Unsurpassed: The Popular Appeal of Franklin Roosevelt

Franklin Roosevelt was not only the first US president to be covered by public opinion polls, but his ratings have consistently exceeded those of all subsequent sitting presidents, save for John F. Kennedy. Moreover, Roosevelt also stands out with a popular appeal that is unsurpassed by any of his successors serving at least a full term. The key to his approval, as this book shows, was wartime leadership, not economic performance. It began with policies preparing the nation for war in the two years before formal entry. To use FDR's own coinage, it was making the United States the "arsenal of democracy" in the battle against tyranny. That pursuit, not the New Deal, earned him high marks with the American people and re-election to an unprecedented third term. World War II--and its heavy human toll--did nothing to diminish FDR's popularity. As such, the FDR experience defies major paradigms of presidential politics. Yet, Roosevelt has been relatively ignored by scholars of public opinion. What can FDR's experience teach us and his successors about rousing broad public support, particularly during wartime? What light does his success shed on the failures of Presidents Truman, Johnson, and George W. Bush in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq? On key issues, mainly with foreign policy, FDR had to contend with an American public that opposed his plans at the outset. Helmut Norpoth argues that Roosevelt had an unparalleled ability for leadership, especially through the fabled "fireside chats" and his appreciation of opinion polls, that enabled him to move the public to embrace his policies. In this book, Norpoth takes an in-depth look at how FDR's leadership swayed public opinion, comparing his experience to his successors to draw broad conclusions about what makes for successful presidential politics.

About the Author :
Helmut Norpoth is Professor of Political Science at Stony Brook University. He is the co-author of The American Voter Revisited and author of Confidence Regained: Economics, Mrs. Thatcher and the British Voter.

Review :
"While there is no shortage of books on Franklin Roosevelt and on public opinion, Norpoth provides the first fascinating account of Roosevelt's leadership of public opinion. Unsurpassed offers a top-notch empirical examination of the earliest public opinion polls that span the New Deal and World War II and underscores how Roosevelt both influenced and was influenced by these polls." -Lyn Ragsdale, author of The American Nonvoter "Franklin Roosevelt presided over America's entrance into the Second World War and the management of that war. Absent that war context and management, it is a toss-up at best that FDR would have served beyond his first two terms, and not a great bet that the Democrats would have kept winning elections in 1940 and 1944. Norpoth crafts a convincing case for this story in this pioneering analysis of public opinion during the war era. It is an important new look at the history." -David Mayhew, author of The Imprint of Congress "Unsurpassed is rich, almost astonishingly so, in new data, insights, and suggestions about presidential leadership and American public opinion. It revises several long-standing conventions about FDR and the public, and requires political scientists to reformulate more than a few notions about presidential leadership. Was there something about FDR's conduct or the political environment of the time that allowed him to retain a high level of job approval through economic hard times and war events that effectively collapsed later presidencies? Those questions alone would make the book worth reading, but it has much more-including an analysis of partisanship in the emergence of the New Deal Democratic coalition." -John R. Petrocik, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, University of Missouri