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The Roosevelt dictatorship was a proposed period of governance in the United States which would have seen President of the United States Franklin Roosevelt assume extraordinary powers either by an explicit grant of Congress or through an autogolpe. Rhetorical and armed support for what was variously called a "mild species of dictatorship" or a "benevolent autocracy" reached a zenith in 1933. Though Roosevelt signaled an early intent to seek extraordinary powers, and would come to exercise broad executive authority throughout his 13 years in office, he ultimately decided to govern within the limit of constitutional restrictions.

Background

In 1933 there were increasing calls for Roosevelt (pictured) to assume absolute political power in the United States.

The 1932 United States presidential election saw Franklin Roosevelt win election as President of the United States in a lopsided and crushing victory over incumbent Republican president Herbert Hoover. Roosevelt's victory came at the height of the Great Depression and was buoyed by his use of pseudo-populist appeals. Roosevelt's ascendancy occurred during an era in which the creation of totalitarian states in German, Italy, Japan, Spain, Poland, and other places has led its characterization as an age of plebiscitary dictatorship.

"For Dictatorship, If Necessary"

Between the time of his November 1932 election, and his March 1933 inauguration, several influential voices in American political commentary called for Roosevelt to assume extraordinary powers upon taking office. In his nationally syndicated newspaper column, Walter Lippmann wrote that "a mild species of dictatorship will help us over the roughest spots in the road ahead" while the New York Herald Tribune opined similar sentiment in an editorial titled "For Dictatorship, If Necessary". The magazine Commonweal, meanwhile, put forth the contention that Roosevelt should assume "the powers of a virtual dictatorship to reorganize the government". Roger Babson called for limitations to be imposed on the powers of Congress, including the abolition of the Senate of the United States, while Will Rogers supported proposals to extend extraordinary powers to Roosevelt by writing that "Mussolini could take our country today and put people back to work at the rate of one million per month".

The month prior to his March 1933 inauguration, the U.S. House of Representatives introduced legislation that would allow Roosevelt unilateral authority to suspend congressional appropriations, abolish government departments, dismiss civil servants at his discretion, and reduce statutory appropriations and contractual payments. Bertrand Snell — leader of the Republican Party in the House — criticized the bill which, he said, would "make an absolute dictator of Roosevelt. It would give him more power than any executive leader in the world except Mussolini".

Though the measure was ultimately defeated by the Senate, Roosevelt nonetheless received letters from around the nation imploring him to assume extraordinary powers. One correspondent wrote that the Roosevelt administration marked the end of the influence of "special interests" in the United States and that, should "the politicians" fail to extend sufficient power to Roosevelt, "the people of this country will come to Washington and clothe you with the power". Alpheus Geer, of the Association for Better Citizenship, wrote the president that "a benevolent autocracy is the most efficient form of government". Another supporter wrote to Roosevelt that if he "assume[d] dictatorship", he would "be immortalized because the mass of the American people are with you".

The following October, the Khaki Shirts of America, a paramilitary group led by United States Army veteran Art J. Smith, was raided by police in Philadelphia. According to UPI reports, the group planned to launch a lightning strike against Washington, D.C. "with the intention of making President Roosevelt 'dictator of America'". At the time of the raid, 300 armed Khaki Shirt partisans were waiting for vehicle pick-up to take them to the armory of the 111th Infantry Regiment which was to be looted of additional arms and weapons prior to the planned attack against the capital city.

Roosevelt's response

During his March 1933 inauguration address, Roosevelt enjoyed immense crowd approval when he stated that he was considering seeking sweeping authority equal to what a president might be granted during a mainland invasion of the United States:

... in the event that the Congress shall fail to take one of these two courses, and in the event that the national emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me. I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis—broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.

Eleanor Roosevelt would later write that she found the moment "a little terrifying" due to the enthusiasm with which the crowd greeted the suggestion. During this period, according to Benjamin Alpers, the "press almost universally noted the new president's calls for greater power and just as universally had nothing detrimental to say about them".

That month Roosevelt was scheduled to address the American Legion, in what would be his first public speech since the inauguration. In the first draft of his speech, he planned to declare his authority to arm and discipline the legion into an auxiliary military force to, in the words of historian Jonathan Alter, "guard banks or put down rebellions" as the president's "private army". One line, removed from that draft of the speech, read:

As new commander-in-chief under the oath to which you are still bound I reserve to myself the right to command you in any phase of the situation which now confronts us.

Aftermath

Ultimately, Roosevelt decided not to move ahead with the assumption of totalitarian authority, and though he would exercise increasingly broad executive powers throughout his administration, limited himself to constitutionally imposed limits. Following the arrest of the Khaki Shirts, in October 1933, Roosevelt — addressing students of Washington College — opined that a dictatorship was unnecessary and more could be accomplished through cooperation than through coercion. Nevertheless, partly as a result of the early enthusiasm of his supporters for extra-constitutional measures, he would be plagued by accusations that he sought dictatorial powers throughout his 13 years in office.

A 1936 poll by the American Institute of Public Opinion saw 45-percent of the public answering "yes" to the question "Do you believe acts and policies of the Roosevelt administration may lead to dictatorship?" with affirmative answers highest among Republicans (83-percent), independent voters (53-percent), and socialists (30-percent), and lowest among Democrats (nine-percent). Residents of Vermont and Maine led states in answering yes (69-percent and 66-percent, respectively), while those of Mississippi and Alabama were most skeptical (22-percent and 20-percent, respectively) that Roosevelt was leading the country towards dicatorship.

The Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937, frequently called Roosevelt's "court-packing plan", reignited charges of Roosevelt's dictatorial ambitions. Meanwhile, Wendell Wilkie responded to the 1940 Destroyers for Bases agreement by characterizing it as the "most arbitrarial and dictatorial action ever taken in the history of the United States". Though he agreed with the proposal, Wilkie believe it should have been authorized by Congress. And, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch denounced Roosevelt as a war-crime committing dictator over the agreement.

See also

• Business Plot, an aborted military coup targeted against Roosevelt
• Criticism of Franklin D. Roosevelt