In the 1936 election, Roosevelt won a decisive victory over
his Republican opponent, Alf Landon of Kansas. He was personally
popular, and the economy seemed near recovery. He took 60
percent of the vote and carried all but two states. A broad new
coalition aligned with the Democratic Party emerged, consisting
of labor, most farmers, most urban ethnic groups, African
Americans, and the traditionally Democratic South. The
Republican Party received the support of business as well as
middle-class members of small towns and suburbs. This political
alliance, with some variation and shifting, remained intact for
several decades.
Roosevelt's second term was a time of consolidation. The
president made two serious political missteps: an ill-advised,
unsuccessful attempt to enlarge the Supreme Court and a failed
effort to "purge" increasingly recalcitrant Southern
conservatives from the Democratic Party. When he cut high
government spending, moreover, the economy collapsed. These
events led to the rise of a conservative coalition in Congress
that was unreceptive to new initiatives.
From 1932 to 1938 there was widespread public debate on the
meaning of New Deal policies to the nation's political and
economic life. Americans clearly wanted the government to take
greater responsibility for the welfare of ordinary people,
however uneasy they might be about big government in general.
The New Deal established the foundations of the modern welfare
state in the United States. Roosevelt, perhaps the most imposing
of the 20th-century presidents, had established a new standard
of mass leadership.
No American leader, then or since, used the radio so
effectively. In a radio address in 1938, Roosevelt declared:
"Democracy has disappeared in several other great nations, not
because the people of those nations disliked democracy, but
because they had grown tired of unemployment and insecurity, of
seeing their children hungry while they sat helpless in the face
of government confusion and government weakness through lack of
leadership." Americans, he concluded, wanted to defend their
liberties at any cost and understood that "the first line of the
defense lies in the protection of economic security." |
