David Beito’s new book argues that Roosevelt’s record reveals a president driven more by power than principle.

David Beito argues that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a self-serving politician who cared very little for the civil liberties of Americans. In FDR: A New Political Life, Beito challenges historians who explain away Roosevelt’s horrid record on civil rights as politically strategic (in the case of black Americans) or as an exception (in the case of Japanese internment).

Instead, Beito contends that FDR’s glib view of civil liberties was core to his worldview. Additionally, Beito emphasizes that Roosevelt’s economic policies were ineffective and at times counterproductive, and that his reliance on top-down solutions to the Great Depression violated the economic liberties of Americans. In short, FDR was the worst president on individual liberty since Woodrow Wilson, and he might have been even worse.

Beito begins by recounting Roosevelt’s actions as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under Wilson. FDR “gave unquestioning support” to Wilson’s attack on free speech and expression during the conflict and demonstrated no “strong ideological commitments to the Bill of Rights.” During the notorious white violence against black Americans during the “Red Summer” of 1919, Roosevelt did nothing as white sailors attacked black streetcar passengers. The violence spread to 26 cities and when the NAACP demanded that the sailors and marines be arrested, FDR and the rest of the Wilson administration initially did nothing. Writing to a Harvard classmate, FDR joked, “With your experience in handling Africans in Arkansas, I think you had better come here and take charge of the police force.”

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