Backlash: The Killing of the New Deal

by Robert Shogan Author of No Sense of Decency: The Army-McCarthy Hearings

Overview

On election night 1936, Franklin D. Roosevelt was sitting on top of the political world. Within a year, two seismic events would transform the political landscape. A nationwide outbreak of labor unrest, particularly the spread of a new and potent union weapon, the sit-down strike, and FDR's launching of a scheme to overhaul the Supreme Court would combine to generate a fierce public backlash that tarnished Roosevelt's mystique and drained the lifeblood from the New Deal. This is the engrossing story that Robert Shogan relates so compellingly in Backlash.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781566636742
Publisher:	Dee, Ivan R. Publisher
Publication date:	07/20/2006
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	7.04(w) x 8.76(h) x 1.06(d)

About the Author

Robert Shogan has also written The Double-Edged Sword, The Fate of the Union, Hard Bargain, Riddle of Power, Bad News, Constant Conflict, and The Battle of Blair Mountain. A former prizewinning national political correspondent for Newsweek and Los Angeles Times, he now lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

What People are Saying About This

Alonzo L. Hamby

[A] fast-paced and thoughtful account...that can be read profitably by the educated public and by professional historians. (Alonzo L. Hamby, author, For the Survival of Democracy: Franklin Roosevelt and the World Crisis of the 1930s)

Patrick Maney

[A] probing narrative. (Patrick Maney, author, The Roosevelt Presence: The Life and Legacy of FDR)

Stanley Kutler

[A] fresh perspective...Shogan's book succintly reminds us of what was, and what might have been. (Stanley Kutler, author, The Wars of Watergate)

Nick Kotz

Backlash is an exciting story about the possibilities of government....Every aspiring politician, historian, and journalist should read this book. (Nick Kotz, author, Judgement Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Laws that Changed America)

Mark Shields

Shogan's compelling narrative of the clash of the titans...is politically as timely as tomorrow's headlines. (Mark Shields, NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and syndicated columnist)

Editorial Reviews

Required reading.. .. American history and underlying political influences come to life in a vivid account.

California Bookwatch

Shogan's probing narrative demonstrates that the tumultuous events of the Roosevelt presidency had consequences that are still felt today.

Patrick Maney

Robert Shogan recaptures a pivotal moment in the history of American liberalism.. .. A fast-paced and thoughtful account.

Alonzo L. Hamby

Shogan's compelling narrative is politically as timely as tomorrow's headlines.

Mark Shields

Long on evidence, short and sweet on analysis, this is excellent narrative history.

Booklist

Shogan offers a fresh perspective.. .. [His] book succinctly reminds us of what was, and what might have been.

Stanley Kutler

Every aspiring politician, historian, and journalist should read this book.

Nick Kotz

Long on evidence, short and sweet on analysis, this is excellent narrative history.

Booklist

Former Newsweek and L.A. Times political correspondent Shogan (The Double-Edged Sword), delivers an insightful though not innovative account of how two key events put an end to New Deal advances during F.D.R.'s second term. Election day, 1936, found Roosevelt at the height of his powers and popularity, and contemplating grand strategies for advancing the domestic programs launched during his first administration. But as Shogan clearly shows, militant unionism gained ground nationwide, upsetting industrial output and slowing the rehabilitation of the Depression-plagued American economy. Second, F.D.R.'s ill-starred and widely unpopular attempt to overhaul the Supreme Court cost him precious political capital in Congress. This same misadventure also cost the president vital PR capital with the electorate, hobbling his ability to rally support for other programs. Although Roosevelt was re-elected for two more terms, his capacity for creating, inspiring and passing the type of social programs set in place during his first term remained diminished, some would argue fatally so. Shogan does a good job of painting the times and the men: Roosevelt himself, labor leader John L. Lewis, Roosevelt's aide Tommy Corcoran and his prickly and unpredictable vice-president, "Cactus Jack" Garner, all of whom played vital roles as the New Deal sputtered and stopped. (Sept. 1) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Former political journalist Shogan (The Fate of the Union) examines FDR's second term by analyzing two almost simultaneous factors that put the skids on proposed legislation aimed at expanding the New Deal programs he had pushed through Congress during his first term. These were labor union sit-down strikes and FDR's attempt to increase the number of justices on the Supreme Court. Shogan argues that the increased militancy of labor unions alienated most of the electorate that had heretofore supported FDR's federal programs to help labor. He characterizes Roosevelt's unsuccessful scheme to pack the court (so that it would reverse previous decisions that had declared New Deal legislation unconstitutional) as a debacle that offended even his staunchest supporters. He is also critical of Roosevelt for trying to rationalize his error in political judgment by saying that Congress rejected the Court-packing proposal because it wasn't necessary once the Supreme Court had come to support some New Deal legislation. Yet Shogan makes clear that while labor unrest and FDR's political mistakes in 1937 and 1938 sparked the "backlash" that killed the New Deal, the middle-class ethic of "reverence for individualism and property rights" was the overarching reason why New Deal legislation effectively ended in 1936. Unfortunately, his chapter on labor leader John L. Lewis fragments the narrative unnecessarily, but Shogan's study is lively, fair-minded, well documented, and unusually accessible. For public and academic libraries. Jack Forman, Mesa Coll. Lib., San Diego Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal