How Fireside Chats Built Trust During The Great Depression

The most powerful political tool FDR wielded wasn’t a bill or a bureaucratic agency, it was a voice coming through the radio at the right moment. We’re joined again by Professor Weinberg to unpack how Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fireside chats turn fear into patience, panic into process, and complex policy into plain English during the Great Depression. Along the way, we connect that media shift to a bigger change: the presidency stops feeling like a distant administrator and starts feeling omnipresent, a straight line to today’s constant presidential communication.

From the bank holiday to early New Deal messaging, we look at how FDR explains what banks do, why confidence matters, and how education can become persuasion. Then we zoom out to the deeper policy and constitutional story: the difference between the First New Deal and the Second New Deal, why Roosevelt isn’t neatly “Keynesian,” and why the Social Security Act becomes such a turning point in federalism. The reactions from state lawmakers are wild, some call it unconstitutional while still racing to get the money.

We also tackle the flashpoints that still echo today: the Madison Square Garden rhetoric aimed at critics, the court packing fight, and how the Supreme Court ultimately shifts as personnel and politics change. Finally, we ask the question that never goes away: did the New Deal work, and by what metric? If you like constitutional history, the welfare state, and the real mechanics of presidential power, subscribe, share this with a friend, leave a review, and tell us what you think: where should we draw the line between effective leadership and overreach?

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Transcript

Welcome Back And The Setup

SPEAKER_00 0:46

Welcome back to Civics in a Year. This is kind of our part two of Franklin Roosevelt. In our last episode, we talked about some campaign speeches, some party platforms, and Roosevelt's first inaugural address. And we have Professor Beimberg back with us. And today we're going to talk about the fireside chats as a means of communication. And then also, again, some laws that were passed, some things that kind of happened. So Professor Weinberg, FTR is really the first president to kind of utilize the radio in this manner of fireside chats. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_01 1:25

Yeah, I mean, Coolidge, Coolidge is the first one that's really doing anything with radio, but he's not, he doesn't have much to communicate, but he doesn't view himself. Again, he he his understanding of constitutional power generally, both for the federal government and for the executive, is not sort of it's it's not the sort of central centerpiece of American society. And particularly in the depression, again, and this is a theme that we talked about in the last podcast. That as much as anything, Roosevelt views his role as avoiding the demoralization that will that he also fears we'll end up with a radical like Huey Long, who's going to be a subject of another podcast. Right. So he's basically trying to, you know, this is a theme he keeps alluding to. We don't want to have radicalism, which he then will say, and I'm not the radical. I'm the not radical solution, stop the radicals. His critics will obviously say he's not that much different than Huey Long or whatever. But and so yeah, he he really does during the depression basically try to lay out things that he's that the administration is working on just to give us to sort of convey to Americans a sense that's important to him that they have, that sort of the government is looking out for them. And so he he undertakes these for for years. And he is, you know, it's a really a quite a good orator on that front if you listen to those speeches, right? He doesn't have the sort of like get you angry. I mean, he doesn't have compared to like Huey Long, generally speaking. Now, Roosevelt can do some demagoguery. I'll say a word about that later, but but it really more is generally an effort to be kind of reassuring during this time of challenge. You know, almost you can almost compare it to like you know, like like preaching, kind of like pastor preaching kind of thing, as much as sort of policy stuff. But some of that too.

SPEAKER_00 3:23

Him like speaking, because he's in these addresses, he's speaking to the general public, right? Is this a a way to kind of assuage fears of what is going on?

SPEAKER_01 3:38

It is that, I mean, it it's got very heavy emphasis on that. You know, there is there is an element of political job owning to it, which is that he's got a captive audience in a way that I mean, it's just something that we talked about before that Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt had anticipated that the idea would be that the centralization of media would massively empower the president. But, you know, he's not the only one that can get on the radio, but you know, Huey Long gives radio addresses and other people can give a radio address. But are the other, you know, are the stations going to cover it? Or, you know, like are they gonna give him their time in that sense, right? So yeah, again, it's it's part of just broadly speaking, also the consolidation of, you can argue it's power, but the consolidation of certainly interest in the presidency is, I think, a clear consequence of these as well, that the presidency ceases to be sort of the administrator of a government far away and the sort of omnipresent figure, right? So there's a fairly short line, I think, between that and you know, presidential tweets, so to speak. Not quite the same in method, and but but the sort of the idea that you're just like always hearing from the president is is something that really comes out of FDR.

