The first term of the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt began on March 4, 1933, when he was inaugurated as the 32nd president of the United States, and the second term of his presidency ended on January 20, 1941, with his inauguration to a third term. Roosevelt, the Democratic governor of New York, took office after defeating incumbent president Herbert Hoover, his Republican opponent in the 1932 presidential election. Roosevelt led the implementation of the New Deal, a series of programs designed to provide relief, recovery, and reform to Americans and the American economy during the Great Depression. He also presided over a realignment that made his New Deal coalition of labor unions, big city machines, white ethnics, African Americans, and rural white Southerners dominant in national politics until the 1960s and defined modern American liberalism.
During his first hundred days in office, Roosevelt spearheaded unprecedented major legislation and issued a profusion of executive orders. The Emergency Banking Act helped put an end to a run on banks, while the 1933 Banking Act and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 provided major reforms in the financial sector. To provide relief to unemployed workers, Roosevelt presided over the establishment of several agencies, including the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Public Works Administration, and the Federal Emergency Relief Administration. The Roosevelt administration established the Agricultural Adjustment Administration to implement new policies designed to prevent agricultural overproduction. It also established several agencies, most notably the National Recovery Administration, to reform the industrial sector, though it lasted only two years.
After his party's sweeping success in the 1934 mid-term elections, Roosevelt presided over the Second New Deal. It featured the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the largest work relief agency, and the Social Security Act, which created a national old-age pension program known as Social Security. The New Deal also established a national unemployment insurance program, as well as the Aid to Dependent Children, which provided aid to families headed by single mothers. A third major piece of legislation, the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, guaranteed workers the right of collective bargaining and established the National Labor Relations Board. The result was rapid growth in union membership. After winning re-election in 1936, the second term was a series of disappointments. Roosevelt sought to enlarge the Supreme Court, but his proposal was defeated in Congress. Roosevelt had little success in passing domestic legislation in his second term, as the bipartisan Conservative Coalition blocked most of his legislative proposals. One success was the Fair Labor Standards Act.
The 1930s were a high point of isolationism in the United States. The key foreign policy initiative of Roosevelt's first term was the Good Neighbor Policy, in which the U.S. took a non-interventionist stance in Latin American affairs. Foreign policy issues came to the fore in the late 1930s, as Nazi Germany, Japan, and Italy took aggressive actions against their neighbors. In response to fears that the United States would be drawn into foreign conflicts, Congress passed the Neutrality Acts, a series of laws that prevented trade with belligerents. After Japan invaded China and Germany invaded Poland, Roosevelt provided aid to China, Great Britain, and France, but the Neutrality Acts prevented the United States from becoming closely involved. After the Fall of France in June 1940, Roosevelt increased aid to the British and began to build up American military power. In the 1940 presidential election, Roosevelt defeated Republican Wendell Willkie, an internationalist who largely refrained from criticizing Roosevelt's foreign policy. Roosevelt later went on to serve a third term and three months of a fourth term, becoming the only president to serve more than two terms, breaking Washington's two term tradition and laying the groundwork for the passage of the 22nd Amendment. Roosevelt's first term is unique in that it is the only presidential term not equal to four years in length since George Washington was elected to his second term as a result of the 20th Amendment.
1932 election
Democratic nomination With the economy hurting badly after the Wall Street Crash of 1929, many Democrats hoped that the 1932 elections would see the election of the first Democratic president since 1916. Roosevelt's 1930 gubernatorial re-election victory in New York established him as the front-runner for the nomination. With the help of Louis Howe and James Farley, Roosevelt rallied some of the supporters of the Wilson while also appealing to many conservatives, establishing himself as the leading candidate in the South and West. The chief opposition to Roosevelt's candidacy came from Northeastern liberals such as Al Smith, the 1928 Democratic presidential nominee and a former close ally. Smith hoped to deny Roosevelt the two-thirds support necessary to win the party's presidential nomination 1932 Democratic National Convention, and then emerge as the nominee after multiple rounds of balloting. Roosevelt entered the convention with a delegate lead due to his success in the 1932 Democratic primaries, but most delegates entered the convention unbound to any particular candidate. On the first presidential ballot of the convention, Roosevelt received the votes of more than half but less than two-thirds of the delegates, with Smith finishing in a distant second place. Speaker of the House John Nance Garner, who controlled the votes of Texas and California, threw his support behind Roosevelt after the third ballot, and Roosevelt clinched the nomination on the fourth ballot. With little input from Roosevelt, Garner won the vice presidential nomination. Roosevelt flew in from New York after learning that he had won the nomination, becoming the first major party presidential nominee to accept the nomination in person.
