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 and spiritual values that go with it; and with work, a reasonable measure of security—security for themselves and for their wives and children. Work and security—these are more than words. They are more than facts. They are the spiritual values, the true goal toward which our efforts of reconstruction should lead. These are the values that this program is intended to gain; these are the values we have failed to achieve by the leadership we now have…. I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people. Let us all here assembled constitute ourselves prophets of a new order of competence and of courage. This is more than a political campaign; it is a call to arms.

The New Deal was born from this philosophy and subsequent call to action. It was created from Roosevelt's awareness of social problems and willingness to administer government oversight into economic life to help those most affected by the Depression. While several drug policies were ingrained into the New Deal, the New Deal was more about experimentation than creating a new agenda. Specifically, the creation of the Federal Security Agency (1939) was one of the 10 largest social programs within the New Deal. Other policy initiatives of note include the Twenty-First Amendment to the Constitution (1933), the International Opiate Convention (1935), the Marihuana Tax Act (1937), and the Pure Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (1938). The New Deal stimulated utopian ideals in American political and social thought and policy. Created as a national safety net, Americans continue to experience the effects of the New Deal as many programs, such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), are part of the American landscape.