SPEAKER_00 4:58

And I think in again, we're not going to go into detail in some of these, but in the one of the first ones he does on the banking crisis, he's he uses it to to educate people on like what banks do, right? He's talking about when you put money in the bank, they don't just put it in a vault and hold it. They're investing it and they're doing all of these things, and then talked about what happened. And it it seems he just, you know, it's this very educational thing, because this is one of his first ones is on March 12th, which is pretty quickly after his first inaugural address.

SPEAKER_01 5:35

When they're trying to do the bank, when they're doing the bank holiday and the bank reforms. So, I mean, that's yeah, that's arguably his first sort of major policy piece of the first New Deal. Yeah, that's right.

From First New Deal To Second

SPEAKER_00 5:45

Yes, he talks about that. And then in May, talking about the New Deal programs where he's, you know, talking about what he's gonna do about this. Again, they're they're interesting speeches to listen to, but also to read. So one of the things that he does in his presidency is, and this I noticed was in the 1932 Democratic Party platform, was the Social Security Act.

SPEAKER_01 6:13

Although it's although it's supposed to be at the state level in the the board. Oh really? Yeah. Because all states are doing old age pensions. Uh and he says effectively we encourage we encourage the states to do those kinds of things, but it is not explicitly is not a federal it's not federal.

SPEAKER_00 6:32

So how does this then change to 1935 with the Social Security Act?

