David Woolner

Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow
Roosevelt Institute Profile

Recent Posts by David Woolner

  • Obama's Second Term Could Mark the Return of the Four Freedoms

    Nov 21, 2012David Woolner

    As part of our series "A Rooseveltian Second Term Agenda," a call to return to a foreign policy based in FDR's vision of shared peace and prosperity.

    As part of our series "A Rooseveltian Second Term Agenda," a call to return to a foreign policy based in FDR's vision of shared peace and prosperity.

    Even though we come from different places, we share common dreams: to choose our leaders; to live together in peace; to get an education and make a good living; to love our families and our communities. That’s why freedom is not an abstract idea; freedom is the very thing that makes human progress possible — not just at the ballot box, but in our daily lives.

    One of our greatest Presidents in the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, understood this truth. He defined America’s cause as more than the right to cast a ballot. He understood democracy was not just voting. He called upon the world to embrace four fundamental freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. These four freedoms reinforce one another, and you cannot fully realize one without realizing them all.—Barack H. Obama, University of Yangon, November 19, 2012

    In his historic visit to Burma, also referred to as Myanmar, President Obama spoke at length about the journey Burma is taking from dictatorship to democracy, a transition he said has the potential to inspire people the world over as “a test of whether a country can transition to a better place.”

    President Obama made it clear that his journey to Burma—the first by an American president—was inspired in part by his own desire to encourage the people and government of Burma to press ahead with their democratic reforms so that the “flickers of progress” that the world has seen will not be extinguished. The president’s visit was also notable for his repeated insistence that America was a “Pacific nation,” whose “future was bound to those nations and peoples to our West.” But perhaps the most significant aspect of his speech was his decision to frame his remarks around a concept first articulated by Franklin D. Roosevelt at one of the darkest moments of the Second World War—the need to build a world founded on four fundamental human freedoms.

    At a moment when Adolf Hitler had proclaimed the onset of “a new order” in Nazi-occupied Europe, and when Japanese militarists had seized much of China and were poised to expand their grip on Southeast Asia, Franklin Roosevelt proposed “a greater conception,” a “moral order” that represented the very antithesis of the “tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.” FDR’s order was based on the idea that all people—“everywhere in the world”—deserved the right to enjoy freedom of speech and expression; freedom of worship; freedom from want; and freedom from fear.

    He articulated this vision in part because of the critical need to gain the support of the American people and Congress for the passage of the Lend-Lease Bill that was pending on Capitol Hill. But the enunciation of the Four Freedoms and initiation of Lend-Lease—which would make it possible for the United States to provide arms and munitions to Great Britain free of charge—was also inspired by a much deeper conviction: that the security of the United States was tied directly to the health and well-being of other nations.

    For many Americans today, World War II and the Great Depression are two separate events. But for the generation that lived through these unparalleled crises, nothing could be farther from the truth. In their minds, and in the mind of Franklin Roosevelt, the two were inextricably linked. The Great Depression, after all, was not confined to the United States, but represented a worldwide economic crisis that helped inspire anti-democratic forces in both Europe and Asia—anti-democratic forces that helped give rise to the fascist movements in Germany and in Japan that would initiate the most destructive war in human history.

    In light of this, Franklin Roosevelt remained convinced that the Second World War had economic causes. Moreover, as the war progressed, he became more and more convinced that America’s security was tied to the security of the rest of the world. As such, it was not enough for the United States to rely solely on the strength of its armed forces to provide for the nation’s safety; we also had to concern ourselves with the political, social, and economic health of other regions of the world since, as FDR put it in 1944, “true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence”…and “people who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.”

    It was this basic idea that inspired not only the Four Freedoms, but also the many institutions and practices that were put in place during and after the war to foster international cooperation and a more prosperous, healthy, and peaceful world. Many of these institutions and practices—like the United Nations, International Monetary Fund, World Bank. and multilateral trading regime—are with us still, so that much of the world we live in today is the world shaped by the vision of Franklin Roosevelt.

    In recent years, however, we seem to have moved further and further away from this vision to a foreign policy that is dominated largely by the use of military force—no doubt inspired in part by the advent of modern technology, such as drone aircraft. This is unfortunate, for even though President Obama has shown willingness to use other means to pursue America’s interests abroad, his foreign policy to date has remained highly militarized.

