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. Explain how World War II and the Cold War brought the issue of civil rights to the fore in American society.

Although African Americans first became an important part of the Democratic coalition in 1936, Roosevelt's New Deal, with the important exception of the president's Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC), did little to address directly the injustices of southern segregation. But World War II and its aftermath spurred Truman to come to terms with the "Negro Question." During the war, more than a million African Americans migrated to large northern and western states, such as Michigan and California, that were rich in electoral votes. Moreover, Truman believed that the president was obligated to uphold the fundamental rights of all Americans. Truman found it especially intolerable that outrageous discriminatory acts were inflicted on black men in uniform, to whom he felt the country owed a great debt of gratitude

Describe Truman's relationship with the 80th Congress.

Although Truman never was able to shatter the stalemate in domestic policy that endured throughout his presidency, he could claim some successes. His social security, minimum wage, and public housing proposals were enacted during the Eighty-First Congress, which as a result of the 1948 elections was again controlled by the Democrats. More important, the Truman administration was remarkably successful in assembling a bipartisan congressional coalition to support the president's policy toward the Soviet Union. In the weeks preceding his death, FDR had begun to take a more jaundiced view of Stalin. But it was left to Truman to formulate the American response to Soviet aggression in Europe.

Did Eisenhower favor the New Deal? Favor the international perspective of FDR and Truman?

Although he was a domestic conservative who had no desire to significantly expand the welfare state, Eisenhower believed that the New Deal was an established part of modern American government In foreign policy, too, Eisenhower carried on most of the policies of his two Democratic predecessors. Unlike many Republicans, he shared the internationalist perspective of FDR and Truman. He was contemptuous of Republicans—notably Senate leader Robert Taft, his main rival for the party's presidential nomination in 1952—who wanted the United States to withdraw into isolation from world affairs. Eisenhower realized that because of the New Deal legacy and the emergence of the United States as the leader of the Free World, it was no longer possible for the president simply to preside. The task instead, as he understood it, was to lead without seeming to lead, to remain quietly and persistently involved in political affairs while maintaining the public face of the genial national hero

What effect did Truman's civil rights position have on the unity within the Democratic party?

Although losing these states cost Truman only thirty-nine electoral votes, his civil rights agenda had opened a fissure in the Democratic Party that later spurred major defections of southern white voters to the GOP.

Identify: Executive Office of the President (EOP)

Concluding that "the President needs help," the Brownlow Committee, as it came to be called, proposed the creation of the Executive Office of the President (EOP). The EOP included the Bureau of the Budget, which had been housed in the Treasury Department since its birth in 1921, and a new White House Office, to be staffed by loyal and energetic presidential aides whose importance would be constrained by their "passion for anonymity." In contrast to the cabinet departments and independent agencies, which were extensively influenced by Congress, the EOP was designed as a presidential institution, responsible for tasks closely linked to the president's priorities and staffed by individuals who shared the president's political and policy objectives.38 Most of those named by the president to fill important positions in the EOP did not require Senate confirmation.

In what ways did Congress help to institutionalize the presidency?

Congress helped Truman to institutionalize the presidency, sometimes unintentionally. Congressionally initiated statutes established the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) in 1946 and the National Security Council (NSC) in 1947 to help the president formulate fiscal and foreign policy, respectively. Although many legislators hoped that the CEA and NSC would serve as checks on the president's autonomy in economic and security matters by making the president consult with other, Senate-confirmed officials, Truman effectively domesticated the councils—that is, he made them part of the president's team.

How does Eisenhower institutionalize the presidency?

Eisenhower also contributed to the institutionalization of the modern presidency. Drawing on his long experience with military staffs, the president enlarged and formally organized the White House Office. This is not to say that Eisenhower arranged his staff along military lines, as many Washington observers concluded. Instead, the respect for careful organization that Ike developed as an army general predisposed him to take seriously the recommendations of the Brownlow and Hoover Commissions that a clearer and more formal line of command and communications be established between the White House and the executive departments and agencies.146 The line Eisenhower established ran from the president through his chief of staff to the rest of the president's team and back again. Former New Hampshire governor Sherman Adams, who was the first presidential chief of staff, worked zealously to free the president from the everyday demands of the White House and executive branch

What was the Bricker Amendment and why was Eisenhower able to get it defeated in Congress?

