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This chapter goes back to the dark days of 1941 when the fates of England—and, by extension, of the United States—hung in the balance. Combining the personal insights on President Franklin D. Roosevelt's diplomacy, found in works such as Warren Kimball's The Juggler and in the compelling narrative on the approach of war best seen in Waldo Heinrichs' Threshold of War, the chapter focuses on the critical issue of the U.S. Navy's convoying of merchant ships across the Atlantic during 1941. It examines how lukewarm public opinion, Congressional opposition, incomplete rearmament, and the pressing needs of other theaters, led Roosevelt to dissemble and delay rather than address the convoy question. This study offers a particularly penetrating re-examination of Roosevelt's legacy of bipartisanship, his mishandling of isolationists in 1941, and his lack of candor toward Congress and the public.

This chapter describes the impact of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt on Ambassador vanden Heuvel's life and politics. He provides a brief biography of FDR and recounts his experiences with Mrs. Roosevelt, from shaking her hand when he was a boy to working with her on political and social issues as an adult. He tells the story of his participation in celebrating the legacy of FDR through the creation of the FDR Memorial in Washington, DC and the international Four Freedoms Awards. He presents two speeches, the first examining the legacy of the three Roosevelts – Theodore, Franklin and Eleanor – on American life and politics, the second detailing the close relationship between FDR and President Lyndon B. Johnson. The chapter ends with details of Ambassador vanden Heuvel's role in the creation of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park in New York City.

This chapter examines Franklin D. Roosevelt's liberal democratic internationalism and his efforts to assure American national security by constructing a stable world order based on the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, which the United States sought to globalize in the aftermath of the Axis defeat in World War II. It first considers how FDR infused American liberalism with a healthy dose of realism about the appropriateness of democracy for other countries in the aftermath of World War II before discussing anti-imperialism as a component of American foreign policy. It also explores the United States's promotion of democracy and pursuit of a liberal world order as a means of countering Soviet imperialism. It argues that liberal democratic internationalism has been the American way of practicing balance-of-power politics in world affairs, and that the dominant logic of American foreign policy was dictated by concerns for national security.

This chapter examines how the people of Kansas retreated into a quiet centrist conservatism that was relatively more bipartisan and apolitical than would have been expected, especially in a state with such a long Republican history. The conservatism of the period included rare hints of the more aggressive political and religious movements that were to brand the region as part of the red state Middle West in later decades. The chapter first considers the increasing feeling of political isolation in Kansas that was evident by the end of Franklin D. Roosevelt's second term. It then looks at the rise of Harry S. Truman as U.S. president after Roosevelt's death on April 12, 1945, along with Kansans' renewed emphasis on homes, hometowns, and hometown religion as the essential ingredients of Middle West life. It also discusses the religious situation in Kansas during the administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower.

This chapter examines the diplomatic journey of the first female US chief of mission, Ruth Bryan Owen, minister to Denmark (1933–1936). Owen, daughter of William Jennings Bryan, was a public lecturer and two-term US congresswoman from Florida before being sent to Denmark by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who eagerly promoted the advancement of women, lobbied Roosevelt to make the appointment. Denmark was a gender-progressive country and considered of lesser importance in Washington. Despite some skepticism and hostility from career diplomats, Owen performed creditably and was extremely popular in her host country, especially due to her decision to reach out to Danes beyond elite circles. And although she was forced to resign when she married a Dane in 1936, her performance paved the way for Roosevelt to appoint a second female envoy the following year.

In the face of international security threats in 1939 from Germany, Italy, and Japan, FDR requested and Barkley helped pass the Army Air Corps Expansion Bill, which dramatically increased US airpower. Much of that year focused on revising the 1937 Neutrality Act since its cash-and-carry provision, which benefited the naval powers England and France, ended in May. Only after the German invasion of Poland was cash-and-carry returned in new legislation. The German blitzkrieg in Europe in 1940 helped Democrats and FDR decide favorably on a third term. Barkley served as permanent chairman of the Democratic national convention. FDR easily won the presidential election, and Barkley helped Harry S. Truman keep his seat in the US Senate. As 1940 closed, Prime Minister Churchill requested aid because England was running out of money and could not meet the cash conditions in the latest Neutrality Act. Barkley sponsored and shepherded the Lend-Lease bill through the Senate in 1941. Later that year Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, and Germany and Italy declared war on the United States.

This chapter focuses on William Dodd's appointment as U.S. Ambassador to Germany in 1933 under the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. It first considers Dodd's views about the causes and remedy of the Depression and his argument favoring the disintegration of urban industrial centers with a corresponding increase in independent, landowning farmers. It then discusses Dodd's support for Roosevelt's presidential bid in 1933 and his appointment as ambassador to Berlin shortly after Roosevelt became president.