    His eloquent speech in Burma may indicate that he has decided to pursue a more progressive foreign policy agenda in his second term, one based on the recognition that the best means to keep America safe in the long term is to ensure that the hopes and aspirations of people the world over to enjoy freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear stand not, as Roosevelt said, as some “vision of a distant millennium,” but as “a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation.”

    David Woolner is a Senior Fellow and Hyde Park Resident Historian for the Roosevelt Institute. He is currently writing a book entitled Cordell Hull, Anthony Eden and the Search for Anglo-American Cooperation, 1933-1938.

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  • The American People are Ready for Leadership in the Wake of Obama's Victory

    Nov 7, 2012David Woolner

    The election results could encourage the bipartisan cooperation we need to solve our country's greatest challenges.

    The election results could encourage the bipartisan cooperation we need to solve our country's greatest challenges.

    Today we re-consecrate our country to long-cherished ideals in a suddenly changed civilization. In every land there are always at work forces that drive men apart and forces that draw men together. In our personal ambitions we are individualists. But in our seeking for economic and political progress as a nation, we all go up, or else we all go down, as one people.—Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1937

    Tonight, more than 200 years after a former colony won the right to determine its own destiny, the task of perfecting our union moves forward. It moves forward because of you. It moves forward because you reaffirmed the spirit that has triumphed over war and depression, the spirit that has lifted this country from the depths of despair to the great heights of hope, the belief that while each of us will pursue our own individual dreams, we are an American family and we rise or fall together as one nation and as one people.—Barack Obama, 2012

    With the 2012 election now over and President Obama returning to the White House, many Americans are asking themselves, will the next four years be any different? Or will we see more of the same gridlock, bickering, and obstructionism that so dominated the Washington political landscape of the past few years? Much will depend, of course, on the temper of the Congress, where the Republicans still hold a majority in the House of Representatives and where, despite their minority status in the Senate, Republicans can still use the filibuster to block or delay the president’s—and the country’s—agenda.

    It was roughly two years ago that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell famously remarked that “the single most important thing” the Republican Party wanted to achieve “is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” But now that the Republicans have failed in this effort one would hope that the party leadership would be more willing to work with—rather than against—the president and his Democratic colleagues.

    Certainly the American public would welcome such a move, and thanks to the recent behavior of Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey and Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York, we now have a precedent upon which such a bi-partisan spirit might be built. For most Americans, Republican Governor Christie’s willingness to “extend the hand of friendship” to the President and “to say ‘thank you sir,’ for providing good leadership in a crisis and for helping the people of New Jersey” was a long overdue antidote to the harsh negativity of today’s “political discourse.”

    Moreover, the same might be said for Governor Cuomo, who, despite his status as New York’s governor and leading Democrat, took the highly unusual step of endorsing Republican State Senator Stephen Saland’s bid for re-election thanks to the latter’s decision to support the governor’s legislation legalizing same-sex marriage last year. Senator Saland’s decision to vote in favor of the bill, in what he said was a personal vote of conscience, was not popular among his party’s right wing. So the governor, in a move he said was motivated in part by his desire to counter “extremists on both sides of the aisle,” came out strongly in favor of Saland, much to the chagrin of the senator’s Democratic opponent. (The winner in that race has yet to be called at this time.)

    Like Governor’s Christie’s willingness to work with President Obama to meet the crisis caused by Hurricane Sandy, Governor Cuomo’s willingness to work with Republican legislators in Albany has been enormously popular among the New York electorate, where he has consistently enjoyed an approval rating of roughly 70 percent. Given all of this, and given the extremely low regard most Americans hold for Congress, one would hope that these examples of bi-partisan cooperation might prove infectious and that our representatives in Congress might summon the courage to work together to meet the enormous challenges we face today.

    Nearly 80 years ago, at a time when our nation faced an even graver economic crisis, Franklin Roosevelt reminded those who were concerned “with the problems of government and economics” to never forget that “devotion to the public good, unselfish service, never-ending consideration of human needs are in themselves conquering forces.”

    We expect this sort of devotion in the face of natural disasters like Hurricane Sandy, but is it too much to expect the same “consideration of human needs” in the face of the economic disaster we are grappling with today? If government can and must play a major role in rebuilding areas ravaged by nature’s fury why shouldn’t the same government do more to help those American citizens ravaged by the scourge of unemployment?

