FDR'S
FIRESIDE CHATS
On
Sunday evening, March 12, 1933, a worried nation sat down by its
radio sets to listen to its president. It was the nadir of the
Great Depression, and between one-quarter and one-third of the
work force was unemployed. Every bank in America had been closed
for eight days-many of them since March 1-and much of the public
had been scraping by on a combination of scrip, barter, and credit.
Chaos beckoned.
Through
the gloom, a calm, confident, reasoning voice was heard. It was
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States,
explaining to the people he governed just how they had reached
the fix they were in, and how they would get out of it.
Roosevelt's
voice was already familiar to the public, of course. They had
heard it many times before, during his years of public service,
and the presidential campaign of the year before. They had heard
it most recently as stern, clarion call on the old Inauguration
Day of March 4, delivering the bracing message that "All we have
to fear is fear itself," and even hinting at the possibility of
dictatorship—a warning greeted by applause so loud and so
sustained that it sent a flutter of fear through Eleanor Roosevelt.
On
March 12, the President struck a different chord. This was the
first of dozens of "fireside chats" Franklin Roosevelt would deliver
over the course of his twelve years in office. Speaking in terms
that were clear, concise, but never condescending, he began by
explaining how the banking system worked: "...when you deposit
money is a bank the bank does not put the money into a safe-deposit
vault. It invests your money in many different forms of credit-bonds,
mortgages. In other words, the bank puts your money to work to
keep the wheels turning around..."
He
went on to announce that the banks would reopen the next day,
and that those that chose to participate would have most of their
deposits guaranteed by the federal government. It was not the
end of the Depression, but it was the end of the downward spiral
that had brought the economy to a standstill.
Roosevelt
would go on to give 30 more fireside chats, hundreds of formal
speeches, and 998 press conferences, as he guided his audiences
through that wonderfully American concoction of pragmatism, improvisation,
and experiment that became known as the New Deal; as he negotiated
with them through the shoals of neutrality, and the terrible conflict
from which the United States would emerge as the greatest power
in world history.
It
was a remarkable departure for an institution that had previously
tended to deal with the public through respectful newsmen, handing
written questions to the President's press secretary, to be answered
at his convenience. Few chief executives had ever dared to speak
quite so frankly to the American people, about such complex and
important subjects—and even fewer have dared to since. The
fireside chats were, of course, shrewdly calculated to be homey,
"down-to-earth" appeals to "the common man." Franklin Roosevelt
was nothing if not a consummate politician.
Yet
they appear downright innocent and high-minded compared to the
calculation of innumerable later performances, such as presidents
Reagan, Bush, and Clinton picking out "regular people" in the
audiences of their State of the Union addresses—or Richard
Nixon, giving his "Checkers" speech before a facade of empty book
bindings, on a TV set known generically as "Veteran's Den."
Frances
Perkins, Roosevelt's not uncritical secretary of labor, described
how thoroughly he came to envision the audience himself, across
the imaginary fireside: "His face would smile and light up as
though he were actually sitting on the front porch or in the parlor
with them. People felt this, and it bound them to him in affection."
Above
all, Roosevelt's fireside chats contrasted with those of another
political master of the airwaves. Adolf Hitler's rise to power
at the bottom of Depression paralleled Roosevelt's in many ways;
a dark star across the Atlantic. Throughout the thirties, he enchanted
his people with his hateful Strum und Drag, pumped out through
cheap plastic radioes deliberately built and sold to the Germanic
mass man. The appropriation of this new medium for reason and
common sense, was one of the great triumphs of American democracy.
American
Greats Edited by Robert A. Wilson & Stanley Marcus
Public Affairs Press, a member of the Perseus Group
