On Wednesday, Sept. 16, the Center for Presidential History kicked off the 2015-2016 academic year with a lecture about President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his impact and influence over our country, specifically World War II and the idea of “Big Business.”
The lecture, hosted by SMU’s Professor of History Thomas Knock, featured Matthew Dallek and James T. Sparrow. Dallek is a professor for Political Management at George Washington University and is working on publishing his second book about the history of Eleanor Roosevelt’s battle to enact a wartime New Deal. Professor Sparrow is an associate professor of United States history at the University of Chicago, whose book “Warfare State” explores the history of how the United States switched from a social policy of welfare to warfare during World War II and Roosevelt’s presidency.
Even 70 years after his death, FDR is still seen as the father of big government in America. His ability to take control of the government during a time of serious economic depression and provide jobs for millions of struggling Americans has placed Roosevelt high on every historian’s list of best American presidents.
As recognized by many historians, the implementation of FDR’s New Deal provided the means necessary to keep the country afloat until World War II by restoring Americans’ faith in the banking system, creation of Social Security, and massive public work projects. But, as argued by the three professors in this lecturer, World War II played a much larger role than the New Deal in the development of big government.
The lecturers argued that the country would not have been able to mobilize for war without FDR, due to his incredible communication skills and his ability to take the one impersonal bureaucracy and create such a personal institution; a government for the people. By changing the nation’s focus from welfare to warfare, the decisions made by the federal government changed everyday life, touching every American, and making it easier to mobilize a country with a weak morale.
Along with this, the lecturers pointed out the importance of FDR’s wife Eleanor, who was the “conscience of social domestic liberalism.” Dallek said she was the true “eyes and ears of the President” and that she was able to focus not only his, but the whole country’s attention on the unmet human needs.
Professor Sparrow commented that, “History is a matter of both fact and interpretation; individuals and uncontrollable forces alike control what happens. It’s meaning is changing all the time as past, present, and future are always shaping it.”
Franklin Delano Roosevelt along with his wife Eleanor were two monumental individuals who shaped the course of American history and laid the foundation for the course in which our country has taken.