Social Security And Constitutional Tension

FDR's Sharper Rhetoric On Critics

Court Packing And Remaking The Court

Did New Deal Spending Work

SPEAKER_01 6:38

Yeah, so so they they and that sort of indicates one of the things that we we tend to think of as a New Deal, but there's really two. So the first New Deal really is much more of sort of dealing with temporary, basically, he's not a Keynesian. And obviously, like a Keynesian would say, you raise spending during you, you know, you spend counter-cyclically. Uh you know, I know we're doing another one of my colleagues is doing another podcast on Keynesianism, but we know we flatten Keynesianism to be just government should spend more and regulate more. But Keynesianism is actually a theory of counter-cyclical stuff that you're supposed to actually aggressively cut government spending in surplus and piece years and you know, raise spending to raise demand, right? It's supposed to be counter to demand. And that's not how it gets interpreted. So Roosevelt himself is not an orthodox Keynesian. Some of his people end up get picking it up. But the first New Deal really is more of a focus on stabilizing the banking system, dealing with concerns about overinvestment uh in the sense of lending out too much money that then you get liquid liquidity crunches and such. He does want to have purchasing of ag surpluses. But the first new deal, and you know, then there's the the National Recovery Act, which will get struck down by the court as exceeding federal power. We had a whole podcast on Schechter, so I don't want to go into that. But that's the other centerpiece of the first New Deal is basically the president creating all these regulatory codes, and the court strikes it down on both federalism and separation of powers grounds. So you should go back and listen to that one in greater detail. Uh so as this, as the that first batch of things, again, he has he has almost overwhelming control of Congress. Um he can get pretty much whatever he asks for. And so he starts thinking about whether this should be a moment not to deal with temporary problems of you know the depression, but whether basically this can be a moment to have the federal government create a broader regime of sort of economic stabilization and security, economic security in the sense of dealing with or creating basically backstops that are individual-based, right? Again, this is different than the first New Deal, which is much more about supply-demand kinds of things. And again, this has been something that at the actual policy level, the states have been experimenting with and good with, building old age pensions, building unemployment programs. So the existence of these in and of themselves is not that incredibly controversial. The controversial move is that Roosevelt wants to move this to the federal government, which is in tension with orthodox understandings of constitutionalism. Again, the ones that he himself was saying, as we talked about in the last podcast three years ago, right? You know, the the the fascinating thing would be plunking down 1930 Franklin Roosevelt with 1933 Franklin Roosevelt and having them then converse. So yeah, he moves to create the Social Security Program, which in and of itself, and originally the early the first version of that, it's since changed over time, does have a greater role for the states. So the states are sort of running it more directly with sort of federal conditions. Now, even the states that have had the most robust programs, this is something that the Supreme Court justices will discuss. Basically, none of the state programs are considered acceptable to the federal government. And so this is an argument that they make saying, look, this isn't just like giving money to the states. This is like actually directly regulating the way that they're going to run it. But if you look at the adoption of Social Security, so they passed it in 35. The uptake of the states is quite interesting. We don't have too many resources in terms of the state legislative records, but they're pretty wild if you go back and read them. There's a lot of them will effectively say, we think this is grossly unconstitutional. We expect the Supreme Court to strike it down, but until they do, we want that money coming to our states. There's one quote, I'm trying to remember whether this one's from Indiana or Maine. Those are the two states we have the best records for. But he says, voting to have my state participate in this is the most hateful thing I've ever done in my career in a violation of my oath to God and country. But like I guess I have to do it anyway. So they really are expecting the Supreme Court to strike it down because it is such a massive expansion into sort of, you know, health and welfare, which were traditionally, you know, under the orthodox sort of Madison understanding of the Constitution, like things that the states could do, things that progressives have said the states should do, but to expand that up to the federal level is is quite striking. But again, that's the sort of the core of the welfare state and regulations that the second New Deal is. And this is partly why in 1936, most of the 1920s Democratic leadership, including Al Smith, they're opposed to Roosevelt because they basically say you have betrayed the things that you seemingly ran on by now having the federal government. You are not cutting social security does not result in a 25% cut in federal spending, shall we say. And so the much of the Democratic leadership actually ends up either explicitly backing the Republicans or backing kind of anti-FDR, anti-FDR Democrats. And Roosevelt will have none of this. He'll try to purge them electorally in 1938 from senators that are skeptical of it. But this is another speech that is one that I think no most nobody knows about. I was thinking about it recently, when Trump gave a pre-election speech in Madison Square Garden, and people said this is like the craziest speech ever given before an election. And Roosevelt actually gives a speech a couple days before the election in Madison Square Garden, and he says critics of Social Security, quote, are aliens to the spirit of American democracy. This is again a year after it passes. But he says, anyone who's criticizing it is an alien, already an alien to the spirit of American democracy, let them emigrate and try their lot under some foreign flag in which they have more confidence. That is not any shortage of confidence for FDR to, while the Supreme Court is considering something that is certainly inconsistent with what he thought a few years ago, but to say if you don't buy into my policy, you're un-American, leave the United States. So, you know, Roosevelt and is alluded to before, he's talking about economic royalists. So he is not taking criticism lightly, even though he's making rather draconian changes, you know, for to uh the structure of American government. So the Second New Deal has a lot more pieces like that. The Supreme Court eventually approves them all. Well, not all of them, but pretty much pretty much all of the Second New Deal clears. It's where we get also the Wickard case that we've talked about in federalism. So we can go hear that one again. But you know, he he basically gets he initially tries to push through court packing, which is arguably his greatest failure. Because even many of the Democrats who have been backing him, and while he's a steadily expanded federal power against what a lot of their own preferences were, frankly, there's a great line. I want to say it's I want to say it's his vice president saying, Boys, here's where I cash in my chips. That like this is I was willing to do a lot to defend federal power and defend the expansion of federal power, but I can't do this. Because Roosevelt had not, his advisors had said, why don't you get specific constitutional amendments authorizing expansion regulations of hours and wages, right? Regulating, authorizing the federal government to run unemployment, like specific ad-enumerated powers. Like we have total control of Congress, we have total control of the state governments, like we don't need to do this. And Roosevelt just thought it was easier to just basically browbeat the court. And then when they didn't get browbeaten, he thought it was easier to add more justices. And then it turns out the one neat trick was you just started bribing them to retire with generous retirement pensions, such that by 1942, as we talked about with Wickard, the Supreme Court is basically willing to say anything the federal government wants to do that doesn't break the Bill of Rights is okay. So, you know, Roosevelt is, you know, and then so then there's the question of like, does this work? Right? Does the did the New Deal work? And that depends on what your metrics are. In terms of fighting the depression, Roosevelt's Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgan Dow in 39, says unemployment is just as bad as it was when we started, but we've spent all this money, we've built all these programs, it doesn't seem like it's done anything. So, in terms of that metric, and there's there are some generally more conservative historians that argue that the Roosevelt administration made it worse by having government sort of interfere with what would have been the recovery above my pay grade, but just on sort of metrics of employment and whatnot, it doesn't seem like it succeeded in certainly the hope that they thought it would. Now, conversely, you know, if you're thinking sort of the longer-term policy outcomes of it's better to have a society with you know guaranteed protections on unemployment and old age, et cetera, that they're federally administered, obviously those endure. So that certainly sticks, even as a lot of the kind of first New Deal, specifically depression fighting pieces, either fell away, were you know found to be ineffective. So the second New Deal is certainly more much more enduring. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:13