    Last night in his acceptance speech, President Obama echoed Roosevelt’s first inaugural when he noted that the American people “voted for action, not politics as usual.” While the Speaker of the Republican-controlled House, John Boehner, remarked that the election represented “a mandate for both parties to find common ground and take steps together to help our economy grow and create jobs.”

    After years of partisan gridlock, the American people are hungry for that elusive but all-important quality they expect from their elected officials and which was on rare display for a brief moment as a president and a governor from different parties came together in a moment of compassion for those suffering hardship through no fault of their own. That quality is called leadership. Let us hope that the moment has finally arrived when those we have placed in positions of power, both in the White House and in Congress, will now have the courage to exercise it.

    David Woolner is a Senior Fellow and Hyde Park Resident Historian for the Roosevelt Institute. He is currently writing a book entitled Cordell Hull, Anthony Eden and the Search for Anglo-American Cooperation, 1933-1938.

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  • FDR's Message to Obama and Romney: America's Strength Abroad Begins at Home

    Oct 29, 2012David Woolner

    FDR knew that America's willingness to fight inequality was more important than its ability to wage war.

    Our strength is measured not only in terms of the might of our armaments. It is measured not only in terms of the horsepower of our machines.

    The true measure of our strength lies deeply imbedded in the social and economic justice of the system in which we live.

    FDR knew that America's willingness to fight inequality was more important than its ability to wage war.

    Our strength is measured not only in terms of the might of our armaments. It is measured not only in terms of the horsepower of our machines.

    The true measure of our strength lies deeply imbedded in the social and economic justice of the system in which we live.

    For you can build ships and tanks and planes and guns galore; but they will not be enough. You must place behind them an invincible faith in the institutions which they have been built to defend. – Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1938

    In their recent debate on foreign policy, both President Obama and Governor Romney made a point of linking America’s security with the health of the U.S. economy. Governor Romney, for example, argued that the ability of the United States to promote “the principles of peace” abroad “begins with a strong economy here at home,” while President Obama said that thanks to our experiments with nation-building in places like Iraq, “we've neglected…developing our own economy, our own energy sectors, our own education system. And it's very hard for us to project leadership around the world when we're not doing what we need to do here.”

    Both candidates are correct, of course, in pointing out that a healthy economy—and in Mr. Obama’s case, a healthy education system and energy sector—are critical to the overall strength of the nation and hence our ability to project American influence overseas. But as has been the case with so much of this campaign, neither man had much to say about another critical element of national health that also plays an important part in our foreign policy: the social health of the nation.

    Roughly 70 years ago, when the United States was living in a far more dangerous world than we are living in today, Franklin Roosevelt argued that America’s place in the world was not merely dependent on our military and economic power, but also dependent on our ability to create a society where social and economic justice were paramount. For Roosevelt, this meant building a nation which, in “arming itself for defense has also the intelligence to save its human resources by giving them that confidence which comes from useful work,” which in “creating a great navy has also found the strength to build houses and begin to clear the slums of its cities and its countryside,” and which as “the industrial leader of the world has the humanity to know that the people of a free land need not suffer the disease of poverty and the dread of not being wanted.”

    Indeed, in gazing out over a world where anti-democratic forces were on the march, Roosevelt also insisted that “unhappy events abroad” had “re-taught us two simple truths about the liberty of a democratic people.” The first truth was that “the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism—ownership of Government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. The second truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if its business system does not provide employment and produce and distribute goods in such a way as to sustain an acceptable standard of living.”

    For Roosevelt and the generation that lived through the Depression and war, these truths were very real, and as such the conviction that the health and strength of the nation were linked directly to its ability to deliver social and economic justice for all its people was regarded, not as a luxury, but as a critical component of national security.

    And yet on the campaign trail today we hear very little about the vital need to address the same disturbing trends that FDR warned us about all those decades ago: the vast and growing unequal distribution of wealth among the American people, the dangers of the rise of “private power” to the exercise of democracy, the fact that in America today roughly one-third of our citizens have rejoined the ranks of the poor or near poor.

