The Plots Against the President by Sally Denton Page A

that this is the last, the culminating crisis of capitalism, and that our existing order of society will not survive it.”
    It was this sense of fear and hopelessness that sent citizens in search of a messiah. Nearly fifty years old, the broad-shouldered and spirited Roosevelt had matured into a seasoned politician with governing experience and an eloquent speaker with an apparent grasp of the problems facing the nation. Still, the populace was fed up with Washington, with government, and with both parties, and while Roosevelt’s charismatic personality enchanted many, others remained skeptical. “The way most people feel, they would like to vote against all of them if possible,” social commentator and comedian Will Rogers quipped, though he would later become a friend of Roosevelt’s. Third parties and “crank candidates” cropped up, spawned by the collective anxiety. Considered progressive, Roosevelt predictably aroused opposition from the Right, which alternately called him a Socialist, Fascist, or Communist—with no apparent comprehension of the contradictions. The fact that he was a die-hard capitalist and far more centrist than liberal was not lost on the Left, which saw him as an unreconstructed scion of America’s elite. Walter Lippmann—“although subjected to massive doses of FDR’s celebrated charm”—had not modified his assessment of the man, writing that “his mind is not very clear, his purposes are not simple, and his methods are not direct.” Time magazine dismissed him as “a vigorous well-intentioned gentleman of good birth and breeding” who “lacked crusading convictions.”
    In the early stages of the 1932 presidential campaign, both the Right and Left were disaffected and disenchanted with the choice, seeing little difference between either Hoover and Roosevelt or the Republicans and the Democrats. Both candidates pledged to balance the budget and cut tariffs. Both promised to revitalize the economy. Both believed in the gold standard and unregulated corporate competition. Beyond platitudes, however, it was difficult to get a fix on Roosevelt’s platform for the presidency. Though his speeches were generally ambiguous and noncontroversial, an outbreak of infectious optimism began to surround him. By early fall, audiences seemed less interested in shallow bromides than in the character of the man. Roosevelt’s persistent smile and sparkling eyes, his indefatigable optimism and genteel manner, and his easygoing confidence and friendly nature implied that he could be the hero that all Americans subconsciously sought. “What they saw was a magnificent leader,” William Manchester wrote. “His leonine head thrown back, his eyes flashing, his cigarette holder tilted at the sky, his navy boat cloak falling gracefully from his great shoulders. He was the image of zest, warmth, and dignity.” Suddenly, the differences between the two candidates could not have been starker.
    Roosevelt’s speeches began to foreshadow the New Deal as he lashed out at Hoover’s failed economic policy. He began to advocate for regulating banks and security firms and for reforming agriculture and private utilities—“to prevent extortion against the public.” At the heart of his emerging ideology was the forging of a new partnership between the government and the citizenry—for “the development of an economic declaration of rights,” as he told the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on September 23, 1932. In one of his most powerful and revealing campaign speeches, Roosevelt spoke movingly of the birth of American democracy and its evolution to the modern day:
    A glance at the situation today only too clearly indicates that equality of opportunity as we have known it no longer exists. Our industrial plant is built; the problem just now is whether under existing conditions it is not overbuilt. Our