So really quick question about core packing. So the president cannot change just like willy-nilly, be like, I'm gonna add more. The Constitution, Article 3 does not say anything about how many justices it says there has to be at least one.

Left And Right Reevaluate Roosevelt

SPEAKER_01 16:27

You have to have a chief justice. Beyond that, it is up to the discretion of Congress. That's right. So it's not, it's not like in consistent, it's not violating, and the numbers have been tweaked over time. So court packing, in and of itself, so adding justices does not in and of itself violate the constitution. But the argument is adding justices to then have the justices sign off on what are other violations of the Constitution. Uh, you know, the the uh the you know Hoover and other people are losing their minds about this. I said Hoover was kind of moderately progressive when he was president. Court packing, et cetera, makes him lose his mind and sound like basically all the caricatures of him who were paranoid about the federal government, paranoid about presidential overreach, et cetera. So, but yeah, that so they actually have most of the prominent opponents of court packing, or most of the Democratic senators who had been many of his allies. Some of them are still, you know, Hugo Black is one of the folks. This is partly whugo black ends up with a court nomination, is because Hugo Black was willing to go down with the shift defending, defending that, defending that proposal. So, you know, that the there is the narrative that the court switches its jurisprudence because of court packing. I don't think that's accurate. I think they they they switch for very, very, very technical reasons. And then largely Charles Evans Hughes, the Chief Justice, just sort of throws his hands up in the air. He throws his hands up in the air, but then the others just once they start losing, they just all retire quickly. So Roosevelt gets to replace pretty much the whole, the whole Supreme Court. So quite quite quickly, including the one that amuses me the most, that he ends up appointing as Chief Justice, the only person Calvin Coolidge put on the Supreme Court, which there's there's a fun, there's a fun thing I read from the person who probably would have gotten the Supreme Court nomination instead if he'd accepted it. Coolidge tried to get him to take it and he lamented and said, uh basically, like, I turned it down because I needed money to pay for like my six daughters' education or whatever it is. Uh, needed to go work in the private sector. But it's this very look the way he writes it is really funny. A guy's name's Nathan Miller from New York. But he says, like, had I known from there, Charl Harlan Stone was appointed, and we saw all that happened afterwards. Something it's like this very laconic lament that he wishes he'd taken it. But yeah, so I will I will note that I think Roosevelt is someone who, I mean, you've probably gathered 30 years ago, Woodrow Wilson was usually considered like a top 10 president and has dropped, basically getting Wilson getting hammered from both left and right. The left largely for his sympathies with, you know, segregation, violations of civil liberties, although you get that from like the First Amendment stuff from the right as well. And the right for the critiques on constitutionalism, you know, federalism, separation of powers. I do see sort of, I wouldn't be completely shocked. When I was in grad school, I definitely noticed that there was a lot more scholarship going after Roosevelt from both the left and the right as well. So it would not completely shock me if you know the critiques Koromatsu was going to be another podcast you folks will do. That is, as that has become sort of more salient, that has harmed his reputation. I mean, if even J. Edgar Hoover, who was willing to wiretap Barry Goldwater for LBJ, says it's too much, which he was against that, right? So Koromatsu in internment has hurt his reputation. The tact, I mean, basically having this convincing the Senate to go after his critics in terms of like bullying, trying to sort of financially ruin them for criticizing him. Probably tough on the First Amendment. Some progressives have argued, you know, redlining was implemented through the Roosevelt administration. You know, his chief closest ally for a long time was Jimmy Burns, who was the chief opponent of Brown v. Board. So you've got sort of the left turning against him in a way that much of the right had been sort of hostile to the living constitutionalism, federalism, separation of powers, and court packing. So I wouldn't be completely shocked if, because he usually polls in like the top three or four. I wouldn't be completely shocked if those historiographical historiographical tendencies sort of pull him down along with Wilson. Maybe they maybe they reverse. I don't know, but that's definitely been a tendency where FDR was. I mean, my understanding is like FDR was dang dang near a saint where people would have him up in like pictures in their houses. I don't think that the historians will be doing that. Again, this is sort of weird left-right combo.

