Presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, first and second terms (original) (raw)

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The first term of the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt began on March 4, 1933, when he was inaugurated as the 32nd president of the United States, and the second term of his presidency ended on January 20, 1941, with his inauguration to a third term. Roosevelt, the Democratic governor of the largest state, New York, took office after defeating incumbent President Herbert Hoover, his Republican opponent in the 1932 presidential election. Roosevelt led the implementation of the New Deal, a series of programs designed to provide relief, recovery, and reform to Americans and the American economy during the Great Depression. He also presided over a realignment that made his New Deal Coalition of labor unions, big city machines, white ethnics, African Americans, and rural white Southerners dominant in national politics until the 1960s and defined modern American liberalism. During his first hundred days in office, Roosevelt spearheaded unprecedented major legislation and issued a profusion of executive orders. The Emergency Banking Act helped put an end to a run on banks, while the 1933 Banking Act and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 provided major reforms in the financial sector. To provide relief to unemployed workers, Roosevelt presided over the establishment of several agencies, including the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Public Works Administration, and the Federal Emergency Relief Administration. The Roosevelt administration established the Agricultural Adjustment Administration to implement new policies designed to prevent agricultural overproduction. It also established several agencies, most notably the National Recovery Administration, to reform the industrial sector, though it lasted only two years. After his party's sweeping success in the 1934 mid-term elections, Roosevelt presided over the Second New Deal. It featured the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the largest work relief agency, and the Social Security Act, which created a national old-age pension program known as Social Security. The New Deal also established a national unemployment insurance program, as well as the Aid to Dependent Children, which provided aid to families headed by single mothers. A third major piece of legislation, the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, guaranteed workers the right of collective bargaining and established the National Labor Relations Board. The result was rapid growth in union membership. After winning re-election in 1936, the second term was a series of disappointments. Roosevelt sought to enlarge the Supreme Court, but his proposal was defeated in Congress. Roosevelt had little success in passing domestic legislation in his second term, as the bipartisan Conservative Coalition blocked most of his legislative proposals. One success was the Fair Labor Standards Act. The 1930s were a high point of isolationism in the United States. The key foreign policy initiative of Roosevelt's first term was the Good Neighbor Policy, in which the U.S. took a non-interventionist stance in Latin American affairs. Foreign policy issues came to the fore in the late 1930s, as Nazi Germany, Japan, and Italy took aggressive actions against their neighbors. In response to fears that the United States would be drawn into foreign conflicts, Congress passed the Neutrality Acts, a series of laws that prevented trade with belligerents. After Japan invaded China and Germany invaded Poland, Roosevelt provided aid to China, Great Britain, and France, but the Neutrality Acts prevented the United States from becoming closely involved. After the Fall of France in June 1940, Roosevelt increased aid to the British and began to build up American military power. In the 1940 presidential election, Roosevelt defeated Republican Wendell Willkie, an internationalist who largely refrained from criticizing Roosevelt's foreign policy. Roosevelt later went on to serve a third term and three months of a fourth term, becoming the only president to serve more then two terms, breaking Washington's two term tradition and laying the groundwork for the passage of the 22nd Amendment. Roosevelt's first term is unique in that it is the only presidential term not equal to four years in length since George Washington was elected to his second term, this was a result of the 20th Amendment. Although in reality this only effected Roosevelt's first Vice President, John Nance Garner. (en)

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Presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt (en)
Roosevelt (en)

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The first term of the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt began on March 4, 1933, when he was inaugurated as the 32nd president of the United States, and the second term of his presidency ended on January 20, 1941, with his inauguration to a third term. Roosevelt, the Democratic governor of the largest state, New York, took office after defeating incumbent President Herbert Hoover, his Republican opponent in the 1932 presidential election. Roosevelt led the implementation of the New Deal, a series of programs designed to provide relief, recovery, and reform to Americans and the American economy during the Great Depression. He also presided over a realignment that made his New Deal Coalition of labor unions, big city machines, white ethnics, African Americans, and rural white Southerners do (en)

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