Franklin D. Roosevelt: Message to the Boy Scouts of America on their Twenty-fifth Anniversary.

Enlisting the Boy Scouts in the New Deal.

Franklin D. Roosevelt: Message to the Boy Scouts of America on their Twenty-fifth Anniversary.

- Message to the Boy Scouts of America on their Twenty-fifth Anniversary. February 8, 1935

President Head, Members of the Boy Scouts:
The year 1935 marks the Twenty-fifth Birthday celebration of the Boy Scouts of America. During these years the value of our organization in  building character and in training for citizenship has made itself a vital factor in the life of America. That is why not only the Boy Scoutsof today, but the millions of men and boys who have graduated through Scouting, will be joined by millions of other Americans in the proper marking and celebration of our anniversary.

As I review the record of these twenty-five years of Scouting in America, I am impressed with the extent of the volunteer service we have rendered. We as a Nation are proud of the fact that in addition to our splendid system of education and of other services made available through funds secured by taxation, there are in each community so many well-organized and efficiently administered agencies which supplement the work of Government and make available additional opportunities which strengthen the best objectives of the home, the church and the school.

Every Scout seeks to do a good turn daily; every troop seeks to accomplish some community benefit;and occasionally, as last year, Scouts everywhere unite to do a good turn nationally. A year ago, as your Honorary President, I started the national Scout effort to collect household furnishings and clothing and supplies for those in need; and the results were truly amazing. Hundreds of thousands of families were helped by the Boy Scouts.

The program for this year, embracing as it does over one million boys, lasts throughout the year. In May there will be a gathering of the Leaders of Scouting at the Twenty-fifth Annual Meeting of the National Council.

But the outstanding event will be America's first National Jamboree, to be held here in the City of Washington from August 21st to August 30th. I hope to attend it in person. Since I extended the invitation a year ago,definite plans have crystallized. With the cooperation of various officials here in Washington a fine camp site has been made available and will be all ready to receive thirty thousand boys when the meeting starts. I am glad to know that the selection of these boys is being made on the basis of merit and, furthermore, that in many cases these boys will come to Washington at the expense of the troop and not merely because the boy's economic situation in life is such as to make it possible for his parents to send him.

Thirty thousand Scouts brought together under such conditions will mean the most thoroughly representative group of American boys ever mobilized for a purpose of this character.

We hope, too, that other countries will send at least small delegations to meet with us on this occasion. Because Scouting is now in active operation in almost every civilized Nation of the world, this will give us a splendid opportunity to enlarge our basis of mutual respect, of understanding and of friendship among the people of the world, regardless of race or creed.

In a moment Dr. West is going to lead the Scouts in thousands of halls and other meeting places in every State in the Union in repeating the Scout Oath and Law. I hope that the people who are listening to my voice will give careful heed to this Scout Oath. It is the basis of good citizenship; it is the basis of good government; it is the basis of orderly progress for our country in the years to come.

Franklin D. Roosevelt: "Message to the Boy Scouts of America on their Twenty-fifth Anniversary.," February 8, 1935. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=14979.

The Fireside Chats and the Public

Lawrence W. Levine and Cornelia R. Levine, The Fireside Conversations: America Responds to FDR during the Great Depression (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010).

from the publisher:

“My friends, I want to talk for a few minutes with the people of the United States about banking.” So began the first of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s famous Fireside Chats, which came on the heels of his decision, two days after his inauguration, to close all American banks. During this address, Roosevelt used the intimacy of radio to share his hopes and plans directly with the people. He concluded by encouraging Americans to “tell me your troubles.” Roosevelt’s invitation was unprecedented, and the enormous public response it elicited signaled the advent of a new relationship between Americans and their president. In this indispensable book, Lawrence W. Levine and Cornelia R. Levine illuminate the period from 1933 to 1938 by setting each of the Fireside Chats in context and reprinting a moving selection of the letters that poured into Washington from an extraordinary variety of ordinary Americans. In his foreword, Michael Kazin examines the achievements and limits of the New Deal and the reasons that FDR remains, for many Americans, the exemplar of a good president. He also highlights the similarities of the 1930s to our era, with its deep recession and a new progressive administration in the White House.

Obama and Reform Leadership

Jean Edward Smith, author of a recent biography of FDR, writes in the Times today with a reminder to President Obama about reform leadership in a divided country:

PRESIDENT OBAMA’S apparent readiness to backtrack on the public insurance option in his health care package is not just a concession to his political opponents — this fixation on securing bipartisan support for health care reform suggests that the Democratic Party has forgotten how to govern and the White House has forgotten how to lead.

