Quick questions on Franklin Roosevelt's leadership: HSC Modern History USA

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born on 30 January 1882 at Hyde Park, New York, to a wealthy Dutch-descended family. He was a fifth cousin of Theodore Roosevelt (President 1901 to 1909, Republican) and married Theodore's niece Eleanor Roosevelt on 17 March 1905.

Roosevelt won the New York governorship in 1928 by around 25,000 votes (his cousin Theodore's old office). The state was hit by the Depression in 1929. The Temporary Emergency Relief Administration (1931), funded by an income tax surcharge and administered by social worker Harry Hopkins, was the first state-level direct relief program in the country and the institutional prototype for FERA.

Roosevelt was nominated on the fourth ballot of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago (1 July 1932) with the help of a deal that gave the vice-presidency to John Nance Garner of Texas. Roosevelt broke convention and flew to Chicago to accept in person, pledging "a new deal for the American people". He won the November election by 472 to 59 electoral votes and 57 to 40 per cent of the popular vote against Hoover.

Roosevelt delivered 30 fireside chats over 12 years, beginning with the banking address on 12 March 1933 and ending in June 1944. Listenership was estimated at around 60 million Americans, about half the country.

Roosevelt's recruitment of academics and administrators was unprecedented. The original "Brains Trust" (term coined by reporter James Kieran) included three Columbia professors: Raymond Moley (law), Rexford Tugwell (agriculture), and Adolf Berle (corporate law).

Legislative leadership. The First Hundred Days (4 March to 16 June 1933) passed 15 major Acts. The Hundred Days remained the benchmark for presidential legislative achievement until Lyndon Johnson in 1965.

Roosevelt broke the unwritten two-term limit that George Washington had set, winning the 1940 nomination over Cordell Hull and James Farley and the 1940 election by 449 to 82 electoral votes against Wendell Willkie. He won 1944 against Thomas Dewey by 432 to 99 electoral votes and died in office on 12 April 1945 at Warm Springs, Georgia.

The court-packing plan of 5 February 1937 was the Roosevelt presidency's worst political failure; the Senate rejected the bill on 22 July 1937. The "Roosevelt recession" of 1937 to 1938 exposed the limits of the recovery. The 1938 mid-terms gave the conservative coalition control of domestic legislation.

James MacGregor Burns (Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox, 1956; Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom, 1970) is the standard two-volume biography.

The First Hundred Days (4 March to 16 June 1933) passed 15 major Acts. The Hundred Days remained the benchmark for presidential legislative achievement until Lyndon Johnson in 1965.

The number of federal employees rose from around 580,000 (1933) to around 1.4 million (1941). The Executive Office of the President was created in 1939 on the recommendation of the Brownlow Committee (1937), bringing the Bureau of the Budget into the White House.

Roosevelt appointed eight Supreme Court justices over his presidency (Hugo Black 1937, Stanley Reed 1938, Felix Frankfurter 1939, William O. Douglas 1939, Frank Murphy 1940, James F. Byrnes 1941, Robert Jackson 1941, and Wiley Rutledge 1943), plus the elevation of Harlan F.

Roosevelt expanded the President's foreign policy role through Lend-Lease (March 1941), the Destroyer-for-Bases Agreement (September 1940), the Atlantic Charter (August 1941), and the conduct of the war.

It shaped his temperament, his political style, and the staging of his public appearances.

Her independent influence on civil rights, women, and refugees is part of the answer.