Transcript: Chapter 19

Narrator: By 1936 government intervention seemed to be working. Unemployment was still high, but six million people had been put back to work. Corporate profits were rising. Detroit was now rolling out almost as many cars and trucks as were being produced before the Depression began.

At the Democratic Convention, there was little doubt that Roosevelt would be renominated by acclamation.

President Franklin Roosevelt: We are fighting, fighting to save a great and precious form of government for ourselves and for the world, and so I accept the commission you have tendered me. I join with you. I am enlisted for the duration of the war.

Narrator: The New Deal was at high tide and FDR was in top form. "There's one issue in this campaign," he told an adviser, "it's myself, and people must be either for me or against me."

Chalmers Roberts: The mood of the country was that something is happening. There was motion. I never had any doubt that Roosevelt was going to be reelected in '36. You could smell it.

William Leuchtenburg: Mile after mile, the Roosevelt entourage could barely get through the streets of well-wishers, and people could hear individuals call out, "He gave me a job," "He saved my home." In the freight yards in Denver, someone had scrawled in chalk, "Roosevelt is my friend."

Narrator: Roosevelt was so supremely confident that he never even mentioned his Republican opponent. He saved his fire for the leaders of big business.

President Franklin Roosevelt: Government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me and I welcome their hatred.

Narrator: The Republican opposition accused Roosevelt of turning class against class. Eleanor Roosevelt also came under attack for her tireless advocacy of New Deal reforms, and especially for her sympathies with the struggle of black Americans.

DOROTHY HEIGHT, National Council of Negro Women: For the things that we, as African Americans, loved her, there were too many Americans who hated her. Here was a woman coming from the top class in our country and here she was, moving into poor neighborhoods. Here she was, sitting in groups of people of all races and all backgrounds. She didn't have a program, but a lot that she did helped to lay the groundwork that we could build upon in later years in civil rights. And of course, many hated her for it.

ANN COTTRELL FREE, Journalist: The whole thing was a paradox. She was loved and despised both, depending on where you sat, you might say, what your needs were. Was she filling your needs or was she stepping on your toes?

William Leuchtenburg: On election night, Franklin Roosevelt was at Hyde Park, and when the first returns came in, he let out a puff of cigarette smoke and said, "Wow." It was the first indication of a landslide victory. Roosevelt would carry every state in the country except Maine and Vermont.

Narrator: It was the biggest popular margin in history.

SINGER, New Lost City Ramblers: [singing] No more bread lines, we're glad to say / The donkey won Election Day / No more standin' in the blowin' snow and rain / He's got things in full sway / We're all a-workin' and a-gittin' our pay / We've got Franklin D. Roosevelt back again.

Narrator: FDR had changed the American political landscape. Wherever African Americans were allowed to vote, they abandoned the party of Abraham Lincoln to vote Democratic. Inner-city immigrants, working men and women, white Southerners -- Roosevelt had created a new Democratic Party coalition.

Eli Ginzberg: Roosevelt became overconfident from that overwhelming victory. He thought he had the country in the palm of his hands. I think his guard was down.

Narrator: The president still faced powerful political enemies determined to undermine his programs. January 20, 1937, the day of his second inauguration -- he had already developed a plan to take them on.

Roosevelt was about to challenge the Supreme Court of the United States. "When the chief justice came to the words, 'defend the Constitution,'" Roosevelt later said, "I felt like saying, 'Not the kind of constitution your court has raised up as a barrier to progress and democracy.'"

The Supreme Court had been leading the opposition to the New Deal, rejecting one Roosevelt law after another. Now, Roosevelt feared that the court was preparing to strike down the Social Security Act and the law that gave unions the right to collective bargaining. Immediately after his inauguration, Roosevelt vented his anger at a Democratic Party dinner.

President Franklin Roosevelt: The Democratic administration and the Congress made a gallant, sincere effort to raise wages, to reduce hours, to abolish child labor and to eliminate unfair trade practices.

William Leuchtenburg: Roosevelt not only wanted a court that would rule favorably on New Deal legislation, he wanted a measure of revenge, because he took personally a number of the opinions, a number of the actions of the court.

President Franklin Roosevelt: And I defy anyone to read the opinions concerning the AAA, the Railroad Retirement Act, the National Recovery Act, the Guffey Coal Act, and the New York Minimum Wage Law and tell us exactly what, if anything, we can do for the industrial worker in this session of the Congress with any reasonable certainty that what we do will not be nullified as unconstitutional.

Eli Ginzberg: He was upset -- he had good reasons to be upset -- but one of the few times in his life, I think, that he miscalculated.

Narrator: To save the New Deal, Roosevelt proposed a radical piece of legislation -- a bill to give him the power to appoint additional justices to the Supreme Court and outnumber his opponents. On Capitol Hill, critics argued that Roosevelt's bill challenged the Constitution itself.

Sen. FREDERICK VAN NUYS, (D), Indiana: I shall not be a party to breaking down the checks and balances of the Constitution.

Rep. SAMUEL B. PETTENGILL, (D), Indiana: A packed jury, a packed court and a stuffed ballot box are all on the same moral plane. This is more power than a good man should want or a bad man should have.

Sen. ARTHUR H. VANDENBERG, (R), Michigan: This is a non-partisan battle to preserve an independent Supreme Court.

Narrator: Determined to win votes for his court plan, Roosevelt was now in the congressional fight of his life. He dangled promises of federal projects, hinted at judicial appointments, threatened to withdraw patronage. At a picnic for Democratic congressmen, he turned on all his charm. This time it didn't work. On July 20th, he asked his vice president, Jack Garner, what his chances were with Congress. "Do you want it with the bark on or off, Captain?" Garner replied. "The rough way." "All right, you're beat. You haven't got the votes."

David Ginsburg: And the price that he paid was very high. It was a loss of confidence on the part of the country. It was a recognition by his opponents in politics that they could beat him. It was a recognition on his part that he had lost some measure of power.

Narrator: And then the economy snapped. The stock market crashed again, businesses failed, and by December, two million more people had lost their jobs. His opponents called it "the Roosevelt recession." An aide observed that Roosevelt seemed depressed. "His face is heavily lined," a member of his Cabinet wrote. "He is distinctly more nervous, punch-drunk from the punishment he has suffered, a beaten man."

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