General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: This is what a REAL Democrat sounds like. [View all]roguevalley
(40,656 posts)Life Before the Presidency
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born to James and Sara Roosevelt in 1882. James was a land-owner and businessmen of considerable, but not awesome, wealth from New York. He likely joined the Democratic Party in the 1850s and identified with the party for the remainder of his life, although he voted for Republicans on a number of occasions. A widower, he married Sara Delano, who was twenty-six years his junior, in 1880. Sara, one of the five beautiful Delano sisters, came from a family of considerable means and was notable both for her aristocratic manner and her independent streak.
After graduating from Groton, FDR went to Harvard College in 1900. He had only been in school for a few weeks when his father, who had suffered from a heart ailment for the previous decade, passed away. At Harvard, Roosevelt threw himself into a wide array of extracurricular activities, helping his social standing but hurting his grades, which were mostly average. After receiving his undergraduate degree in 1903 he returned for a year of graduate work; more important, he became editor of Harvard's student newspaper, the Crimson. While at Harvard, FDR apparently declared himself a member of the Democratic Party, although he remained fond of then-President Theodore Roosevelt.
Roosevelt ran for the state senate from Dutchess County in upstate New York, a region dominated by Republicans. He was a good candidate because of his name, his family's wealth, and his seemingly endless reservoir of energy, which allowed him to campaign tirelessly on a clean-up-government platform. FDR won the race by over a thousand votes, the clear beneficiary of his own efforts and a split in the Republican Party between progressives and conservatives.
In the state senate, Roosevelt proved a staunch defender of the farmers in his district, who were mostly Republicans, and a determined opponent of the Tammany Hall political machine that essentially ran New York City's Democratic Party. He even went so far as to oppose Tammany's choice for the U.S. Senate seat, earning him the enmity of that powerful group of politicians. Roosevelt's politics in these years were essentially of the progressive, new nationalist variety. Like his distant relative, former President Teddy Roosevelt, he generally believed that the government had to play a role in creating and maintaining a fair and equitable society, and in protecting individuals from concentrations of economic or political power.
A lot of people 'know' FDR but they don't. He was the greatest President in American history. Long live FDR, the hero of my family and savior of our country at a terrible dire moment.