This is a lovely little book. Basically an essay, but it details the history of a quilt that was sent to FDR. Hicks does an excellent job relating the events as well as the history Estella Weaver Nukes. This was quite a nice read, and a steal for I got it when it was offered free.

If you are interested in quilts, you should check this out.

The effort by Franklin Roosevelt to “pack” the Supreme Court in 1937 is regarded today as one of the greatest political missteps ever made by a president.  Devised in response to the Court’s rejection of New Deal legislation, it galvanized a seemingly moribund conservative opposition and cost Roosevelt the enormous momentum he possessed coming out of his landslide 1936 reelection victory.  Jeff Shesol does not dispute this conclusion, but instead seeks to explain the background to the plan and the course of the battle over it.  In doing so, he has provided an absorbing account that illuminates many forgotten or overlooked aspects of the dispute.

Shesol traces the origins of the conflict to the very beginning of Roosevelt’s presidency.  From the first he and his administration were concerned about the fate of the New Deal when it was subjected to judicial review, both because of the dubious nature of much of the emergency legislation and because of the traditional role the Supreme Court had played in striking down economic regulation.  Here the author does a good job of presenting the Court, showing how in spite of assumptions about its conservatism it nonetheless handed down a number of “liberal” decisions that gave many New Dealers cause for hope.  The famous decision in the Schecter case ended causes for such hopes, and as the frustration over the Court mounted Roosevelt and his aides began to search for a solution to the Court’s immovability.

Though numerous approaches were considered, ultimately Roosevelt settled on a plan to expand the number of justices on the Court in order to appoint more members sympathetic to the New Deal.  The plan he endorsed was devised by Homer Cummings, Roosevelt’s first Attorney General, and one of the strengths of Shesol’s book is in elevating this often-overlooked figure to his rightful place in the history of the plan.  Roosevelt deferred action until he was successfully reelected in 1936, during which he campaigned against conservative opposition to the New Deal but not explicitly against the Court – a decision that Shesol argues helped to avoid controversy that might have cost him votes but that also deprived him of any ability to use his victory to push the measure through Congress.  Presented against a backdrop of increasing totalitarianism in Europe, the plan alienated many within even his own party, and it was they who soon emerged as its most prominent opponents.  Yet Shesol argues that even after Owen Roberts’s timely switch in the Parrish case and Willis Van Devanter’s retirement in May 1937 deprived the plan’s supporters of many of their arguments, a scaled-down version of the bill might have passed were it not for the death of Joseph Robinson, the Senate majority leader, in July.  Without his leadership, the plan died quickly, dealing Roosevelt his first major political setback and leaving in its wake a strong conservative opposition to further extension of the New Deal.

Fluidly written and based on a considerable amount of research, Shesol’s book is a superb history of Franklin Roosevelt and his confrontation with the Supreme Court.  Not only is the author is a sure guide to the complex cases that defined the struggle, he also has an eye for the telling anecdote, which helps him to bring color to the greyest branch of the government.  Thanks to the clarity of its prose and wealth of details, it will likely serve for some time as the definitive history of the issue, one that readers can read for enjoyment as well as enlightenment.

The scope of Franklin Roosevelt's presidency offers a considerable challenge for any prospective biographer.  The twelve years of his presidency encompassed two of the most momentous events in American history, and his approach to each could (and has) merited important studies in and of themselves.  Added to the challenge is the opaque nature of Roosevelt's inner self, which often left him inscrutable even to those who were closest to him, yet must be addressed by biographer in any serious effort to understand him.  Many writers who have made such an effort have produced multi-volume works that are often left incomplete, and even single-volume biographies are often massive in size.

Yet in spite of this, Patrick Renshaw manages to pull off the impressive feat of providing a concise yet insightful assessment of Roosevelt’s life and career.  In accordance with the “Profiles in Power” series, his focus is on how Roosevelt used power as president, yet his scope encompasses the whole of FDR’s life, including such topics as his complicated relationship with his wife Eleanor, the personal impact of his polio affliction, and his affairs with other women.  All are addressed within the context of Renshaw’s theme, yet it is done in such a way as to provide a better understanding of who Roosevelt was as a person.  Because of this, his book serves not just as a good study of FDR’s use of power but as the best short biography of Roosevelt available, one that is ideal for anyone seeking a concise introduction to the life and career of America’s 32^nd president.

American presidents fortunate enough to enjoy two terms invariably find their second term more difficult than their first one, but if there was a president who could have bucked the trend it was Franklin Roosevelt.  Enjoying one of the most massive reelection victories in history, he could claim a clear mandate from the voters, one reflected not just in his own overwhelming numbers but the enormous majorities enjoyed by the Democratic Party in both houses of Congress.  Yet despite this Roosevelt was unable to accomplish anything approaching his triumphs in his first term, when he was able to pass through Congress legislation that transformed the nation.  Instead Roosevelt squandered his political capital in ill-advised confrontations that diminished his standing and eroded his support.  Though the first of these battles, over the Supreme Court “packing plan”, is well known, far less so is his subsequent effort to purge conservative Democrats from office during the 1938 midterm election.  Susan Dunn’s book is a history of this effort, providing an examination of its origins, its consequences, and its subsequent impact on national politics.

Dunn argues that the origins of the purge lay in Roosevelt’s desire to reshape the American political landscape.  In the early twentieth century, American political parties were mainly coalitions of regional political groupings, often ideologically disparate.  Roosevelt aimed to change that by forcing the conservatives out of the Democratic Party and into the Republican one.  His immediate motivation, however, lay in his frustration with the failure of his legislative agenda in Congress.  Despite large Democratic majorities in both houses, his court-packing and executive reorganization bills were thwarted and his wages and hours legislation faced similar hard going.  Roosevelt sought to target the conservative Democrats up for reelection in 1938 who had succeeded in styming his agenda.

In spite of his enormous national popularity, Roosevelt’s plans faced considerable obstacles.  Foremost among them was the political support these congressmen and senators enjoyed at home, even when that support clashed with their constituents’ approval for the New Deal programs their elected representatives often opposed.  Many of the targeted politicians took advantage of this, turning Roosevelt’s attacks to their advantage by decrying national interference in their local elections, thus playing to voters’ sense of their independence.  Nor was Roosevelt’s own camp completely on board, as Roosevelt’s handpicked party leader and former campaign manager, James Farley, conspicuously absented himself from the effort out of skepticism of its success and concern for the impact of such internecine warfare on the party’s prospects in November.  Yet perhaps the greatest impediment to the president’s plans lay in Roosevelt’s own half-hearted efforts in his own cause.  Often he seemed hesitant about his own campaign, starting out late in launching it and often pulling his punches in speeches.  Opponents of Roosevelt’s targets often could not even count on outright endorsements, leaving them with little counter to the advantages provided by incumbency.  As a result, Roosevelt’s efforts and the publicity surrounding them translated into few successes but many open wounds, confirming further the limits of even the president’s political ability.

Overall Dunn’s book supplies an enjoyable account of the 1938 midterm campaign.  Drawing upon contemporary press coverage and other published sources, she sheds light into an overshadowed aspect of Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency.  Yet her narrative is based upon a flawed premise.  The political realignment that her book attempts to establish had its origins not in 1938 but in the political campaign of another Roosevelt – his cousin Theodore, whose Progressive bolt form the GOP in 1912 was the true beginning of the recasting of party politics of ideological lines.  Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency was only one – albeit very important – step down a road that the country was already on by the 1930s. By overlooking this Dunn overstates the importance of the Roosevelt purge in American political history and limits her achievement with this book, which ultimately chronicles more of a premature push than the dawning of the political landscape Americans know today.