    No, instead what we hear is an endless stream of uninspiring messages about each candidate’s “plans” to create jobs, reduce the deficit, and “keep America strong.” But after living through four long years of the Great Recession and bearing witness to a society where 400 individuals now own more wealth that the bottom 150 million combined, the American people deserve more than mere platitudes. They want to hear their leaders articulate a vision for America that involves the creation of a better and more just society, a society that will inspire what Roosevelt called “the anguished common people of this earth.”

    President Obama has offered hints of this in his call to move the country forward, but in the dangerous world that our parents and grandparents inhabited, Franklin Roosevelt went much further. In the final and anxious days of the 1940 election, for example, he reminded his fellow citizens that they were a generation living in “a tremendous moment of history,” where the “surge of events abroad” had led some to ask whether “the book of democracy” might “now to be closed and placed away upon the dusty shelves of time.” For Roosevelt the answer was clear and unequivocal:

    All we have known of the glories of democracy—its freedom, its efficiency as a mode of living, its ability to meet the aspirations of the common man— all these are merely an introduction to the greater story of a more glorious future.

    We Americans of today—all of us—we are characters in this living book of democracy.

    But we are also its author. It falls upon us now to say whether the chapters that are to come will tell a story of retreat or a story of continued advance.

    I believe that the American people will say: "Forward!"

    David Woolner is a Senior Fellow and Hyde Park Resident Historian for the Roosevelt Institute. He is currently writing a book entitled Cordell Hull, Anthony Eden and the Search for Anglo-American Cooperation, 1933-1938.

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  • The Obama-Biden Foreign Policy Mirrors FDR's: Prepare for Conflict, But Build Peace

    Oct 12, 2012David Woolner

    Unlike the modern-day GOP, FDR understood that securing peace required both massive military power and massive diplomacy.

    The permanent security of America in the present crisis does not lie in armed force alone. What we face is a set of world-wide forces of disintegration—vicious, ruthless, destructive of all the moral, religious and political standards which mankind, after centuries of struggle, has come to cherish most…

    Unlike the modern-day GOP, FDR understood that securing peace required both massive military power and massive diplomacy.

    The permanent security of America in the present crisis does not lie in armed force alone. What we face is a set of world-wide forces of disintegration—vicious, ruthless, destructive of all the moral, religious and political standards which mankind, after centuries of struggle, has come to cherish most…

    Overstatement, bitterness, vituperation, and the beating of drums have contributed mightily to ill-feeling and wars between nations. If these unnecessary and unpleasant actions are harmful in the international field, if they have hurt in other parts of the world, they are also harmful in the domestic scene. Peace among ourselves would seem to have some of the advantage of peace between us and other nations. In the long run history amply demonstrates that angry controversy surely wins less than calm discussion. - Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1940

    In the vice presidential debate between Vice President Biden and Congressman Ryan, the latter reiterated the now-familiar Romney campaign charge that the Obama administration has projected “weakness abroad,” and that as such the world has become “more chaotic and less safe.” In the Romney-Ryan view, it is critical that the United States exude strength at all times, and above all stop “apologizing” for America. The logic behind this view is based on the argument, put forward by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others, that American weakness or even the perception of American weakness is provocative. Based on this analysis, it would seem that Governor Romney’s foreign policy has been reduced to the idea that the first responsibility of the president in foreign affairs is to turn Theodore Roosevelt’s maxim on its head by speaking loudly and carrying a big stick.

    In essence, it is this idea—that the president needs to “get tough” with our enemies and adversaries—that has formed the core of the Romney-Ryan critique of the Obama administration’s foreign policy, whether it’s toward Iran over its nuclear ambitions or toward China over its trade policies.

    But as any expert in the field of foreign policy will attest, securing America’s interests abroad involves far more than the mere projection of strength. It also involves a realistic understanding of the limits of military power and the ability to exercise restraint in times of high tension, the ability to understand and interpret other people’s histories and cultures, and most important of all, the ability to inspire in others the same respect for human rights and the rule of law that we aspire to here at home in our yet-to-be perfected democracy. At times—as much as Governor Romney or Congressman Ryan might not like to admit it—this involves a certain degree of humility and willingness to acknowledge our own shortcomings. Qualities that stem not from weakness but from strength, a deep and abiding faith and confidence in our ability as a people to learn from past mistakes and fashion a better democracy.