This was not true of Franklin Roosevelt and the Democratic Congresses that enacted the New Deal. With the exception of the Emergency Banking Act of 1933 (which gave the president authority to close the nation’s banks and which passed the House of Representatives unanimously), the principal legislative innovations of the 1930s were enacted over the vigorous opposition of a deeply entrenched minority. Majority rule, as Roosevelt saw it, did not require his opponents’ permission. . . .

Jean Edward Smith, "Roosevelt: The Great Divider," New York Times, 2 September 2009.

see also Jean Edward Smith, FDR (New York: Random House, 2007). See Jonathan Yardley's review in the Washington Post.

Traitor to His Class

It's an old story but still a good one even in a re-telling, especially with a writer who displays the narrative energy, historical perspective, and political balance of H. W. Brands, professor of history at the University of Texas. I enjoyed reading the book in the late days of last winter, as the Obama administration was getting underway and our hopes for another New Deal came back to life. And as we were being told that we are in the worst recession since the Great Depression.

H. W. Brands, Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (New York: Doubleday, 2008).

Thomas J. Sugrue reviews the book in The Nation: Thomas J. Sugrue, "The Hundred Days War: Histories of the New Deal," The Nation, 27 April 2009. Sugrue also reviews Adam Cohen, Nothing to Fear: FDR's Inner Circle and the Hundred Days That Created Modern America.

The Inner Circle

There's an interesting review by Lizabeth Cohen in the American Prospect. Cohen, chair of the history department at Harvard, reviews

Nothing to Fear: FDR's Inner Circle and the Hundred Days that Created Modern America by Adam Cohen, Penguin Press, 372 pages, $29.95

The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR's Secretary of Labor and his Moral Conscience by Kirstin Downey, Doubleday, 458 pages, $35.00

Lizabeth Cohen, "Team of Rivals Redux," The American Prospect, 16 April 2009.

Obama Explains: Fireside Chats for the New Depression

John Dickerson in Slate:

In an effort to educate the public on the state of the economy and his plans for improving it, President Obama is considering a series of short televised addresses similar to Franklin Roosevelt's fireside chats. Press secretary Robert Gibbs has told the television networks that the administration may request more time than usual for a president. Gibbs did not provide a schedule but described the addresses as lasting about 10 minutes each. . . .

John Dickerson, "Fireside Chat 2.0: Obama's Plans to Adapt FDR's Model to Address Today's Economy," Slate, 16 March 2009.

Robert Reich on the AIG Bonuses

Robert Reich sensibly suggests that the way to end the abuses at AIG is to send it into bankruptcy and rebuild it from there. This course has the danger of cascading defaults, of course, but it would allow for structured re-building, and it would allow the bonuses to be cancelled.

I'm no lawyer, and no economist, but it is interesting to follow the rhetoric surrounding this situation, and the way the bonuses, more almost than any other even in the past months, has momentarily unified the country in populist outrage.

Huey Long would have a field day.

FDR would find a way to act, and would find a way to explain and condemn -- and point to a way forward.

President Obama seems to be finding ways to do this, but he can't be engaged in a running commentary -- nor could FDR in his own time. The onrushing news cycle keeps giving all the rest of us plenty to react to, but any president would soon wear out our patience if he or she commented daily on the latest buzz. Instead, comments, speeches, and appearances need to be timed (and placed) so that there is an ongoing sense that things are being seen, understood, and, where appropriate, acted on by the administration.

Would we be better off if our president maintained a public twitter account to report moment by moment reactions? No, I don't think so either.

Relief, Reform, Recovery

Economists and policy makers have been telling us that the present situation is the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Some progressives have been calling for a new New Deal.

The public debate over this week's "stimulus" bill has struck me, for that reason, as somewhat impoverished.

In the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt made the case that simply re-starting the business cycle, kicking in a new boom that would lead to a new bust, was impractical and unwise. Instead, he offered an approach that is referred to, with some variations, as the three R's --

RELIEF -- Economic action to offer immediate relief to those most affected by the crisis.

REFORM -- Fixing the economic and financial systems so that the abuses that had led to the crash would not come again -- reforming the banks, the mortgage system, and Wall Street.

RECOVERY -- The return of prosperity in the private sector, which in the U.S. system is the engine of economic growth and offers the hope, under reasonable rules, of widespread prosperity.

I'm no economist, and so it is not really for me to say whether the stimulus bill passed by Congress this week will bring about recovery. But as a matter of rhetorical history, it has struck me as strange that President Obama and the sponsors of the bill have allowed the Republican opposition to define the debate as merely about stimulus -- as if recovery could be achieved with relief (in the short run) and reform (to prevent a return to this mess after another artificial bubble). If "stimulus" is the only theme in the debate, the Republican opposition can make a seemingly plausible argument about tax cuts. But their re-distributionist tax cuts in the past eight years and their neglect of regulation helped to bring about the crisis.

