The Fall Of The House Of Roosevelt Brokers Of Ideas And Power From Fdr To Lbj Michael Janeway by Michael Janeway 9780231505772, 0231505779 instant download after payment.

In the 1930s and 1940s a band of smart and able young men-Thomas G. Corcoran, Benjamin V. Cohen, William O. Douglas, Abe Fortas, and James Rowe-helped Franklin D. Roosevelt build the modern American state and a progressive political coalition that seemed invincible. These junior officers of the New Deal numbered among their favorite members of Congress the young Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas. For thirty years, through LBJ's own presidency, they functioned as his intimate "kitchen cabinet."Michael Janeway grew up with an insider view of these brokers of ideas and power because his father, economist and journalist Eliot Janeway, was a member of their circle. Janeway crafts a riveting account of how these men worked together to fuse reform impulses in the social sciences and law with political advancement. Can a progressive coalition of ideas and power come together again? The Fall of the House of Roosevelt makes such a prospect both alluring and daunting.

In the 1930s a band of smart and able young men, some still in their twenties, helped Franklin D. Roosevelt transform an American nation in crisis. They were the junior officers of the New Deal. Thomas G. Corcoran, Benjamin V. Cohen, William O. Douglas, Abe Fortas, and James Rowe helped FDR build the modern Democratic Party into a progressive coalition whose command over power and ideas during the next three decades seemed politically invincible.
This is the first book about this group of Rooseveltians and their linkage to Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and the Vietnam War debacle. Michael Janeway grew up inside this world. His father, Eliot Janeway, business editor of Time and a star writer for Fortune and Life magazines, was part of this circle, strategizing and practicing politics as well as reporting on these men. Drawing on his intimate knowledge of events and previously unavailable private letters and other documents, Janeway crafts a riveting account of the exercise of power during the New Deal and its aftermath. He shows how these men were at the nexus of reform impulses at the electoral level with reform thinking in the social sciences and the law and explains how this potent fusion helped build the contemporary American state. Since that time efforts to reinvent government by "brains trust" have largely failed in the U.S. In the last quarter of the twentieth century American politics ceased to function as a blend of broad coalition building and reform agenda setting, rooted in a consensus of belief in the efficacy of modern government.
Can a progressive coalition of ideas and power come together again? The Fall of the House of Roosevelt makes such a prospect both alluring and daunting.