SECOND TERM PROGRESSIVE IN THE WHITE HOUSE: 3/8: 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
🗓️ 22 April 2024
⏱️ 14 minutes
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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.
1925 Coolidge Opening Day
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| 0:00.0 | Have you ever felt like escaping to your own desert island? |
| 0:04.0 | Jane Gaskin did exactly that, trading in the family home to begin a new life in the |
| 0:09.1 | tropics. |
| 0:10.1 | But she soon discovers that Paradise has its secrets. |
| 0:13.4 | I'm Alice Levine, and this is the price of Paradise, |
| 0:18.0 | the island dream that ends in kidnap, corruption, and murder. Wish you were here. Follow the price of Paradise Now wherever |
| 0:26.7 | you listen to podcasts. This is, this is CBS I in the world, with David Patricia, the author of the new book Roosevelt Sweeps Nation. |
| 0:42.0 | I'm John Bachelor, and we're about to look at two of the most |
| 0:46.1 | important figures of the 1936 election who were not elected but made very important contributions to how the president |
| 0:56.0 | Franklin Roosevelt saw his campaign ahead. The first is Francis Everett |
| 1:01.7 | Townsend born 1867, a senior figure who is a physician, and he comes |
| 1:07.4 | forward with the Townsend plan. |
| 1:10.1 | This is in the time of great want and doubt for the people who are elderly in America. |
| 1:18.0 | At that time that was considered 60 years plus was elderly. David, Francis Townsend, looks to be an amateur and the fact that |
| 1:28.0 | he enters into politics at all is so unlikely. What do we need to know about how Roosevelt thought of Townsend? |
| 1:35.0 | Well, Townsend was this old Gezer doctor who writes a letter to the local paper saying, we've got to have this plan which is going to give $200 a month to everyone over 60 and they will have to do two things for it. |
| 1:52.0 | One, not work anywhere and two, spend it all in 30 days. He thinks this is going to be, create a velocity of money. |
| 2:01.0 | We're sort of like priming the pump, getting the economy up and running. |
| 2:06.6 | He's a pretty dull fellow otherwise, but millions and millions of people join these towns and clubs in around the country, and they start electing congressmen. |
| 2:20.0 | Now, Franklin Roosevelt, well, first off, one thing about Franklin Roosevelt, well first off one thing about Franklin Roosevelt is for all his big spending hates the dole. |
| 2:29.0 | He hates the idea of people just sitting around and giving a government, getting a government check. |
| 2:36.1 | This is one reason why we have so many remnants, relics, artifices of the New Deal still around today. |
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