Eisenhower's commitment to constrain the military-industrial complex coincided with his determination to strengthen the constitutional foundation of modern presidential diplomacy. His defense of the twentieth-century executive was never more apparent than in his efforts to defeat the Bricker Amendment, which proposed changing the Constitution to curtail the president's authority to conduct the nation's foreign policy. By the terms of the amendment, executive agreements with other nations would take effect only if they were approved by Congress and did not conflict with state laws. As historian Elmo Richardson has noted, "The idea was, of course, a belated response to Franklin Roosevelt's personal diplomacy. In the Senate, mostly because of the president's personal influence, the Bricker Amendment fell one vote shy of passage. The close division indicated that many Americans still believed that the modern chief executive's power in foreign affairs was excessive. It was the reluctant modern president, "Dwight D. Eisenhower—nobody else," an embittered Senator Bricker claimed, who preserved the executive's right to make international agreements unilaterally

How did Harry Truman become president?

FDR died of massive stroke

According to Republican journalists William Allen White, what did FDR's victory in 1932 indicate?

FDR's victory indicated, in the opinion of progressive Republican journalist William Allen White, "a firm desire on the part of the American people to use government as an agency for human welfare."

How did Eisenhower's view of the presidency differ from FDR?

He was determined not to lead the federal government into new and untried activities but instead to restore a sense of national calm after the controversial and frenetic activism of the Roosevelt and Truman years. "Eisenhower has been a sort of Roosevelt in reverse," Richard Neustadt wrote in 1960. "Roosevelt was a politician seeking personal power; Eisenhower ... came to crown a reputation not make one. He wanted to be arbiter, not master. His love was not for power but for duty."

What personal qualities and background helped FDR as President?

His confidence stemmed from the combination of a privileged, albeit challenging, upbringing in Hyde Park, New York, and an admirable political education as state senator, assistant secretary of the navy in the Wilson administration, vice-presidential candidate in 1920, and two-term governor of New York, then the largest state in the Union. His resolution owed in no small part to his determination, after losing the use of his legs to poliomyelitis in 1921, not to let disability stand in the way. Roosevelt, who was thirty-nine when stricken by the disease, spent much of the next decade developing techniques to divert people's attention from his inability to walk or stand unsupported. Like a magician using misdirection to foster an illusion, FDR drew audiences' attention to his strong upper body, not his withered legs, and to his jaunty, upward-tilted chin and expressive eyes. He even learned to "walk" by leaning heavily on the arm of an aide while swinging each leg forward with his hips.12 News photographers helped preserve Roosevelt's personal dignity and public image by never showing him in a wheelchair or being carried.

Why does Eisenhower send in the National guard to de segregate Central High School in Little rock, Arkansas?

In September 1957 the Democratic governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus, mobilized his state's National Guard in an effort to thwart a federal court order to begin desegregating Little Rock's all-white Central High School. Eisenhower tried to stay out of the controversy, initially conducting only a single, inconclusive meeting with Faubus at the president's summer home in Newport, Rhode Island, on September 14. Upon returning to Arkansas, Faubus, who believed that Eisenhower was indifferent to the situation in his state, defied the president's private request to instruct the Arkansas National Guard to enforce the court order. Instead, Faubus withdrew the guard from around the school. On September 23, nine African American students were turned away from Central High School by a howling, hate-filled mob of segregationists from Arkansas and other states. Faubus continued to inflame the onrushing crisis with defiant rhetoric.

What were the issues in Korematsu v United States? How did the Supreme court rule?

