to his ability to lead the country in the 1930s and 40s.
What would you say about the treatment of women through FDR’s New Deal programs? I know he was criticized for the lesser benefits they received but I do understand that he was restricted by the social norms at the time, so what do you think?
I think that’s a fairly accurate statement. I guess that I would say that FDR was progressive on many issues but race and gender were where he was more mainstream. He did reflect more mainstream ideas of gender roles, of race relations. He was not somebody who spent a lot of time advocating for a lot of those issues but I think it’s important to emphasize that he was married to someone who did. And Eleanor Roosevelt was a very important part of that political calculation. And so he let her speak very freely or relatively freely about these issues even though he knew it would cost him some support in certain parts of the country or among certain constituents. And you know again getting back to the political acumen is that she would say something really controversial supporting equal pay for women or supporting women’s right to work and he would say, “Well, I can’t control the Mrs.” So he was allowing her to say these controversial things and at the same time he was distancing himself from her. And that’s again a genius political move on his part because he was not disagreeing with her; he was just saying she has a different mind and he can’t control her, kind of like shrugging his shoulders. So I think he was able to really use her—and I don’t mean that in a way that sounds like he was being completely conscious about maneuvering her politically—but he was able to use her to solidify his position with African Americans, with women, at the same time as you point out that his actual record was not all that progressive or impressive when it came to women and minorities. I think the other thing to keep in mind it’s not just the social norms at the time, it’s the fact that Southern Democrats were in control of Congress and several committees of Congress, and all of the New Deal legislation was tempered or modified by a Southern orientation and he recognized that, he recognized that he needed the Southern bloc to support his New Deal and he was willing to make compromises on many racial issues in particular which in hindsight is a little upsetting and one wishes he was willing to take a little more political risk because of a principle or moral right but he didn’t do that and I suspect it’s partly because as you pointed out his views weren’t that progressive and he wasn’t willing to spend that political capital in order to support women and minorities. You know looking back, much of the New Deal legislation instituted inequalities in ways that were very harmful in the long run to women and to African Americans in particular so I would say that on that part of his record it’s really not something that Progressives can hold up as an example of his ability to push forward a progressive agenda. I mean in 1940, he did put Henry Wallace on his ticket; like Eleanor, [Wallace] was very progressive at the time. He did surround himself with people who were very progressive. But one would say that he didn’t take a strong leadership role in either civil rights or women’s rights. I mean he had a small black cabinet so there were actually what were called Negro advisors in departments of his agencies to push for the hiring of minorities or to advocate on behalf of people maybe having trouble working with an agency. So I guess behind the scenes there was a little bit of movement. I would also say Harry Hopkins, who headed the WPA was a very close adviser to FDR. Harry Hopkins was like Eleanor; they wanted to institute a system where a certain percentage of WPA jobs would go to minorities based upon population. And that was a pretty radical proposition for that time period. So again I think and maybe that goes back to the self-confidence that he had people in his administration who were very progressive. But when it came to big things like the anti-lynching bill, the poll tax, and the Southern tenant farmers’ union he didn’t stand up for African Americans. And he allowed certain exemptions to be passed in the Social Security Act, in the National Labor Relations Act, in the Fair Labor Standards Act, that exempted occupations mainly held by African Americans. And those kinds of exemptions, those kinds of things they matter over time. That’s an economic loss to the community which is very difficult to recoup. So one wishes he’d said to Southern Democrats, “I’ll draw a line here and here,” but he didn’t do that. The other thing I would say is it’s not just African Americans in the New Deal. There was what was called the New Deal for American Indians and they were given a lot more autonomy and sovereignty in terms of their land and governance and so at the same time you know again it’s sort of back and forth there was a repatriation of Mexican Americans. So many were deported because they were said to be taking jobs that belonged to native born Americans. Even though some of these Mexican Americans had been in the US for years and years and many of them had been born here. So you know I think it really, we can’t point to it as a watershed in terms of civil rights but we can say that he allowed some windows to open and Progressives took advantage of that.
What do you think is the most important legacy of FDR that Americans still feel today?