    Seventy-plus years ago, in a world that in many respects was far more dangerous than our own, Franklin Roosevelt understood this. He knew better than anyone in the dark days of 1940-41 that there was an urgent need to build up America’s military capabilities, to render our nation second to none in armed strength. But he also knew that such a military buildup would be useless in the long run if people around the world did not believe that America’s cause was their cause, that what we were fighting for was not to establish an “American century” but rather to join with what he called “the anguished common people of this earth” in building a world where freedom would mean “the supremacy of human rights everywhere.” The United States, he believed, could play a unique role in this effort, not by virtue of our military or industrial power, but rather because of our willingness to lead not by force but by example. As he said in 1941,

    Since the beginning of our American history, we have been engaged in change—in a perpetual peaceful revolution—a revolution which goes on steadily, quietly adjusting itself to changing conditions—without the concentration camp or the quick-lime in the ditch. The world order which we seek is the cooperation of free countries, working together in a friendly, civilized society.

    To Roosevelt, then, even in a world ravaged by war, “the mere conquest of our enemies [was] not enough.” It was also critical that the United States do all it could “to conquer the doubts and the fears, the ignorance and the greed, which made this horror possible.” As such, the American people had to face “the preeminent fact that, if civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships—the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together and work together, in the same world, at peace.”

    By reaching out to the world in Cairo, Indonesia, Moscow, and elsewhere, President Obama has shown that he understands the need “to cultivate the science of human relationships.” He has also made it eminently clear that he can be a ruthless adversary when dealing with the Taliban or the top leadership of al Qaeda. Based on the bluster and saber-rattling tendencies of Governor Romney and Congressman Ryan, however, it would appear that they still have much to learn about exercise of foreign policy. In this sense, Vice President Biden is surely correct when he says that “the President has led with a steady hand and clear vision” and that all of the “loose talk” the Romney-Ryan team seems to relish in risks “painting the United States into a dangerous corner.” After all, as the Vice President, also said, the “last thing” the American people want or need “is another ground war in the Middle East.”

    David Woolner is a Senior Fellow and Hyde Park Resident Historian for the Roosevelt Institute. He is currently writing a book entitled Cordell Hull, Anthony Eden and the Search for Anglo-American Cooperation, 1933-1938.

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  • FDR's Debate Lesson for Obama: It's About Capturing Americans' Imaginations

    Oct 4, 2012David Woolner

    President Obama spent too much time picking apart the details of his opponent's plans instead of attacking the underlying philosophy as FDR did.

    President Obama spent too much time picking apart the details of his opponent's plans instead of attacking the underlying philosophy as FDR did.

    Let me warn you and let me warn the Nation against the smooth evasion which says, “Of course we believe all these things; we believe in social security; we believe in work for the unemployed; we believe in saving homes. Cross our hearts and hope to die, we believe in all these things; but we do not like the way the present Administration is doing them. Just turn them over to us. We will do all of them—we will do more of them we will do them better; and, most important of all, the doing of them will not cost anybody anything.”

    But, my friends, these evaders are banking too heavily on the shortness of our memories. No one will forget that they had their golden opportunity—twelve long years of it.

    Remember, too, that the first essential of doing a job well is to want to see the job done. Make no mistake about this: the Republican leadership today is not against the way we have done the job. The Republican leadership is against the job's being done. — Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1936

    From the moment he took office in the New York State Senate until his death as president roughly 35 years later, Franklin D. Roosevelt relished the toss and tumult of the political arena. As he once told a reporter in the midst of his early struggle with New York’s Tammany Hall political machine, “there is nothing I love as much as a good fight” – and FDR was brilliant at it.

    This passion for the art of politics—and for the basic principles that underpinned his political philosophy—served FDR extremely well over the course of his public life. In fact, few politicians in the 20th century, with the exception of Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and his cousin Theodore Roosevelt, ever came close to FDR’s ability to master the nation’s political discourse.

    What fueled FDR was his fundamental belief in the power of government to create a more just and equitable society, and his deep knowledge—from personal experience—of the forces of wealth and privilege that had little if any regard for the plight of millions upon millions of Americans who struggled day by day to provide for their families. FDR never forgot that it was these “malefactors of great wealth,” as his cousin TR labeled them, who brought the country to ruin in 1929, and he spent the better part of his presidency in battle against the forces that wanted to return the United States to the so-called Gilded Age of unfettered capitalism.