In the spring of 1939, as the world hurtled towards war, Mencken warned his fellow journalists to be aware of the dangers that executive power and war would have on freedom of the press. Mencken had experienced this during World War I, and it influenced his newspaper column, which became increasingly controversial. In 1941, in almost an exact parallel to what he experienced in 1915, Mencken quit his long standing association with the Baltimore Sun.

From the early 1930s, when Franklin D. Roosevelt created the New Deal during the Great Depression, to the mid-1960s, when Lyndon B. Johnson launched the Great Society during a much more affluent time, the pendulum of politics in America swung magisterially and seemingly inexorably to the left side. In the four decades following, the same pendulum swung to the right. The decades-long decline of liberal political fortune came in part because of social backlash. From the New Deal to the Great Society, there had just been too much equality, too much progressive social change, too much government, and too much disruption of settled manners, mores, and entrenched elites. There was bound to be growing resistance and the return to political power of the Republican side. While political movements are deeply affected in part by social forces, their fate is decided to some extent by whether they provide these social forces with effective rhetoric and voice.

This chapter details events in Josephine Roche's life from 1939 to 1945. World War II created new difficulties for Roche with Franklin D. Roosevelt. As during World War I, U.S. involvement in this new global conflict funneled fresh resources to both progressives and their opponents, leaving the outcome of their competition to the postwar period. Roche's experience provided glimpses of both the war's progressive and conservative tendencies as well as the dilemmas generated within progressive souls. Difficulties at Rocky Mountain Fuel, however, gave World War II an even more discouraging cast for Roche than World War I had. Indeed, miseries fueled by her coal company eroded her connection to the Democratic Party and weakened her confidence in government as an ally in the cause of diminishing inequality. These losses set Roche slightly out of sync with the larger progressive movement and left her by war's end institutionally unmoored.

The 1932 election found Barkley reelected to the Senate and FDR elected to the presidency. Barkley played a key role in New Deal legislation because of his Senate committees and his close relationship with Senate majority leader Joseph T. Robinson. He became the unofficial and then the official assistant Senate majority leader. He worked closely with Leslie L. Biffle, the Senate majority secretary and a lifelong friend. He made the transition from Wilson’s New Freedom to FDR’s New Deal because he felt that government had a role to play in overcoming the Great Depression. Especially on national radio, where he strongly supported it, the New Deal could be identified almost as much with Barkley as with the president. His support and fame prompted FDR to make sure Barkley would once again serve as temporary chairman and keynote speaker during the 1936 Democratic national convention that selected FDR for a second term in the White House. The chapter also introduces the growing international insecurity posed by such powers as Germany, Italy, and Japan.

This chapter details events from 1933–1945, an era of defeat and discord for the Republicans as Franklin D. Roosevelt dominated American politics during the New Deal. Roosevelt reshaped American politics by creating the welfare state and broadening the nation's role in the world. The Republican Party had been divided on both achievements, and that fracture persisted after Roosevelt had left. On the right of the GOP, sentiment was strong towards repealing as much of the New Deal as the voters would allow. More moderate elements wished to retain the popular and workable results of the Roosevelt era while reducing bureaucracy and spending.

This chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This biography explains first how Josephine Roche moved from a small town on the Great Plains, where she was born in 1886, to the nation's capital, where she joined Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration in 1934. Especially significant in explaining her achievements were her education at Vassar, mentoring by a progressive reform community in Denver, and the meaning she made of the momentous coal strike in Colorado that culminated in the Ludlow Massacre of 1914. This biography also explains why, having achieved renown in the 1930s, Roche largely disappeared from history and memory, a disappearing act made all the more mysterious by her stunning post-New Deal resume.

A conservative Supreme Court seemed bent on destroying the New Deal. President Roosevelt wanted Congress to pass a bill adding more justices to the federal judicial system. Barkley supported FDR because the court attacked programs for farmers and workers—Barkley’s key supporters. Most Republicans strongly opposed the idea, and many Democrats had mixed feelings about the reform. In the midst of the controversy Senate majority leader Robinson suffered a fatal heart attack. With FDR’s support, Barkley won the Senate’s leadership post. Barkley, however, now led a Senate badly divided not only over the court bill but also over regional issues. A watered-down reform was approved but without changing the number of justices on the Supreme Court. In 1938, Barkley faced reelection competition in the Democratic primary from Governor A. B. “Happy” Chandler. Despite, from Chandler’s perspective, controversy over the campaign, Barkley maintained unbeatable numbers in popular opinion polls and won the primary and the general election solidly.