. I think the message that FDR was trying to get across was that he wasn't going to be a president who just sat back, like a few before him. He wanted the people to know that he was going to do what it took to get laws passed, and make their lives better without overstepping his constitutional boundaries. In his inaugural speech, he stated that he would try and pass laws through congress and if congress did not approve of the laws, then he would rally the people to help persuade congress and also take the decision to a higher authority. He said that he would do all of this while remaining within his limits pre set by the constitution.
Some examples of his quick action were when he handled the banking crisis on March 5. He closed the bank so that the government could reorganize the weaker ones. In June, Congress created the FDC to guarantee that banks had deposits. He helped change the lives of the farmers by establishing the AAA to combat the depression in agriculture caused by the depression.
Everything that he did was to help the people of the United States deal with the depression and help to solve all of the problems they were facing. These problems not only included the threat of war, but also the money issues that every family was facing. He tried to establish safety nets to catch and then save the industries so that a depression would never happen again.
His messages was not that he would just go on a rampage and try to fix everything all at once, his message was just that he would try his best within his limits to be as productive as possible to try and help the American people better their lives as soon as they legally could.
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Very nicely done, Caitlin. You have identified some of the most important points in this very famous speech. The promise to take decisive action to end the Depression was in direct contrast with Hoover who did not take such action and had lost the confidence of the American people. FDR understood that he needed to broaden the power of the executive branch if he was going to get the nation on the road to recovery. As you so rightly point out, he does this during his first 100 days in office as he puts in place a whole series of programs designed to address the main problems facing the nation at the time: unemployment, bank closures, failing businesses.
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