Roosevelt Administration, Franklin D.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945), the 32nd president of the United States, was the only president elected to four terms (1933–45), dying during his fourth term on April 12, 1945. Roosevelt is considered by many to be one of the founders of modern liberalism, along with Dewey and Keynes, supporting a wider social and economic role for government in conjunction with stronger promises of civil liberties.

Elected during the Great Depression, Roosevelt entered office without a specific set of plans for dealing with the social and economic crisis. During a speech accepting the nomination as Democratic presidential candidate on July 2, 1932, Roosevelt stated:

[Page 700]What do the people of America want more than anything else? To my mind, they want two things: work, with all the moral ...