In the decades since Korematsu, no racially restrictive law has ever passed the constitutional test of military necessity endorsed by the Supreme Court in that case. In truth, soon after the war ended in 1945 the Court's ruling came to be regarded as a judicial travesty. In 1948 Congress provided $37 million in reparations for the victims of Japanese internment. In another burst of conscience forty years later, Congress awarded $20,000 to each surviving detainee. In 1998 President Bill Clinton awarded the nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, to Fred Korematsu.68 Yet these official acts of atonement never completely erased the deeply troubling failure of Congress and the Supreme Court to strike a constitutional balance that gave the president enough authority to make the nation safe while preventing serious abuses of individual freedom.

In foreign affairs, what did Truman mean by the policy of containment?

Instead, Truman articulated a policy of containment, promising to keep the Soviet empire from extending its borders.88 Although maintaining a strong nuclear arsenal, stationing American troops in Europe and Asia, and supplying arms to vulnerable regimes would help to deter Soviet imperialism, Truman argued, the most effective way to assist threatened nations was with economic and financial aid. "The seeds of totalitarianism," he said, "are nurtured by misery and want." Proclaiming a policy that reporters quickly dubbed the Truman Doctrine, the president declared "that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures

Identify: Truman Doctrine, NATO, Marshall plan

Internationalist Republicans and Democrats in Congress united to authorize the Truman Doctrine to contain communist expansion, the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe economically, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to defend the West against Soviet aggression.

Why did Truman take control of the nation's steel mills in 1952? How did the Supreme Court rule on this issue in the case of Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company v. Sawyer?

Most important, Truman's claim that the Korean conflict endowed the president with emergency economic powers was rebuffed by the Supreme Court after he seized control of the nation's strike-threatened steel mills in 1952. For fear of alienating the unions, Truman refused to apply the Taft-Hartley Act, which authorized the president to impose an eighty-day cooling-off period on labor and management in an industrial dispute in order to postpone a strike. Instead, on April 8 he ordered Secretary of Commerce Charles Sawyer to take control of the steel mills. Truman argued that because steel is the essential ingredient in weapons manufacturing, a "work stoppage would immediately jeopardize and imperil our national defense." Less than two months later, the Court, in Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co. v. Sawyer, disabused the president of his belief that in a national emergency, he could do anything that the Constitution or Congress did not explicitly forbid. Justice Hugo Black declared in his majority opinion that Truman must return the mills to their owners because his seizure order was a de facto statute that preempted Congress's lawmaking power. "The Constitution is neither silent nor equivocal about who shall make laws which the President is to execute,"

In the Supreme Court's ruling in the case of United States v Curtiss-Wright Export Corporation, what did it say about presidential power in domestic affairs and in foreign affairs?

On December 21, 1936, in United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp., the Supreme Court upheld a 1934 law that authorized the president to place an embargo on the sale of American-made weapons to countries engaged in armed conflict. The law was passed with the so-called Chaco war between Bolivia and Paraguay in mind, and Roosevelt quickly forbade the sale of arms to both countries. Weapons merchants challenged the measure as an unlawful delegation of legislative authority to the president. A federal district court agreed. But in a somewhat surprising opinion written by conservative justice George Sutherland, a near-unanimous Supreme Court laid down a sweeping doctrine of presidential supremacy in foreign policy.

In his inaugural address, FDR said he would not hesitate to ask Congress for what?

Once sworn in, FDR did not hesitate to use the full powers of his office to address the national emergency. He felt no reluctance about attacking the banking crisis with a World War I measure. On the same day that he declared the bank holiday, Roosevelt issued another executive order calling Congress into special session. Four days later, on March 9, he introduced the Emergency Banking Bill, which marshaled the full resources of the Federal Reserve Board to support the faltering banks and thereby restore the people's confidence in the banking system.

What did FDR believe was the scope of his wartime powers in World War II?

Once under way, World War II greatly accelerated the flow of power from Congress and the courts to the president, allowing Roosevelt to assert an inherent executive prerogative more boldly than he could have before Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and Germany's declaration of war against the United States. Under conditions of total war, Roosevelt believed, the president is authorized not only to direct military operations abroad but also to manage economic and social affairs at home. In a bold—critics said brazen—expression of his theory of presidential power, Roosevelt insisted that an effective program of wage and price controls be created

What was the key issue in the 1948 election? Explain how Truman's surprise victory in the election confirmed the preeminence of the modern executive.

