Chapter 07
Roosevelt’s Re-election: “I Won’t Run Unless Drafted”

III. The Era Characteristics of Roosevelt’s New Deal

The collapse of European democratic regimes and the shattering of hopes for liberty inevitably spread to the United States. In the early 1930s, during the initial implementation of the New Deal, most people believed that parliamentary democracy was clearly weak and ineffective compared to the confidence and vitality of Italian Fascism, German Nazism, and Japanese militarism.

In July 1933, a dramatic scene unfolded in the U.S. When the Italian Fascist leader Italo Balbo, a member of Mussolini’s Blackshirts, arrived in Chicago with his squadron, he was enthusiastically welcomed by the local population and officials: Chicago named a street after him in his honor; to welcome this Italian, Chicagoans even stood and gave the Nazi salute. In New York, people gathered in the city center to welcome his arrival, and even Franklin Roosevelt invited him to lunch.

As some authors have noted, at the beginning of the New Deal, many American social elites, and even decision-makers, were attracted by Mussolini, who was claimed to have saved capitalism, and regarded the Italian government reforms as worthy of attention and study. Throughout the 1930s, the United States maintained close ties with Italy, and even the President’s Executive Management Committee sent people to Italy to study management experiences. This committee’s main responsibility was to propose federal government reorganization plans to strengthen the executive branch’s capacity and improve its efficiency.

Even two years after the New Deal began, the situation in the United States remained grim. The book vividly depicts a bleak picture of 1930s America: violence became commonplace across the nation; centralized powers threatened freedom and democracy; the political climate was unstable and uncertain; anti-Semitism resurfaced; and public sentiment was easily inflamed and manipulated. The political influence rooted in Southern interests was disrupted in Congress, leading to a fierce defense of racial segregation policies that tolerated no challenge to the established black-white racial hierarchy, carrying deeply ingrained racial prejudices onto the political stage in Washington. African Americans lived in constant fear for their safety, with lynching widespread. To secure political support, Roosevelt compromised with these conservative political forces, sacrificing the rights of people of color. The United States found itself trapped in a huge crisis of suspicion and fear, facing an uncertain future — a dark moment for the American political system had unfortunately arrived.

Zhong Wen remarked: In 1936, Roosevelt promised, “I will not run again unless the party calls me.” However, his loyalists loudly proclaimed at the Democratic National Convention, “We want Roosevelt, we want Teddy,” creating an uproar. The Democratic primary was then fixed in his favor. Roosevelt’s promise to run only if the party demanded was broken, amounting to a coup within the party. In this sense, Roosevelt’s New Deal shared common era characteristics with communism and fascism.