That was a really good question. And it was really hard for me to narrow it down because there’s so much. So in terms of a big picture I guess there are three areas where you really see, in terms of politics or governance, you really see the influence of the new deal. One, there’s the massive expansion of the Regulatory State and this idea that the government is going to allow private property and industry to continue but it’s going to regulate it. So the regulation of industry throughout the 1930s really set a precedent for moving forward in terms of how the economy was going to work. And then by WWII the government became committed to Keynesian economics, in which they are flushing money into the economy partly through the military but also through other government programs. The Welfare State obviously was a huge legacy of FDR. So we can look to the Social Security Act and part of that was age dependent children, pensions for older people, unemployment insurance, so that was really important legacy. And I guess in turn you can put labor regulations under regulatory or welfare but the NLRA and FSLA were really important to ordinary working people and we still have minimum wage such as it is. You also see and I think your website talked about this but you see the growth of the office of the presidency, under the Reorganization Act, FDR was allowed to hire permanent staffers. He had six and now we have thousands. Another legacy of FDR’s is the National Security State. And this is primarily a consequence of WWII but it is a very, very important part of our political life today…infrastructure that was built under the WPA, CCC, and PWA, and support for the arts…in a less maybe concrete way I suppose one could say he inspired people with disabilities and he was a very important symbol for people with disabilities. The Disabilities Rights Movement which I guess doesn’t really start to gain traction until the late 20th century could use FDR in ways that were very important. The political realignment of the Democratic party during the 1930s, with bringing African Americans into the coalition, northern workers, Midwestern Progressives, the labor movement; that’s still with us, they’ve fractured a little bit, but the basis of the constituents of the Democratic party came about under FDR. The other legacy I just wanted to mention and this is more of a personal pitch but I work at Roosevelt University. It was named for Franklin and Eleanor. It was founded in 1945, and it was founded because students and faculty at a local college were protesting the use of quotas to determine how many Jews, how many African Americans could be at the school. And in their protest they left this small college they belonged to and they created their own college and they wanted to call it Jefferson College. Roosevelt died within weeks of the founding of this college and they wrote to Eleanor and asked if they could use FDR’s name and she said, “You may not only use his name, but I will sit on the board of trustees and I will bring in trustees from my network.” Like Albert Einstein was on the board, Harold Ickes, Marshall Field III, so the board had a lot of New Deal luminaries on it but the university was dedicated to open admission to all qualified students. And it still operates on that principle, it’s still committed to social justice. So that’s a very concrete legacy, very specific to my position and to Chicago but I think it’s very important because it symbolizes what FDR inspired in other people. He didn’t found the college, he inspired other people to found it. And that’s where you see someone like FDR have a ripple effect, leave a legacy that is sometimes intangible and people don’t necessarily notice. Yes, partly because he was in office for so long his legacy is very with us but it is not discussed much but it is incredibly important to the way our political system functions, our economy functions.
How is his legacy reflected in policy today?
Well many of the New Deal policies are still with us today, like the NLRB, the SSA and the FDIC. And that was very important in the 1980s and then in the 2008 implosion—the FDIC was very important. So I think that’s policy there that’s a very clear connection to FDR’s legacy. Also the support for the arts. Although the WPA was abolished in the 1940s the idea of government support for arts programs continued and obviously were institutionalized under JFK and LBJ. Those are just some that I can think of off the top of my head but obviously when you look at the post offices and stadiums, many of them are 1930s projects.