Shrewdly taking the political initiative, Truman turned the 1948 presidential election into a referendum on the New Deal. When he surprised nearly everyone by winning a come-from-behind victory against his Republican opponent, Gov. Thomas E. Dewey of New York, Truman stepped at least partially out of FDR's shadow. The president had saved the New Deal and revived enough of the New Deal Democratic coalition to prevail. Beyond that, the assertiveness he displayed in his battles with Congress confirmed the preeminence of the modern executive in legislative affairs.

Why does FDR receive very high ratings as President?

So great an impression did Franklin Roosevelt make on the American political system that surveys of historians nearly always rank him alongside Abraham Lincoln and George Washington as one of the three greatest presidents in history. In large measure, FDR's high rating owes to his efforts to lead the American people through the Great Depression and World War II. Roosevelt came to office in the fourth year of a world economic crisis whose persistence raised grave doubts about the viability of republican government.

Identify: New Deal, Social Security Act

The New Deal was a series of legislative acts, executive orders, and presidential proclamations that sought to remedy the broader economic problems that underlay the Great Depression as well as to secure individual security. During Roosevelt's tenure as president, not only was social security established to aid the aged, the unemployed, the disabled, and widows with dependent children, but work projects were financed by the greatest peacetime appropriation in history. The centerpiece of Roosevelt's program was the Social Security Act, which created a comprehensive federal system of old age and unemployment insurance. Selling social security to Congress and the country was no easy task. On June 19, 1934, remarking on the unusual American commitment to individual self-reliance,

Identify: 22th Amendment

The amendment prohibits any person from being elected president more than two times. It also limits vice presidents who succeed to the presidency to one elected term if they have served more than half of a departed president's four-year term. If they have served half or less than half of a term, they may be elected twice, for a maximum tenure of ten years.

Validate this statement: "FDR forged a vital link between the government and the people.

The first two weeks of Roosevelt's presidency lifted the spirit of the country. Clearly, the new president had forged a vital link between the government and the people. White House clerks who were accustomed to opening a thousand pieces of mail per day during peak periods found themselves snowed under by the 460,000 letters that greeted FDR's inauguration. As William Hopkins, who worked in the White House correspondence section, remembered, "The mail started coming in by the truckloads. They couldn't even get the envelopes open."

What precedent did FDR shatter in the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1932?

The nation became aware of FDR's innovating spirit when, shattering precedent, he hired a small plane to take him to the 1932 Democratic National Convention in Chicago to accept his party's nomination for president. In the past, major party nominees stayed away from the convention, waiting for official notification that they had been nominated.13 But Roosevelt wanted to demonstrate dramatically that his physical disability would not hinder him as a candidate or as the president.

What marks the 20th century as the time of the modern presidency? And, what roles does FDR play?

What marked the twentieth-century transformation of the executive was the emergence of the president, rather than Congress or political parties, as the leading instrument of popular rule, "the steward of the public welfare. It then fell to Franklin Roosevelt to consolidate, or institutionalize, the changes in the executive office that were initiated during the Progressive era by establishing rhetoric and administration as the pillars of a reconstituted presidency. After Roosevelt's long tenure, this new understanding of executive responsibilities led even conservative Republican presidents to wield the powers of the office in the manner of their liberal forebears.

How was the Korean War another occasion to expand the power of the presidency?

These included his 1945 decision to use atomic weapons against Japan to bring an end to World War II and his decision in 1950 to commit American troops to combat in Korea. The Korean intervention, which followed communist North Korea's invasion of South Korea, was another important extension of the president's powers as commander in chief. For the first time, American troops waged a full-scale overseas war without a congressional declaration.

What were Truman's two executive orders that advanced civil rights?

Truman established a committee headed by Solicitor General Charles Fahey that set the stage for the integration of the armed forces. Truman's other executive order forbade racial and ethnic discrimination in the federal civil service and established a Fair Employment Board to monitor hiring. This order was designed to uproot the discriminatory federal employment practices planted by the Wilson administration.

