Franklin D. Roosevelt

Iraq: The Moon Is Down, Again! (April 23, 2004)
...imacy over the nations of occupied Europe. Legitimacy, to paraphrase, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Ah, theres the rub! Incidentally, the movie version of the book opens...
Italy Stands Behind US Over Iraq (September 25, 2002)
...ng to fear is fear itself," Berlusconi said, quoting former U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's famous remark. Former Italian Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema, who is...
Credibility Gap Redux (May 17, 2002)
...lic in on the truth about Vietnam sapped support for the war. By contrast, Franklin Roosevelt in 1942 offered a different lesson. In the World War IIís early days, when...
What the White House Knew (May 17, 2002)
...ood to gain from the ensuing war. This line of thinking is nothing new. Franklin D. Roosevelt was accused of knowing about Pearl Harbor in advance and doing nothing bec...
Peace Activists Target War Profiteers (August 5, 2003)
...sociate working on the campaign, noted that during World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt said I dont want to see a single war millionaire created in the United S...
The American Revolution and Iraq (July 2, 2004)
...historian Mercy Otis Warren as a day that would live in infamy (a phrase Franklin D. Roosevelt and his speechwriters expropriated for themselves on December 8, 1941): wh...
A Nation of Victims (June 12, 2003)
...d this fear of unknown, sinister enemies.) Contrast this rhetoric with Franklin Roosevelt's speech delivered the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He s...
Has the US Lost Its Way? (March 3, 2002)
...erican leader who advocated transcendent human values: for Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt and John Kennedy made hearts rise abroad when they rejected narrow 'Americ...
Has Bush Infringed the Constitution? (September 3, 2002)
...ists and banned anti-war publications from the mails. During World War II, Franklin Roosevelt interned tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans. "By the standards of...
Public's Anger Simmers Over Airport Searches (March 11, 2002)
...medal," Foss said. It was presented to him in the Oval Office by President Franklin D. Roosevelt after Foss shot down 26 enemy planes in the Pacific theater--23 in 10 days...
Dennis Kucinich and the Question (January 23, 2004)
...The three most powerful letters in American politics are FDR. Franklin Roosevelt unleashed a political revolution so powerful and complete that it required...
A Grand Strategy of Transformation (December 1, 2002)
...as an ill-advised effort to make the president sound, simultaneously, like Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, and it's now been given a quiet burial. This administra...
A Legal Battle Over Limits of Civil Liberty (August 4, 2002)
...s especially compared with changes during the times of Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt. What has changed, they say, is a greater sensitivity to civil liberties a...
An Analysis of Opposition Movements (February 18, 2003)
...agan, Richard Nixon, rather than putting forth the kind of patriotism that Franklin Roosevelt did, for example, in the 1930s, which was sort of a golden age for politic...
The Need for a New Wilsonianism (September 2, 2002)
...w world of democracy and open markets in the "common interest of mankind." Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan all may have disdained Wils...

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Franklin Delano Roosevelt

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**Franklin Delano Roosevelt**
Roosevelt in 1944
Order:	32nd President
Term of Office:	, - ,
Followed:
Succeeded by:
Date of Birth	, ,
Place of Birth:
Date of Death:	, ,
Place of Death:
:
Profession:
:
:	(-) (-) ()

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (, - , ), often referred to as FDR, was the 32nd (-) of the . He was elected to an unprecedented four terms of office - the only U.S. president elected more than twice, and part of the reason the was to limit presidents to 2½ terms (10 years). His main contributions were the instituting of major economic and social assistance programs in response to the , leading the country through a successful involvement in , and the formation of the .

Table of contents

Biography

He was born on , in , and died on , in of a , leaving the famous . He suffered from at the age of 39, which left him with severe difficulty in moving his legs. He often used a , but took efforts to hide this throughout his life. In fact, there are only two known photographs of Roosevelt in his wheelchair. When a of Roosevelt sitting in a wheelchair was commissioned in in , some criticized this as unnecessary .

From the age of one, through until , Roosevelt spent his summers at but because of his worsening polio, in later years he had to spend much of his time in Warm Springs, whose provided him and others relief from their , and where he built the , now a state . He also created the town's , which continues to help others with disabilities to this day.