I do. I guess I would answer that question in kind of two parts. I think there are probably a whole generation of leaders who were inspired because they lived through that period; for example, the person that first comes to mind is Lyndon Johnson, he actually started his political career waiting for New Deal agencies in the 1930s…and by the time he became President in the 1960s he was quite determined to expand the New Deal, and really move forward on some of FDR’s vision that didn’t get implemented: for example, health care. So there was a very direct inspiration of someone who grew up during the Depression and was in politics. And I guess you could say to a certain extent someone like JFK was certainly inspired by FDR. And then you have another generation of leaders who are a little more far-removed from FDR, and that would be people like Bill Clinton, who maybe read about FDR or was very young during the war or something like that and so there I think the inspiration is a little more the question of desiring to use the government to advance a public good which they identified with FDR. The other thing I would say is that the interesting element of FDR’s inspiration is that for many years it cut across party lines and to a certain extent it still does. Like in the 1980s, you had someone like Ronald Reagan, kind of the father of the modern Conservative movement, admiring FDR and talking about FDR as someone he wanted to emulate at the same time that he was trying to dismantle some of the elements of the New Deal programs. Likewise, someone like Newt Gingrich in the 1990s often talked very fondly or very highly of FDR. So, that bipartisan understanding of FDR or that kind of adulation of FDR has evaporated to a certain extent in the 21st century, I think you’re less likely now to see Conservatives praising FDR, but the other thing I would say about FDR as an inspirational leader is that one reason you get people from both sides of the aisle admiring him is because you can cherry pick or pick and choose what parts of FDR’s leadership and legacy inspire you. If you’re a Progressive or a Liberal you tend to focus on the New Deal. If you’re more conservative you see FDR’s wartime leadership as something that should be emulated. So I think partly because FDR was in office for so long and he guided the country through two major crises allowed people from different political orientations to look to him as an inspirational leader in many different ways. And I’d say that to a certain extent Barack Obama evokes FDR, he’s quoted him recently on immigration reform, he of course talked about him in the 2008 campaign, and Bill Leuchtenburg who’s one of the most well-known historians on the New Deal and FDR talked about how Obama’s first inaugural address certainly amplified on some of FDR’s ideas.
What do you think were FDR’s most important leadership traits?
I think first of all and probably most important in terms of his personality you were talking about someone who was supremely self-confident and I don’t meant arrogant, I mean someone who was completely sure about who they were. A lot of biographers say it’s because he had this adoring mother who almost made him feel like he was the only person in the world and every special. And what I see as his strength is that that kind of confidence allows you to surround yourself with people who are sometimes smarter than you or have different ideas than you do and you can accept their feedback and accept their conversation in a way that someone who is deeply insecure has difficulty with. So, that kind of just very self-assured attitude I think really helped him especially in the early years of the Depression. Likewise and maybe it’s because of that self-confidence he inspired confidence in other people. He was very calm but yet determined. And I think that that those qualities and that ability to project those qualities really encouraged people to look up to him as someone who could guide them through the crisis. I think the was incredibly sociable and very personal so that people felt comfortable around him and felt like they had a connection with him even if they didn’t really know him that well. He always used first names and joked around with people he had a great sense of humor and a certain joy and life, it came through in his radio addresses came through in his speeches and came through in his personal relationships with people. So the people who worked for him (with a few exceptions of course) were incredibly devoted to him. And that of course is very helpful when you’re moving through a political career as long as his. He was also I would say empathetic to a certain extent and a lot of people attribute that to the fact that he suffered polio and saw adversity and was able to see during the Great Depression the pain people were feeling and saw that as something he had to take on. Adding another important leadership quality and again this goes back to his self-confidence, he was not wedded to any political ideology other than he was a Democrat with a small d; of course, he was a Democrat and he believed in the democratic processes but he was willing to learn from his mistakes and he was very willing to experiment. So that makes him very flexible in office at a time when the American people needed somebody to be flexible. I would also say that he wore a mask so no one was quite sure what he was really thinking he tended to hold his cards very closely and that was sometimes to his and others’ benefits but sometimes it was not because he could also be very duplicitous, but again during the early years of the Depression when all of his legislation was being proposed it was helpful to have somebody who wasn’t completely transparent and again who you could read or interpret in many different ways. One of the things that happened was people tended to project on him their vision. Some people saw him as a father, others preferred to see him as a doctor, others preferred to see him as a captain of the ship of State and he could be all of those things because he was such a complicated person and he did have a mask. So he could meet with certain people and say, “Oh, I’m definitely supportive of that mission and am definitely supportive of that initiative,” but then he could meet with other people who had a completely different opinion on the same policy or topic and say, “Oh, I’m completely in agreement with you!” So both sides would think that, “Oh yes, he supports me.” I think that’s helpful in your political career; sometimes it damages personal relationships and yes, sometimes it can hurt you politically if at some point some group feels betrayed. The last thing I would say about him in terms of his leadership trait is that he had an unbelievable political acumen. He really could read for the most part the electorate, he understood how to work the Democratic party, the conventions; he just had really good political instincts and I think during a crisis that’s a tremendous strength. So those are some of the qualities that I think I would say contributed to his ability to lead the country in the 1930s and 40s.
