Warding off the danger to democracy
Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke often about the importance of history in the context of securing American’s democratic future.
Just months before the U.S. entered World War II in 1941, at the dedication of the presidential library that bears his name at his home in Hyde Park, N.Y., FDR said, “A nation … must believe in the past. It must believe in the future. It must, above all, believe in the capacity of its own people to learn from the past.” The library, he insisted, reflected “our confidence in the future of democracy.”
These are good words from a great man, whose record-shattering 12 years in the White House were punctuated by crises which tested the capacity of our democracy to withstand what might otherwise have been fatal assaults.
In no small part because of his leadership, the nation survived the greatest economic crisis in its history – the Great Depression- and the deadliest conflagration of all time – the Second World War.
Either one might have spelled the end of the American experiment in self-rule. Coming as they did, one after another, it’s kind of miraculous that we not only survived but flourished: the U.S. emerged at the end of the war in 1945 stronger and more prosperous than ever before.
American democracy was in good shape, too. The three presidents who followed Roosevelt to the White House were among the very best: Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and John Kennedy. And the fourth, Lyndon Johnson, was pretty good, too; LBJ played a key role in expanding the American promise to Black Americans. (Enmeshing himself and the nation in the muck and mire and divisions of Vietnam, Johnson ended his term in office with his reputation in tatters and his historical renown clouded.)
Like all the great presidents, Roosevelt appealed to what was best in the American character: resilience, charity, tolerance, strength, fair-play. World War II required unbelievable sacrifices and courage. What Roosevelt called for, the American people delivered.
Certainly FDR made mistakes, some of which were grievous; he could be, and frequently was, devious, short-sighted, and just plain wrong. But despite everything, he was invariably warm-hearted and generous.
I spent several days last week at Hyde Park, looking through a small slice of FDR’s voluminous presidential papers for insights and bits of information that will help inform a book I hope to write. Like previous visits I made to FDR’s home, I came away with a renewed sense of the immense contributions he made. He and his wife, Eleanor, were giants, their contributions to the nation’s wellbeing immensely important, in their time and ours.
Social Security is one obvious example. The freeing up of labor to organize is another The list goes on: bank deposit insurance, vocational education, stock investment safeguards, unemployment compensation, natural resource management, rural electrification (the precursor to rural internet service), wage and hour guarantees, job stimulus measures.
There’s no repeal of the New Deal.
As for our place in the world, it’s simple: victory in World War II had far-reaching consequences that went beyond the defeat of Germany and Japan, as important as that was.
All of this was framed by Roosevelt in the name of democracy, in service to the survival of a collective democratic future in which we all might share. Time and again, Roosevelt returned to this one powerful idea – the idea that with all its faults, democracy – by which is meant free and fair elections, the practical politics of persuasion, maneuver, and compromise (reviled by so many people), and the rule of law – was the best of all governing mechanisms, the one that did the least harm and the most good.
FDR’s wartime buddy Winston Churchill famously said, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”
Roosevelt became president at a time when a great many people looked longingly at the rise of authoritarian governments in Europe. Mussolini in Italy and even Hitler in Germany were admired figures for their ability to achieve much in a hurry. In those difficult days, even some Americans yearned for an American dictatorship. Roosevelt resisted the tide, he refused the offer, such as it was.
Several years later, as the world war closed in, Roosevelt, in calling on the nation to become “the great arsenal of democracy,” noted the suggestion by some that “we should imitate the methods of the dictatorships. But Americans never can and never will do that.”
“Never can and never will” encompasses a mighty long time. What about the next few months, the next few years? Of course, the circumstances are different now than they were Roosevelt’s time. Without much prompting from the outside, we have turned on ourselves. The threat to democracy comes from within. “Believing in” the American people as he did, Roosevelt could be forgiven that even he, were he alive, would be stymied and stumped by this strange twist in our national story.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.