Franklin D. Roosevelt: Campaign Address at Madison Square Garden

Impact

Roosevelt's Madison Square Garden speech culminating the campaign highlights the aggressive and class-oriented approach of his entire reelection struggle. The approach of the speech and of the campaign as a whole was Roosevelt's response to a grassroots upsurge among his supporters, especially among working people. Roosevelt stakes out a pro-working-class position because of the evidence he and his advisers saw that working people were engaged in political and economic life in a new way, supported him and the radical measures of the Second New Deal, and wanted action against conservative forces.

Although early polls had indicated the election would be close, an upswing of the economy in 1936 and the effective Democratic campaign caused Republican nominee Alf Landon to shift away from the moderate positions he espoused early in the campaign. The challenger's attacks on Social Security and his accusations that Roosevelt was seeking to destroy the American governmental system pleased the conservative base of the Republican Party. Roosevelt's effective counterattack in his Madison Square Garden speech may have prevented the Republicans from making inroads with their charges. Roosevelt's October 31 speech contributed to his remarkable landslide on Election Day.

Some scholars have argued that the overwhelming nature of Roosevelt's 1936 victory led him to err in the way he handled his proposal to add more members to the Supreme Court in 1937. Some moderate Democrats had been uncomfortable with the radical character of the 1936 campaign. Conservative Democrats took the lead in attacking Roosevelt's court proposal, and by 1938 an alliance between conservative Democrats and Republicans had developed. On the other hand, the Supreme Court began shifting away from conservatism and toward liberalism with the West Coast Hotel Company v. Parrish decision in 1937, reversing its 1936 rejection of a state minimum-wage law for women. Roosevelt's popularity was such that he went on to win two additional presidential elections.