Why Presidential Rankings Keep Changing

SPEAKER_00 20:57

It's interesting because it, you know, court packing came up in the 2020 election. I think that it was one of the, and and I remember having to explain to people like the president can't just appoint Supreme Court justice. Like that's not a thing that they just again willy-nilly do. But because it comes up, and I mean, I think that then this is like a question for another podcast is what how long do you wait before you judge a president? Right. Because like FDR, I remember learning about him in school, and it was always, you know, so positive whenever. But if like as we go on, it just the more you learn and the more you understand about it, the more criticisms I think come up.

SPEAKER_01 21:49

Right. I mean, there are some that come back that you know get reversed. Like Grant has moved up, as we've talked about. Grant was for a long time, largely by the lost causes, regarded as a drunk, a buffoon, a butcher, and an idiot. And he has sort of moved up. So, I mean, part of that is going to be an emp is gonna be a question of sort of what your emphases are, right? So if your emphasis is on sort of economics and class issues, then FDR looks a lot more appealing. If you know progressives, if they're more interested in sort of identity or racial issues, FDR doesn't look so hot. And you could say, I mean that's the same critique of you know Wilson. I'll just sort of back up for a second. So part of what changes really is basically what people are emphasizing, what they think is most important, right? So if your emphasis is on sort of class and concerns about economics, if you're on the left, FDR is more appealing. If you're on the left and issues of identity or race or requirements, Protection matter more, right? FDR is going to look like if you think that's the most important part of say being a good progressive, then FDR is going to drop. And you can, you know, work the same thing with conservatives. Again, even internally with a group sort of assessing its own members, what they're going to emphasize as well. So yeah, there's there's been some fun shifts over time. The weird one to me has been I was told recently that like Twitter, young people on Twitter had decided they liked George W. Bush, which having seen the end of the George W. Bush presidency and those approval ratings, again, not commenting on whether it's justified or unjustified on either side of them, but that was a reassessment that was quite quite odd to me to see that that little I don't know if it was like they were looking at his paintings, or I don't imagine that it was a consequence of like, huh, let's have a thoughtful reassessment of the possible Social Security modifications and no child left behind and all that. But yeah, stuff can go in weird places.

SPEAKER_00 23:45

It's probably because he was passing Michelle Obama candy. Like I wonder if part of that is the relationship between because and he is like they're they're funeral buddies, unfortunately, because the way that they sit, he sits next to Michelle and again different political parties. And it's interesting you brought up his paintings too, because they there was a show at the Arizona Historical Society. And of course I went to it because it was, but it's so interesting. So it makes me wonder if they're talking about like his post-presidency, right? And and that kind of again, this is now I'm I I have another rabbit hole to go down of like what what makes a good president? And you know who I should ask too is Dr. Nod, because he has absolutely done this kind of stuff. So okay.

SPEAKER_01 24:35

Well, contemporary presidents are way outside my historical expertise. So I will I I I've merely pointed it out sort of how history can shift on that. But yeah, that's a that's a and you know, there's also an element that I'll just I'll close on this. You but you know, there there is an element of sort of there can be, I said there can be an element of like ingratitude of like, well, what'd you do for me lately, right? Of like yes, somebody was very effective at solving problems. Again, I'm not commenting on any individual president or anything like that, but you know, sold that solve the essential problems, and then you decide that those problems aren't important anymore, largely because that person solved them, and then you complain about the stuff that they that that person does. So that that is a tendency that I I that does make me kind of wince as historians sort of reassess people sometimes. But anyway, but we've had lots of podcasts and folks will have lots of folks that they can think about and assess.

SPEAKER_00 25:30

Yes, that's probably a great thing.