EARLIER POTUS CONFRONTING THE COURTS: 2/8: Roosevelt Sweeps Nation: FDR’s 1936 Landslide and the Triumph of the Liberal Ideal by David Pietrusza (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 23 March 2025
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
https://www.amazon.com/Roosevelt-Sweeps-Nation-Landslide-Triumph/dp/1635767776
Award-winning historian David Pietrusza boldly steers clear of the pat narrative regarding Franklin Roosevelt’s unprecedented 1936 re-election landslide, weaving an enormously more intricate, ever more surprising tale of a polarized nation; of America’s most complex, calculating, and politically successful president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, at the very top of his Machiavellian game; and the unlocking of the puzzle of how our society, our politics, and our parties fitfully reinvented themselves.
With in-depth examinations of rabble-rousing Democratic US Senator Huey Long and his assassination before he was able to challenge FDR in ’36; powerful, but widely hated, newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst, who blasted FDR’s “Raw Deal”; wildly popular, radical radio commentator Father Coughlin; the steamrolled passage of Social Security and backlash against it; the era’s racism and anti-Semitism; American Socialism and Communism; and a Supreme Court seemingly bent on dismantling the New Deal altogether, Roosevelt Sweeps Nation is a vivid portrait of a dynamic Depression-Era America.
1934
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Batcher with David Petrucia. |
| 0:07.0 | His new book is Roosevelt Sweeps Nation, FDR's 1936 landslide in the triumph of the liberal ideal. |
| 0:14.0 | Roosevelt is without his best advisor. |
| 0:17.0 | Louis Howe is gone. |
| 0:19.0 | Roosevelt now faces Al Smith, his old mentor on his right, with the American |
| 0:24.7 | Liberty League, preaching is the Constitution for sale and other provocative remarks that |
| 0:30.5 | irritate the president. He is very sensitive, although he's always laughing when you see him in |
| 0:35.0 | the newsreels. That is a style that Louis Howe approved of. |
| 0:39.7 | Just keep them laughing. |
| 0:41.5 | However, the president has to deal with the fact that he sits upon a Democratic Party |
| 0:46.1 | that has been solid since the Civil War and before as what is politely known at the time |
| 0:54.0 | as the way things are. |
| 0:56.3 | We would call it today unacceptable racism, vast and crushing. |
| 1:02.2 | The Jim Crow laws were the beginning of it. |
| 1:04.5 | Roosevelt knows this. |
| 1:06.1 | He also knows that he can be challenged from the South by two men, and we're about to meet them. |
| 1:12.4 | One, his name is Huey Long from Louisiana, who is a character beyond belief, except for |
| 1:21.0 | he's real. |
| 1:22.4 | And the other is Herman Talmadge from Georgia. |
| 1:25.3 | Let's start with Long, David. |
| 1:27.2 | What is, Long is gone by 36, but what he |
| 1:30.8 | represents challenges Roosevelt. What is, what was it that was most worrying to the president |
... |
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