Introduction
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, or FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States. He was a Democrat who was a successful politician and who was able to win a total of four presidential elections. He is still perceived as a strong leader who was able to steer the United States through a global depression and through the Second World War (The White House, 2016). Even when he was stricken with polio in 1921, he continued to participate in politics and serve his constituents. This short paper will examine his leadership style, as well as his strengths and weaknesses while he served as President of the United States.
Teamwork as a Value
FDR was a person who realized the value of working with others in order to achieve his objectives. As he was paralyzed from the waist down due to polio, he knew that he needed others to help him finish the work that was ahead of him. In the years leading to the Second World War, FDR recruited a powerhouse team of men – the diplomat Summer Welles, the spymaster Bill Donovan, the social worker Harry Hopkins, the GOP presidential nominee Wendell Willkie, and the railroad scion Averell Harriman. FDR then sent these men on various missions, mainly in Europe, in order to help him prepare for the challenges that the country would face in the succeeding years. FDR made use of his excellent statesmanship through these five men in order to see how the Third Reich and Hitler were going to devastate Europe. He also sought to assure Winston Churchill and the other US allies in Europe that the United States was ready to support them and come to their aid in case they would need it. He was able to concoct a plan such that the British were indeed able to realize that the United States was sincere in its desire to help protect not only US-British relations but to actually come to help the British in the impending war. His selection of his five diplomats was very good in the sense that the five men each brought to the table certain strengths and weaknesses.
Welles was not too highly regarded by the British – perhaps this was due to the fact that he was the first envoy, but Welles was able to produce a clear report that reflected the true nature of the European situation at the time. Donovan was then able to make the recommendation that a multitude of trained American soldiers would be needed soon, and thus this resulted in the conscription law that brought about the enlisting of 10 million soldiers and the reserving of millions more. Willkie was FDR’s political opponent, but his loyalty to the United States and to FDR helped cement strong ties between Britain and the United States. Willkie was the ultimate “salesman” of the US plan to support the British in the war, and Harriman was the “implementer” – he helped the British determine its war needs, how to remove all impediments against the plan, also made recommendations for the production of US assistance to Britain as well as its flow (Fullilove, 2013). Hopkins helped create the Lend-Lease program, wherein the United States provided arms, weapons, air and sea craft, and other war implements, in exchange for the opening of bases in these allies’ territories (Tuttle, 1983). Thus this team of five men of different personalities and inclinations actually helped FDR better understand the European situation at the time of the Third Reich and how best to deal with the same.
FDR as a Visionary
One another leadership trait clearly exhibited by FDR was that of being a visionary. He knew that after the war, the United States would have to take on a different role on the world stage. The negotiations with China, the Soviet Union and Great Britain during the course of World War II all determined the need for greater cooperation not only for the duration of the war but even beyond it. He wanted to see an America where everyone shared also in the fruits of the nation’s labor. FDR then proclaimed a Second Bill of Rights wherein the groundwork for the evolution of America from an agricultural to an industrial nation was laid. He wanted political rights as well as economic rights to be enjoyed by all US citizens, and in this Second Bill of Rights, the rights to a good-paying job, recreation, food, clothing, a decent home, protection of fears due to old age, illness, unemployment and accidents, and the right to a good education – were all declared by FDR to be enjoyed by all citizens of the country (Kloppenberg, 2006). FDR then proceeded to urge lawmakers to pass laws that would ensure the provision of these rights to all. One such law was the Social Security Act of 1935, which essentially guaranteed income for retirees and the unemployed (History, 2016).
Weaknesses
One weakness of Roosevelt is that he did not like to tell what he was working on to his Vice President, Harry Truman. As he knew that his health was declining in early 1945, at the Yalta Conference in Yalta, in the Crimea, FDR wanted to plan for a post-World War II reorganization of Europe and the world. He failed to communicate his own vision of a post-war situation to Truman. This lack of endorsement and turnover on the part of FDR (who was to die a few months after the Yalta Conference) led to Truman’s difficulty in negotiating with Stalin during the succeeding Potsdam Conference in July of the same year. Truman felt that the demands of Stalin of the USSR were too much, as he did not know exactly why FDR allowed Stalin to receive certain concessions during the earlier Yalta Conference such as control of certain sections of Poland, Hungary, Romania and other nearby countries. Thus, Truman and Stalin clashed over certain issues at the Potsdam Conference. One issue was Truman’s request of the internationalization of rivers such as the Rhine and the Danube which were vital to European and international trade. Stalin refused to even listen to Truman’s plea, and actually rebuffed the latter (Griffin and Giangreco, 1988).
Aside from not being able to prepare Truman to assume the Presidency and discuss his way of thinking with him, FDR failed to reveal to the American people how strained American-Soviet relations had become by 1945. FDR in fact, gave a glowing report of the Yalta Conference instead of disclosing that agreements had become difficult to arrive at with regard to the decisions on Poland and Germany. Harriman, one of the team envoys, had already been alarmed at the state of US-Soviet relations by this time, but FDR refused to disclose this even to Truman and to the American public (Patterson, 1997).
He also did not want to compromise. In 1937, when the Supreme Court struck down most of his New Deal programs, FDR retaliated by introducing measures to increasing the number of judges. The number of justices, he averred, was not covered by the Constitution. Congress and other politicians saw this as the President trying to put one over them, and Congress and the Senate promptly shut down this recommendation (NPR, 2010).
Lessons Learned
While one perhaps cannot compare to the situation in which FDR found himself in on two occasions during his tenure as US president, there is still the attraction of following some of his traits. The ideas of the importance of teamwork and having a vision for the future are traits which must be embraced by anyone wishing to become a leader. Being a visionary is essential, as this future desired situation is what will drive one to create strategies that support and aid one another. FDR envisioned an America as a major political, cultural and economic player on the world stage, and so he thought that American support for a European war would set the stage for this. He also wanted America to become strong internally, so he put in motion plans in order for the United States to become industrialized and more progressive.
However, being a good leader entails grooming a successor who will be able to sustain the growth of any organization. This aspect or field is where FDR failed. One thinks about whether or not he developed any trust in his last Vice-President, Harry Truman, such that Truman was at a loss when FDR died suddenly in 1945 when the United States was still embroiled in the war. It was crucial for FDR to brief Truman on his thinking and on what direction any foreign policy should take, so that Truman would have known what he was going to do. Honesty and trust are traits that any good leader must possess in order to achieve success. These are the traits that FDR did not possess then.
References
Fullilove M. (2013). Rendezvous with Destiny. NY: The Penguin Press.
Griffin, R. and Giangreco, D. (1988). Airbridge to Berlin: The Berlin Crisis of 1948, Its Origins and Aftermath. NY: Presidio Press.
History. (2016). FDR Signs the Social Security Act. Retrieved from: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fdr-signs-social-security-act
NPR. (2010). FDR’s Losing Battle to Pack the Supreme Court. Retrieved from: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125789097
Patterson, J. (1997). Great Expectations: The United States: 1945-1974. NY: Oxford University Press.
The White House (2016). Franklin D. Roosevelt. Retrieved from: https://www.whitehouse.gov/1600/presidents/franklindroosevelt
Kloppenberg, J. (2006). Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Visionary. Reviews in American History, 34(4): 509-520.
Tuttle, D. W. (1983). Harry L. Hopkins and Anglo-American Soviet Relations, 1941-1945. Retrieved from: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL5916266W/Harry_L._Hopkins_and_Anglo-American-Soviet_relations_1941-1945