    The American people understood this, in part because they had lived through the economic collapse that brought on the Great Depression, but also because of the clear and unequivocal message that FDR delivered time and time again about the nature of struggle between those who sought to exploit the free-market system for their own ends, and those who believed, as he did, that the only way to make capitalism work in the long run was to make sure that it provided a basic measure of economic security and opportunity to all Americans, not just those at the top.

    It was this conviction that led the Roosevelt administration to initiate Social Security and unemployment insurance, to guarantee bank deposits through the FDIC, or to protect investors—both small and large—through the establishment of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

    The aim here was not to create “trickle-down government,” or a generation of dependents, as Governor Romney would have us believe, but rather to use government to ensure that the millions who toiled in the nation’s farms and factories might receive a decent wage and a small measure of economic security against what FDR called “the hazards and vicissitudes of life,” such as the loss of a job or poverty-ridden old age.

    We now take many of these programs for granted, but in FDR’s day they aroused fierce opposition, particularly from the well-heeled conservative elite, who did everything they could to try to discredit both the president and his ideas. In their view, FDR’s philosophy of government was tantamount to socialism, an un-American attempt to subvert the Constitution and rob the nation of the individual initiative that stood at the core of its—and their—success.

    But FDR would have none of this, and in a series of withering attacks on what he called “a generation of self-seekers” he implored the American people to join him in abandoning “our tolerance of the abuse of power by those who betray for profit the elementary decencies of life.” Indeed, as he reminded the American people in the summer of 1936, it was critical that the nation reject a system of governance where “for too many of us the political equality we once had won was meaningless in the face of economic inequality,” where “a small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people's property, other people's money, other people's labor—other people's lives.”

    For Roosevelt, the great issues of his day were not simply about whose “plan” might deliver more jobs for the American people, or provide a greater chance at reducing the deficit, but about the fundamental moral and economic structure of our society -- a society where government must remain determined “to make every American citizen the subject of his country’s interest and concern; and [where] we will never regard any faithful law-abiding group within our borders as superfluous.”

    Like FDR in 1936, President Obama now faces the same sort of “powerful influences” that in Roosevelt’s words “strive today to restore that kind of government with its doctrine that that Government is best which is most indifferent.” But judging from last night’s debate, one would hardly know it. Instead of attacking the underlying philosophy behind Governor Romney’s call for the restoration of the types of policies that led to the Great Depression and the Great Recession—policies that in Romney’s words would rid the country of what he calls “the web of dependency” among the “47 percent”—the president spent too much time trying to explain the differences between the two men’s various “plans.” Given Governor Romney’s penchant for leaving out the details of his various proposals to reduce the deficit and grow the economy, perhaps this is understandable, but in doing so the president failed to capture the imagination of the American people.

    This is unfortunate, for Governor Romney is correct when he says this election is about choosing very different paths for our nation. Will we embrace the type of society that was built in the New Deal? A country where the reforms of the 1930s helped the middle class flourish in the decades after World War II? Or will we embrace the philosophy of government that has become increasingly dominant in the past 30-plus years -- a philosophy of government where, as the Census Bureau recently reported, the average male worker is making the same hourly wage adjusted for inflation that he was making in 1978, while the average CEO’s pay over the same period has sextupled and the income of the people in the top 1 percent has grown by 600 percent?

    For Roosevelt, the answer was obvious, and he was not afraid to state it “boldly and plainly.” As he said in his speech to the 1936 Democratic Convention:

    The defeats and victories of these years have given to us as a people a new understanding of our government and of ourselves… It has been brought home to us that the only effective guide for the safety of this most worldly of worlds, the greatest guide of all, is moral principle…

    We cannot afford to accumulate a deficit in the books of human fortitude.

    In the place of the palace of privilege we seek to build a temple out of faith and hope and charity…

    Governments can err, presidents do make mistakes, but the immortal Dante tells us that Divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted on different scales.

    Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.

    There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.

    David Woolner is a Senior Fellow and Hyde Park Resident Historian for the Roosevelt Institute. He is currently writing a book entitled Cordell Hull, Anthony Eden and the Search for Anglo-American Cooperation, 1933-1938.

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