What would you say about the treatment of women through FDR’s New Deal programs? I know he was criticized for the lesser benefits they received but I do understand that he was restricted by the social norms at the time, so what do you think?
I think that’s a fairly accurate statement. I guess that I would say that FDR was progressive on many issues but race and gender were where he was more mainstream. He did reflect more mainstream ideas of gender roles, of race relations. He was not somebody who spent a lot of time advocating for a lot of those issues but I think it’s important to emphasize that he was married to someone who did. And Eleanor Roosevelt was a very important part of that political calculation. And so he let her speak very freely or relatively freely about these issues even though he knew it would cost him some support in certain parts of the country or among certain constituents. And you know again getting back to the political acumen is that she would say something really controversial supporting equal pay for women or supporting women’s right to work and he would say, “Well, I can’t control the Mrs.” So he was allowing her to say these controversial things and at the same time he was distancing himself from her. And that’s again a genius political move on his part because he was not disagreeing with her; he was just saying she has a different mind and he can’t control her, kind of like shrugging his shoulders. So I think he was able to really use her—and I don’t mean that in a way that sounds like he was being completely conscious about maneuvering her politically—but he was able to use her to solidify his position with African Americans, with women, at the same time as you point out that his actual record was not all that progressive or impressive when it came to women and minorities. I think the other thing to keep in mind it’s not just the social norms at the time, it’s the fact that Southern Democrats were in control of Congress and several committees of Congress, and all of the New Deal legislation was tempered or modified by a Southern orientation and he recognized that, he recognized that he needed the Southern bloc to support his New Deal and he was willing to make compromises on many racial issues in particular which in hindsight is a little upsetting and one wishes he was willing to take a little more political risk because of a principle or moral right but he didn’t do that and I suspect it’s partly because as you pointed out his views weren’t that progressive and he wasn’t willing to spend that political capital in order to support women and minorities. You know looking back, much of the New Deal legislation instituted inequalities in ways that were very harmful in the long run to women and to African Americans in particular so I would say that on that part of his record it’s really not something that Progressives can hold up as an example of his ability to push forward a progressive agenda. I mean in 1940, he did put Henry Wallace on his ticket; like Eleanor, [Wallace] was very progressive at the time. He did surround himself with people who were very progressive. But one would say that he didn’t take a strong leadership role in either civil rights or women’s rights. I mean he had a small black cabinet so there were actually what were called Negro advisors in departments of his agencies to push for the hiring of minorities or to advocate on behalf of people maybe having trouble working with an agency. So I guess behind the scenes there was a little bit of movement. I would also say Harry Hopkins, who headed the WPA was a very close adviser to FDR. Harry Hopkins was like Eleanor; they wanted to institute a system where a certain percentage of WPA jobs would go to minorities based upon population. And that was a pretty radical proposition for that time period. So again I think and maybe that goes back to the self-confidence that he had people in his administration who were very progressive. But when it came to big things like the anti-lynching bill, the poll tax, and the Southern tenant farmers’ union he didn’t stand up for African Americans. And he allowed certain exemptions to be passed in the Social Security Act, in the National Labor Relations Act, in the Fair Labor Standards Act, that exempted occupations mainly held by African Americans. And those kinds of exemptions, those kinds of things they matter over time. That’s an economic loss to the community which is very difficult to recoup. So one wishes he’d said to Southern Democrats, “I’ll draw a line here and here,” but he didn’t do that. The other thing I would say is it’s not just African Americans in the New Deal. There was what was called the New Deal for American Indians and they were given a lot more autonomy and sovereignty in terms of their land and governance and so at the same time you know again it’s sort of back and forth there was a repatriation of Mexican Americans. So many were deported because they were said to be taking jobs that belonged to native born Americans. Even though some of these Mexican Americans had been in the US for years and years and many of them had been born here. So you know I think it really, we can’t point to it as a watershed in terms of civil rights but we can say that he allowed some windows to open and Progressives took advantage of that.
