Were president Roosevelt's economic and diplomatic policies leading up to world war 2 in any way conservative or were they completely liberal?

Answer 1

Although President Roosevelt's economic and diplomatic policies leading up to World War II were primarily liberal in nature, the reality of the situation he found himself in and his class of birth bias against "rash and unproven changes" being made resulted in a definite but little recognized conservative twist to his policies as a whole. For example throughout the 1930s America was conservative and resolutely isolationist in global matters. Although Roosevelt was a liberal internationalist he acquiesced to this conservative trend until late in the decade. Roosevelt's plan was to relieve the United States of despair caused by Great Depression. The New Deal faced some very vocal conservative opposition. The first organized opposition in 1934 came from the American Liberty League led by Democrats such as 1924 and 1928 presidential candidates John W. Davis and Al Smith. There was also a large loose grouping of opponents of the New Deal who have come to be known as the Old Right which included politicians, intellectuals, writers, and newspaper editors of various philosophical persuasions including classical liberals and conservatives along with Democrats and Republicans. A majority of Americans in the 1930s considered the New Deal successful because some actual recovery had occurred and President Roosevelt had infused his administration with the spirit of optimism. The New Deal lacked any consistent ideological base; Roosevelt did what he thought would work, borrowing ideas from the populist tradition on inflating currency, from Theodore Roosevelt's New Nationalism on deemphasizing competition and relaxing antitrust laws, from the Progressive social workers helping the downtrodden, and from Wilson's wartime agencies on establishing bureaucratic procedures. Rival officials within the administration and special interest groups battled to implement their own views, while Roosevelt mediated between them. Communists, classical liberals, conservatives, and Herbert Hoover used the term fascism in that manner at that time. Likewise, modern-day paleoconservatives argue that the New Deal was a major milestone in the rise of America's managerial state.The intent was to stimulate the economy, alleviate unemployment and industrial stagnation, and inject optimism into the American public. Alike and among the programs introduced in Roosevelt's first New Deal were the National Recovery Administration, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, the Tennessee Valley Administration, and the Works Progress Administration. But because unemployment still remained high, optimism was not always easy to come by and Roosevelt had his detractors. As the depression continued, Roosevelt unveiled the second New Deal in 1935; it introduced deficit spending and was somewhat less business-friendly than earlier efforts. Roosevelt won reelection in 1936, and emboldened by his triumph and frustrated by opposition from the Supreme Court to some of the New Deal programs, attempted to increase the number of judges on the Court. He failed, and although some judges became friendlier and others retired or died and thus allowed Roosevelt to name replacements, the court-packing scheme was a blow to Roosevelt. This episode also essentially marked the beginning of the end of the New Deal, as a "Roosevelt recession" gripped the country in 1937. .