General election
In the general election, Roosevelt faced incumbent Republican president Herbert Hoover. Engaging in a cross-country campaign, Roosevelt promised to increase the federal government's role in the economy and to lower the tariff as part of a "New Deal." Hoover argued that the economic collapse had chiefly been the product of international disturbances, and he accused Roosevelt of promoting class conflict with his novel economic policies. Already unpopular due to the bad economy, Hoover's re-election hopes were further hampered by the Bonus March 1932, which ended with the violent dispersal of thousands of protesting veterans. Roosevelt won 472 of the 531 electoral votes and 57.4% of the popular vote, making him the first Democrat since 1876 to win a majority of the popular vote, and he won a larger percentage of the vote than any Democrat before him since the party's founding in 1828. In the concurrent congressional elections, the Democrats took control of the Senate and built upon their majority in the House. Though congressional Democratic leadership was dominated by conservative Southerners, over half of the members of the incoming 73rd Congress had been elected since 1930. Many of these new members were eager to take action to combat the Depression, even if it meant defying the political orthodoxy of the previous years.
Administration
Roosevelt appointed powerful men to top positions but made certain he made all the major decisions, regardless of delays, inefficiency or resentment. Analyzing the president's administrative style, historian James MacGregor Burns concludes: The president stayed in charge of his administration...by drawing fully on his formal and informal powers as Chief Executive; by raising goals, creating momentum, inspiring a personal loyalty, getting the best out of people...by deliberately fostering among his aides a sense of competition and a clash of wills that led to disarray, heartbreak, and anger but also set off pulses of executive energy and sparks of creativity...by handing out one job to several men and several jobs to one man, thus strengthening his own position as a court of appeals, as a depository of information, and as a tool of co-ordination; by ignoring or bypassing collective decision-making agencies, such as the Cabinet...and always by persuading, flattering, juggling, improvising, reshuffling, harmonizing, conciliating, manipulating.
For his first secretary of state, Roosevelt selected Cordell Hull, a prominent Tennessean who had served in the House and Senate. Though Hull was not a foreign policy expert, he was a long-time advocate of tariff reduction, was respected by his Senate colleagues, and did not hold ambitions for the presidency. Roosevelt's inaugural cabinet included several influential Republicans, including Secretary of the Treasury William H. Woodin, a well-connected industrialist who was personally close to Roosevelt, Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes, a progressive Republican who would play an important role in the New Deal, and Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace, who had advised the Roosevelt campaign on farm policies. Roosevelt also appointed the first female cabinet member, Secretary of Labor Frances C. Perkins. Farley became Postmaster General, taking charge of major patronage issues. Howe became Roosevelt's personal secretary until his death in 1936. The selections of Hull, Woodin, and Secretary of Commerce Daniel C. Roper reassured the business community, while Wallace, Perkins, and Ickes appealed to Roosevelt's left-wing supporters. Most of Roosevelt's cabinet selections would remain in place until 1936, but ill health forced Woodin to resign in 1933, and he was succeeded by Henry Morgenthau Jr., who became the most powerful member of the cabinet, followed by Wallace.
First term domestic affairs
First New Deal, 1933–34
When Roosevelt took office on March 4, 1933, the economy had hit rock bottom. In the midst of the Great Depression, a quarter of the American workforce was unemployed, two million people were homeless, and industrial production had fallen by more than half since 1929.Schlesinger, Jr., Arthur M. The Crisis of the Old Order (1957), pp. 427-504 online By the evening of March 4, 32 of the 48 states – as well as the District of Columbia – had closed their banks.Alter, Jonathan, p. 190. The New York Federal Reserve Bank was unable to open on the 5th, as huge sums had been withdrawn by panicky customers in previous days. Beginning with his inauguration address, Roosevelt laid the blame for the economic crisis on bankers and financiers, the quest for profit, and the self-interest basis of capitalism:
Historians categorize Roosevelt's economic program into three categories: "relief, recovery and reform." Relief was urgently needed by tens of millions of unemployed. Recovery meant boosting the economy back to normal. Reform meant long-term fixes of what was wrong, especially with the financial and banking systems. Through Roosevelt's series of radio talks, known as fireside chats, he presented his proposals directly to the American public. To propose programs, Roosevelt relied on leading senators such as George Norris, Robert F. Wagner, and Hugo Black, as well as his Brain Trust of academic advisers. Like Hoover, he saw the Depression caused in part by people no longer spending or investing because they were afraid.Roger Biles, A New Deal for the American people (1991) pp. 33-56.
Banking reform