What do you think is the most important legacy of FDR that Americans still feel today?
That was a really good question. And it was really hard for me to narrow it down because there’s so much. So in terms of a big picture I guess there are three areas where you really see, in terms of politics or governance, you really see the influence of the new deal. One, there’s the massive expansion of the Regulatory State and this idea that the government is going to allow private property and industry to continue but it’s going to regulate it. So the regulation of industry throughout the 1930s really set a precedent for moving forward in terms of how the economy was going to work. And then by WWII the government became committed to Keynesian economics, in which they are flushing money into the economy partly through the military but also through other government programs. The Welfare State obviously was a huge legacy of FDR. So we can look to the Social Security Act and part of that was age dependent children, pensions for older people, unemployment insurance, so that was really important legacy. And I guess in turn you can put labor regulations under regulatory or welfare but the NLRA and FSLA were really important to ordinary working people and we still have minimum wage such as it is. You also see and I think your website talked about this but you see the growth of the office of the presidency, under the Reorganization Act, FDR was allowed to hire permanent staffers. He had six and now we have thousands. Another legacy of FDR’s is the National Security State. And this is primarily a consequence of WWII but it is a very, very important part of our political life today…infrastructure that was built under the WPA, CCC, and PWA, and support for the arts…in a less maybe concrete way I suppose one could say he inspired people with disabilities and he was a very important symbol for people with disabilities. The Disabilities Rights Movement which I guess doesn’t really start to gain traction until the late 20th century could use FDR in ways that were very important. The political realignment of the Democratic party during the 1930s, with bringing African Americans into the coalition, northern workers, Midwestern Progressives, the labor movement; that’s still with us, they’ve fractured a little bit, but the basis of the constituents of the Democratic party came about under FDR. The other legacy I just wanted to mention and this is more of a personal pitch but I work at Roosevelt University. It was named for Franklin and Eleanor. It was founded in 1945, and it was founded because students and faculty at a local college were protesting the use of quotas to determine how many Jews, how many African Americans could be at the school. And in their protest they left this small college they belonged to and they created their own college and they wanted to call it Jefferson College. Roosevelt died within weeks of the founding of this college and they wrote to Eleanor and asked if they could use FDR’s name and she said, “You may not only use his name, but I will sit on the board of trustees and I will bring in trustees from my network.” Like Albert Einstein was on the board, Harold Ickes, Marshall Field III, so the board had a lot of New Deal luminaries on it but the university was dedicated to open admission to all qualified students. And it still operates on that principle, it’s still committed to social justice. So that’s a very concrete legacy, very specific to my position and to Chicago but I think it’s very important because it symbolizes what FDR inspired in other people. He didn’t found the college, he inspired other people to found it. And that’s where you see someone like FDR have a ripple effect, leave a legacy that is sometimes intangible and people don’t necessarily notice. Yes, partly because he was in office for so long his legacy is very with us but it is not discussed much but it is incredibly important to the way our political system functions, our economy functions.
How is his legacy reflected in policy today?
Well many of the New Deal policies are still with us today, like the NLRB, the SSA and the FDIC. And that was very important in the 1980s and then in the 2008 implosion—the FDIC was very important. So I think that’s policy there that’s a very clear connection to FDR’s legacy. Also the support for the arts. Although the WPA was abolished in the 1940s the idea of government support for arts programs continued and obviously were institutionalized under JFK and LBJ. Those are just some that I can think of off the top of my head but obviously when you look at the post offices and stadiums, many of them are 1930s projects.