FDR taught that Recovery could not reasonably be expected by merely letting the business cycle do its work. Many people need relief now -- for example through extended unemployment benefits, some extension of various welfare benefits, health care, mortgage protection. And though most direct relief would not be expected for the long run, some of its elements might be needed by those worst off. Reform we desperately seem to need to restore sensible regulation to the market.

Or so it seems to a non-economist. In any case, one would hope for a rhetorical approach that makes the case for the role of RELIEF and REFORM in the planning for RECOVERY.

see:

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Fireside Chat, 28 June 1934.

"The New Deal: Measures for Relief, Recovery, and Reform" Crossroads high school curriculum.

New Deal - Wikipedia

FDR at Gettysburg on video

FDR throws out the first ball, Washington, D.C. 24 April 1934
FDR Library, Hyde Park, New York

During his presidency, FDR gave two speeches at Gettysburg, in 1934 and 1938. I've been remembering them this week, since November 19 is the anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.

YouTube has video transfers of some newsreels made on the occasion of FDR's speech at Gettysburg on July 4, 1938, the 75th anniversary of the battle. Reading the speeches now, it is possible to see how, all those years after the end of the Civil War, Roosevelt is still working to re-unite the country. The veterans on that occasion, old men who returned for their last reunion, seemed willing to shake hands and meet as friends. All these years later, 80 years after Roosevelt's 1938 speech at the dedication of a peace memorial on the Gettysburg battlefield, the first comments on the YouTube posting of Roosevelt's speech wave the banner of the lost cause bitter-enders, still not ready for peace.




For more on FDR's 1934 and 1938 Gettysburg speeches, see -- Thomas W. Benson, "FDR at Gettysburg: The New Deal and the Rhetoric of Presidential Leadership," The Rhetoric of Presidential Leadership, ed. Leroy Dorsey (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2002), 145-183.

Paul Krugman -- Think Big

Paul Krugman in today's New York Times has interesting advice and a history lesson for Barack Obama -- think big. Krugman argues that Franklin Delano Roosevelt could have ended the Great Depression sooner had he enacted even bolder progressive measures.

Paul Krugman, "Franklin Delano Obama," New York Times, 10 November 2008.

100 Days and 75 Days

This image from today's New York Times exactly captures the hope, in some ways premature, for Barack Obama to get to work and fix America's problems. The photograph by Doug Mills of the Times, and the mise en scene provided by the campaign, suggest a president sitting with his cabinet in the White House.

Americans -- and the American press -- have celebrated the election of Barack Obama on Tuesday night, and by the next day they wanted him to take charge. Weeks ago, Daniel Schorr, a great figure in American journalism, expressed the longing that if Obama were elected he should immediately be welcomed as a partner by the current occupant so that he could get to work on change. Schorr obviously did not expect that to happen, but did suggest that perhaps we should move up inauguration day. Joe Nocera in the Times, in the story that accompanies Doug Mills's photograph, also expresses the widespread impatience for the president-elect to act, and act now.

Why?

It is of course Constitutionally inappropriate for a president-elect to start governing until inauguration day. Herbert Hoover tried hard to get Franklin D. Roosevelt to join him in economic and financial planning before inauguration, but Roosevelt quite properly would not be drawn. In those days, the wait was even longer, as inauguration was not until March 4. The change to January 20 came in a Constitutional amendment before Roosevelt's second inauguration.

On the other hand, in 2000, the Supreme Court decision in Bush v. Gore, which infamously declared the recount over, thus making George W. Bush president, despite his loss by more than 500,000 votes in the popular election and the fact of still-uncounted votes in Florida, came on December 12 -- giving George Bush too little time for adequate transition planning.

Americans may be forgiven for not being Constitutional scholars -- but Barack Obama actually is a Constitutional scholar, and he seems to understand well the nuances of presidential action. His repeated reminder during yesterday's press conference that he is not yet president, while still indicating his preferences on some policy matters, seemed a reasonable attempt to balance the Constitutional proprieties and the urgencies of public expectations.

Perhaps our ever-shortening news cycle and our saturation in the images of the campaign have helped us forget that there are schedules other than those of cable TV news and the Internet. We're about to get a reminder, and it already seems like a long wait. It will be interesting to see how the Obama campaign manages the problem of visibility versus Constitutional reticence as these 75 days before the first 100 days tick away.

photo credit: Doug Mills, New York Times, 8 November 2008.

see:

Joe Nocera, "Talking Business -- 75 Years Later, a Nation Hopes for Another FDR," New York Times, 8 November 2008.