Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Visionary

Abstract

Visitors to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington D.C. find themselves face to face with FDR's boldest challenge to the American people. Carved in the granite walls of the Memorial are the Four Freedoms that FDR proclaimed in January 1941. Joined to the Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Worship guaranteed by the original Bill of Rights are two new freedoms to be secured by Americans then confronting new dangers, Freedom from Want and Freedom from Fear. The two books under review address the history and significance of those latter freedoms, which remain as elusive in 2006 as they were sixty-five years ago. Most Americans today, lulled into smug contentment with their role as consumers rather than citizens, and provoked by endless harangues into demonizing a shadowy and little understood enemy, seem as determined not to confront the reasons behind the problems of want and fear as FDR was determined to force the nation to face them. FDR's urgent calls for greater equality at home and for a multilateral approach to global affairs may seem as quaint as the cape he wears in sculptor Neil Estern's powerful portrayal of the president at the Memorial. Cass Sunstein's and Elizabeth Borgwardt's books are particularly valuable now, when the distance separating American politics from the principles of FDR has rarely seemed greater. These books matter in part because they demonstrate so clearly something that has been in doubt for several decades now. As I've tried to signal with the title of this review, Sunstein and Borgwardt both show that Franklin Roosevelt did indeed have ideals both for domestic politics and foreign policy. Countless historians have shown that FDR was a deft politician, shrewd in maneuvering friends and foes, but awareness of that skill should not distract us from the evidence of his guiding principles