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The eruption of Franklin D. Roosevelt into the political area in 1928 was a surprise. "F. D.R". born to a patrician Hudson River family in 1882, graduated from Groton and Harvard (where he was regarded as a playboy) and the Columbia Law School. For a few years
he engaged in law and business in New York City with very moderate success; but he made a successful marriage in 1905 with Eleanor Roosevelt, niece of his remote cousin Theodore, whom he greatly admired. The Dutchess County Roosevelts to whom Franklin belonged had been Democrats since Andrew Jackson days; so, as a Democrat, "Frank", as his friends called him, was elected to the New York Senate. Support of Woodrow Wilson in the campaign of 1912 earned him the assistant secretaryship of the navy, which enabled him to counteract some of the folly of Josephus Daniels; and that, in turn, led to his vice-presidential nomination on the losing Cox ticket in 1920. Next year a sudden and severe attack of polio at his summer home in Campobello, New Brunswick, left him apparently a hopeless invalid; but during the next seven years he fought his way back to health, used his leisure for thought, study, and correspondence, and emerged from forced retirement a changed man. Still charming and jaunty in manner, he was deeply ambitious to do something for his country and lend fresh luster to the Roosevelt name. Franklin D. Roosevelt, who occupied the chief magistracy for twelve years and thirty-nine days, was one of the most remarkable characters who ever occupied that high office; and he held it during two major crises, the Great Depression and World War II. A patrician by birth and education, endowed with an independent fortune, he was a democrat not only by conviction; he really loved people as no other President has except Lincoln, and as no other American statesman had since Franklin. Appreciation he prized; opposition often angered but never soured him. Widely traveled in youth and young manhood, Roosevelt knew Europe well. A great reader, especially of American history and political science, he found time to collect postage stamps and books on the United States Navy. No American President has been a success without prior political experience; and Roosevelt had had plenty of that, in the New York assembly. He combined audacity with caution; stubborn as to ultimate ends, he was an opportunist as to means, and knew when to compromise. A natural dramatist, he was able to project his personal charm both in public appearances and in those radio "fireside chats" in which he seemed to be taking the whole country into his confidence.
Roosevelt political comeback was signaled by nominating Al Smith in the Democratic convention of 1924 with the "happy warrior" speech: and Al later persuaded him to take the Democratic candidacy for governor of New York in 1928. To those who objected that Roosevelt was still a cripple, the Happy Warrior replied, "The Governor of New York State does not have to be an acrobat!" Although Al lost his native state in the presidential election, the magic of the Roosevelt name elected F'.D.R. governor; and at Albany he did so well, with the assistance of an able staff of economists and social workers, that in 1930 he was re-elected by a majority of 700,000. That made him a leading contender for his party's presidential nomination.
Roosevelt, who before his nomination had seemed to many people merely "a nice man who very much wanted to be President", electrified the country by a bold, aggressive campaign. Although he now had a wide radio network at his disposal, the candidate, to prove his physical vigor and exert his personal magnetism, embarked upon an old fashioned stumping tour which took him into almost every state of the Union. He set forth a comprehensive scheme of reform and recovery, embracing the repeal of Prohibition, unemployment relief, lower tariffs, and legislation to save agriculture, rehabilitate the rail roads, protect consumers and investors, and slash government expenses, all of it contained in the party platform. The keynote was a "New Deal" to the "forgotten man". For some odd reason this last phrase aroused the fury of conservatives, even Al Smith, when he first heard Roosevelt plead for "the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid", burst out with, "This is no time for demagogues". President Hoover, laboring under the dead weight of the deepening depression, doubled his efforts to cope with it.
Most of the voters, fearing that the "American system" needed desperate measures to be saved, were ready to take a chance on the New Deal. On election day Roosevelt received almost 22. 8 million votes with 57.3 per cent of all cast, and won 472 electors. Hoover polled 15.8 million votes — 39.6 per cent, with only 59 votes in the electoral college. It was a tribute to the average American's faith in his country and her institutions. There was never a stronger popular mandate in American history for a new program or policy.
The Great Depression unquestionably ruined the Republicans, for the electoral upheaval in 1932 seems to have been more anti-Hoover than pro-Roosevelt. The Democrats had only to harness the national grudge and let it pull them to victory. "A Vote for Roosevelt Is a Vote against Hoover", ran the saying.
