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Readers of this feed may know that I believe Roosevelt campaigned on the New Deal in 1932—contrary to a widespread impression he did not. George Selgin of Cato says "Rauchway ought to supply direct proof.… But he never does"
I disagree. https://twitter.com/GeorgeSelgin/status/1275043109831938049
I disagree. https://twitter.com/GeorgeSelgin/status/1275043109831938049
A general observation first: one really should take extra special care when asserting a negative—like Roosevelt didn't campaign on the New Deal in 1932 or, for that matter, Rauchway "never" presents documentary evidence for his thesis.
Especially when many of the documents in question are publicly available. To illustrate this point, I'll link to places with no paywall wherever possible—which will be most of the time.
And where it's not possible to link to material on the web, I'll make a note of why it's important that historians know about sources that aren’t on the web, or in print.
OK, so on page 7 of WINTER WAR, I note that Roosevelt did say in his Oglethorpe University commencement address, "take a method and try it, If it fails, admit it frankly and try another" https://georgiainfo.galileo.usg.edu/topics/history/related_article/progressive-era-world-war-ii-1901-1945/franklin-d.-roosevelts-twenty-third-visit-to-georgia/fdr-oglethorpe-university-commencement-address-may-22-1932
That's one thing people often cite when they want to say the New Deal lacked form during the campaign.
But that was, after all, a commencement address—given May 22, 1932—very early on in the campaign, before Roosevelt had even won his party's nomination.
Whereas nearer the election—as I note on p. 7—FDR gave "a series of speeches, each focused on a single theme,” making the case for what he would do in office.
He promised an ambitious program of public works, not only for "immediate relief" but for a long-term jobs guarantee—"permanence of employment." https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/campaign-address-program-for-unemployment-and-long-range-planning-boston-massachusetts
He called for lower tariffs "to secure a lowering of foreign tariff walls," (thus identifying retaliation as the chief ill begot by Smoot-Hawley, consistent with @D_A_Irwin 's scholarship) https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/campaign-address-agriculture-and-tariffs-sioux-city-iowa
We're on to page 8 of WINTER WAR now—
FDR called for the Muscle Shoals power plant to remain public and to become the model for other federally owned power plants, to be "forever a national yardstick to prevent extortion" by private monopolies https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/campaign-address-portland-oregon-public-utilities-and-development-hydro-electric-power
He called for a program of agricultural price supports. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/campaign-address-topeka-kansas-the-farm-problem
He proposed what we know as Glass-Steagall: "Investment banking is a legitimate business. Commercial banking is another wholly separate and distinct business. Their consolidation and mingling are contrary to public policy. I propose their separation." https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/campaign-address-columbus-ohio
In the same speech he proposed regulation of stock sales, and requiring financial disclosures. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/campaign-address-columbus-ohio
Still on page 8: I mention Roosevelt's book of campaign essays, in which he declared for unemployment insurance and old-age insurance, with a self-supporting fund https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015008716345?urlappend=%3Bseq=49
(that was another place he argued for jobs on public works as a preferred form of relief)
I also mention the DNC's 1932 campaign flyers, promoting minimum wages, maximum hours, right to organize. I don't think those are on the web but here's a clipping from the one on labor:
And I mention Roosevelt's campaign commitment to cutting the regular budget—which he paired with a commitment to spend as necessary on the New Deal:
"There can be no extravagance when starvation is in question." https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/campaign-address-the-federal-budget-pittsburgh-pennsylvania
"There can be no extravagance when starvation is in question." https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/campaign-address-the-federal-budget-pittsburgh-pennsylvania
What Selgin says I never do, I do within the first ten pages.
And later in the book, these observations get elaborated. There are whole sections on the most important of these observations, including a long one on how the flyers came from the women's division of the DNC, headed by Molly Dewson
As for why historians might have argued to the contrary, I thought that didn't belong in this book, but I did write an article partly about it. You can read it here; click "view html" https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/modern-american-history/article/new-deal-was-on-the-ballot-in-1932/8CDA127BFA5DACAD00893104E04CCA12
Now, let me say something about sources. Selgin takes me up on two sources: Raymond Moley and Frances Perkins.
I regard Moley as unreliable; he was more conservative than FDR and left the administration before a year was out. He was favorable to Herbert Hoover by 1940.
If you've been to see his papers, you might have found the note he left in them, trying to get researchers to discount things in them that ran contrary to the interpretations he preferred.
So: unreliable.
I also regard Perkins's memory as unreliable. I am not alone in this judgment; Elisabeth Israels Perry found the same.
Selgin thinks my treatment of Perkins is "shabby." I don't know what to say about this, but memoirs are sometimes faulty; that can happen to the best of us as we age.
Perkins's account of her February 1933 meeting with FDR makes it sound as if he was hearing of minimum wage, unemployment and old-age insurance, and public works planning for the first time. But he campaigned on them (as we’ve seen)
As indeed he campaigned on (for example) the CCC, which Perkins contrariwise says "was not my idea, nor was it his at that time." http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/digital/collections/nny/perkinsf/transcripts/perkinsf_3_1_593.html
But Roosevelt did, during the campaign, refer to the need for a reforestation program, "another field for the employment of great numbers of our citizens." https://nyti.ms/2Bss0ca
Which provides the occasion for another source note: that speech, suggesting a reforestation program-as-unemployment program, isn't in FDR's published papers, and so it isn't on the UCSB presidency site.
It's not the only one; as FDR said in the published papers, they include a mere selection, "only a small number of the speeches" from the campaign.
So if you’re going to say what FDR did, or more importantly didn’t, say in the campaign, you can’t just rely on the public papers, or databases that include only the public papers. You have to go to more archival sources.
One of the things historians generally do when revising previous interpretations is consulting un- or under-used, and unpublished, material.
Generally speaking, a primary source contemporary with the event is preferable to a memoir. And if you take a look at my notes, you will see I've tried to rely on those sources.
You'll see a lot of citations to diaries and letters from the time—material that wasn't readily available to earlier generations of historians. Diaries of Robert Jackson, Rex Tugwell, Theodore Joslin, James MacLafferty, Edgar Rickard; correspondence of Molly Dewson &c
For example, Leuchtenburg's great book on the New Deal first appeared in 1963. Great as it is—and it is—Herbert Hoover was still alive when it was published. Many archival collections have been sorted out and made available since.
And coming back to Hoover: he had an acute understanding of what FDR wanted to do, precisely because (as Hoover complained) FDR had promised to do it. Hoover tried to stop him; you can read about that if you pick up a copy of WINTER WAR. https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/eric-rauchway/winter-war/9780465094585/
