From the first day of his presidency, FDR kept a full schedule and worked
long hours, dispelling any doubts about his ability to handle the demands
of the office. The challenges he faced were many. On inauguration day, he
confronted a country on the verge of economic collapse. The banking system
in had all but shut down, there was massive unemployment, and many feared
at the time that if things got much worse the United States might
disintegrate into revolution. But declaring that "the only thing we
have to fear is fear itself," FDR met this crisis much like he had met
his own personal catastrophe of polio: with optimism, energy, and imagination.
During FDR's first famous "hundred days" in office, for example, his
administration salvaged the banking system and passed a flurry of legislation —
15 major laws — that launched a recovery program known as the New Deal. In an
echo to his earlier roll at Warm Springs he even called himself "Dr. New Deal"
and brought to the White House the same management techniques he had learned
running the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation. America needed to be rehabilitated,
its "cure" required experimentation, and over the course of the New Deal, all
sorts of economic theories, work programs, and social experiments were tried.
If they worked, they were kept. If they did not, they were cast aside.
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