In 1932 Roosevelt did become the party’s official nominee and, with the help of the Great Depression, easily defeated Republican incumbent Herbert Hoover.īrands’ assessment of Roosevelt’s New Deal is fairly conventional. At one point Smith’s campaign manager felt compelled to wire FDR’s speechwriter to “tell the candidate he is not running for President but for Governor.” During this statewide race he continued to speak out on national issues. While Smith lost by a large margin, Roosevelt won his own race to succeed Smith as governor of New York. From the speech, broadcast nationally on radio, listeners “learned something about Roosevelt - about what he valued in a man, about the kind of person he was,” Brands writes. It also gave him time to study presidential leadership and to reflect on the lessons that could be drawn from past presidencies, especially those of TR and Wilson.īrands cites the nomination speech Roosevelt gave for Al Smith in Houston at the 1928 Democratic Convention as the event that re-established his political star power. Being forced to the sidelines in the early 1920s kept him out of elective politics during a period of Republican dominance. and to soldier forward,” and that is what Roosevelt did.īrands suggests that horrific as Roosevelt’s illness was, it may have contributed to his later political success. In the era in which Roosevelt was raised, males were expected to meet misfortune “with a stiff upper lip and a sturdy smile. The severity of Roosevelt’s illness and the painful therapy he endured - downplayed at the time - are vividly described here. But his promising career came to an abrupt halt in 1921 when he was diagnosed with polio, a condition that would confine him to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. In 1920 he was named the Democratic Party’s vice presidential nominee. He writes that FDR greatly admired TR’s vigorous leadership style and reforming zeal and consciously mapped out his own political future using TR as his model.Īt first his career seemed to be advancing even faster than “Uncle Ted’s.” Following a short stint in the New York Assembly, FDR was appointed assistant secretary of the Navy in the Wilson administration.

Brands thinks Roosevelt set his sights on the presidency at a relatively young age, probably during the administration of his fifth cousin, Theodore Roosevelt.

Roosevelt traitor to his class