Fair Deal Quotes



What is particularly interesting in this quotation is her use of the term “untried methods”. To most conservatives of any party “untried methods” connotes something bad and to be avoided. Yet to Mrs. Roosevelt and her husband, along with the New Dealers and many other Democrats, viewed “untried methods” as a virtue and a President willing to use untried methods and experiment was to them dangerous and inadequate for the modern world. “Tried and true” approaches are fine as long as they work and the nation is not facing a new situation. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, assuming the Presidency in the midst of the Great Depression realized that President Herbert Hoover had tried all the “tried and true” methods and was an excellent administrator. Yet the nation was in mortal crisis. So the Roosevelts and the New Dealers tried a number of solutions that had never before been attempted—Social Security, Closing aA(the)ll banks and stopping foreclosures, the CCC, WPA are just a few. Some did not work; some were declared unconstitutional and we will never know whether or not they would have been effective, and some were so effective that they are now considered “tried and true” like Social Security.