. Compare and contrast Truman to F Roosevelt

Truman eventually was able to emerge from FDR's shadow but not because he had much ability to rouse the public. In this respect, the contrast between Truman and Roosevelt was striking. "Truman possessed little or no charisma, struggled with an ego more fragile than most observers have understood, and had extreme distaste for the need to manipulate others," historian Alonzo L. Hamby has written.77 A poor speaker who was awkward in the presence of reporters and microphones, Truman suffered persistently low popularity. His public approval rating was less than 50 percent during most of his tenure, including his final three years as president

Identify: Bank Holiday, Hundred Days fireside chat

he issued the Bank Holiday Proclamation, which suspended "the heavy and unwarranted withdrawals of gold and currency from our banking institutions" in the states where banks remained open. The bank edict, an unprecedented exercise of executive power in peacetime, declared that from March 6 to March 9, banks in the United States must suspend all transactions. The bank bill and the fireside chat ended the banking crisis The bill was the first to be passed during the extraordinary One Hundred Days (from noon on March 9 to 1:00 a.m. on June 15, 1933), when Congress passed a relentless succession of Roosevelt-sponsored laws. Remarkably, the bank bill was enacted in less than eight hours. Forty-five minutes later, with photographers recording the scene, Roosevelt signed it into law.

What is meant by the "hidden hand"?

in which the president exercises power behind the scenes while presenting the public with an image of detachment from Washington's political machinations

How could one interpret FDR's election in 1932? In 1936?

The 1936 election ensured that the important political changes of Roosevelt's first term would endure. In 1932 his victory was more a rejection of Hoover than an endorsement of FDR and his party. The 1936 election, however, was a sweeping confirmation of his leadership and of the New Deal. The Republican campaign sought to resuscitate Hoover's idea of "rugged individualism." The GOP candidate, Kansas governor Alf Landon, argued in a September speech in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, that the Social Security Act

Identify: Fair Deal. What were its min elements?

The Fair Deal was Truman's attempt to codify Roosevelt's vision of a postwar economic order. "We have accepted," Roosevelt proclaimed in his 1944 State of the Union address, "a Second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed."82 To fulfill Roosevelt's vision, Truman argued, the federal government must guarantee everyone a useful and remunerative job, adequate medical care, a decent home, and a good education. The program that Truman presented to Congress in 1945 was an appeal, as he put it, "to make the attainment of those rights the essence of post-war economic life."83 He called for the extension of social security to more workers, a higher minimum wage, national health insurance, urban development, and full employment

What was FDR's "Court-packing bill?" Why did he propose it? Was FDR successful in his effort to pack the Supreme Court? Why did FDR claim that in losing the battle, he won the war?

the "Court-packing" bill. The bill provided that for every justice who failed to retire within six months of reaching the age of seventy, the president must appoint a new justice. Six of the nine justices were already seventy or older, which meant that Roosevelt would be able to enlarge the Court from nine to fifteen members by making new appointments. Presumably, these new justices would overcome the Court's resistance to the New Deal. Roosevelt's plan sought to eliminate the final constitutional barrier to a vast expansion of government activity, thereby ratifying the president's power to direct the affairs of state. Although the Court-packing bill failed in Congress, Roosevelt claimed that in losing the battle, he won the war. Beginning in March 1937, Justice Owen Roberts switched from the conservative to the liberal wing of the Court, and in rapid succession the justices approved a minimum wage law in Washington state, which was similar to a New York statute they found unconstitutional just a year earlier and, more significantly, upheld both the National Labor Relations Act and the Social Security Act. The "constitutional revolution of 1937" was cemented after a wave of deaths and retirements allowed Roosevelt to appoint a majority of justices by the end of his second term.49 The Court never again struck down a New Deal law. In fact, since 1937 the Supreme Court has not invalidated any significant federal statute to regulate the economy, nor has the Court judged any law (with the exception of the Line Item Veto Act of 1996) to be an unconstitutional delegation of congressional authority to the president.50 Most of the judicial barriers to presidential power have fallen.