He graduated from in , and from Ivy League with a J.D. in before taking a job with a prestigious firm. On , , he married , a distant cousin, who was the favorite niece of , his fifth cousin. They would have six children:

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Government Positions include: Assistant Secretary of the Navy, -; Governor of New York, -. Roosevelt's saw the committing himself to battling the , promoting a with "Three R's - relief, recovery and reform." He coined the term "" when he stated: "I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people." On , after his victory in the , President-elect Roosevelt was nearly assassinated in (the assassin did manage to kill Mayor ). In reference to the Great Depression, Roosevelt proclaimed "The only thing we have to is fear itself" in his inauguration speech on (, ). Roosevelt's first weeks in office were called The Hundred Days, as during the first part of his administration he authored and approved a flurry of acts to institute immediate change and keep the nation's economy from destabilizing. He insituted a four-day "banking holiday" two days after he took office: a four-day period in which all banks in the country closed, allowing the institutions a brief period to recover and reorganize. During this time of crisis Roosevelt addressed the nation for the first time as President on , in the first of many "."

Of the various reform programs initiated by the Roosevelt administration, the most far-reaching and influential was the institution of the system, a form of that was meant to provide support for low-income and elderly citizens.

In -, the , which was dominated by conservatives with a narrow view of the of the Constitution, the basis of much New Deal legislation, struck down eight of FDR's programs. In response Roosevelt submitted to Congress in February of a plan for "judicial reform," which proposed adding a justice for every justice over the age of 70 who refused to retire, up to a maximum of 15 total. This came to be known as his attempt to "pack" the Court. Though the plan failed in Congress, as a threat to the Court it may have had its desired effect. In a move cynically referred to as "the switch in time that saved nine," one of the conservative justices inexplicably shifted his vote in , changing the ideological balance of the Court. It wasn't long before time allowed Roosevelt to further have his way on the bench, as vacancies allowed Roosevelt to eventually fill all nine seats with his appointments--the most of any presidency except 's.

In , Roosevelt became the first U.S. President to be on , following adoption of the . Prior to this, presidents had been sworn into office on .

Campaigning for re-election in against , Roosevelt said that he would not send American boys to fight in foreign wars. However, in the conflicting interests of and the United States in and the , especially in , resulted in a breakdown of diplomatic relations to the point where war seemed inevitable (see entry for ). Some have suggested Roosevelt had prior knowledge of the , 1941 Japanese and welcomed it as a way to get the U.S. into . Others point out, that while U.S. code-breakers had broken Japanese codes in and knew something was about to happen, communication delays prevented the messages from getting to Pearl Harbor until 4 hours after the attack.

On , , Roosevelt wrote a private letter to , Prime Minister of the Canada, in which he discusses that the USA and Canada agree on an unwritten plan aiming to disperse in order to assimilate them more quickly.

On , Roosevelt became the first President of the United States to travel via while in office with his flight from to to meet with to discuss . The meeting was concluded on .

In hindsight, perhaps the most controversial decision Roosevelt made was which resulted in the internment in concentration camps of 110,000 nationals and American citizens of Japanese descent on the West Coast. Considered a major violation of , it was even opposed at the time by Director as well as Eleanor Roosevelt as well as many other groups. The Supreme Court upheld the of the Executive Order. Others have criticised him for failing to do anything to disrupt the operations in perpetrating the despite having intelligence of the atrocity.

Some have said of all the American Presidents of the , that he was the most loved and most hated. He was so well known, he was referred to by his initials, FDR. Historians have often cited him as one of the three United States Presidents whose influence and leadership set a standard for greatness, along with and .

Roosevelt was the first President to regularly address the American public through the medium of . He instituted a tradition of weekly radio speeches, which he called "fireside chats." These "chats" gave him the opportunity to take his opinions to the American people, and they often bolstered his popularity as he campaigned for various changes. During the fireside chats were seen as important morale boosters for Americans at home.

One speech he is famous for delivering was his in 1941. This speech is also known as the Speech. His address to Congress and the nation on , following the attack on entered history with the phrase, "December Seventh, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy."

He was elected to an unprecedented fourth term on , , beating challenger . However, during the painting of his portrait, he died of a brain on , and was succeeded by his vice president . In the was passed, which limited all presidents from that point forward to two terms (this was previously just a custom that was established by and followed by every president up to Roosevelt).

Roosevelt's portrait appears on the U.S. dime.