"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." These are some of
the most famous, most quoted, and best remembered words in
American political history. They seem to be a natural idiomatic
expression of American democratic will, yet these words from
Franklin Roosevelt's first inaugural address had an actual author
who struggled with how best to express that thought—and it
was not the new president. In this innovative book on the crafting
of FDR's crucial speech, Davis W. Houck leads the reader from its
negative, mechanical, and Hooverian first draft through its final
revision, its delivery, and the responses of those who were inspired
by it during those troubled times.

    Houck's analysis, dramatic and at points riveting, focuses on
three themes: how the speech came to be written, an explication of
the text itself, and its reception. Drawing on the writings and
memories of several people who were present in the crowd at the
inauguration, Houck shows how powerfully the new president's
speech affected those who were there or who heard it on the radio.
Some were so moved by Roosevelt's delivery that they would have
been willing to make him a dictator, and many believed such
inspired words could have come only from a divine source.

    Houck then flashes back to the final year of the 1932 presidential
campaign to show how Raymond Moley, the principal architect of
the address, came to be trusted by Roosevelt to craft this important
speech. Houck traces the relationships of Moley with Roosevelt
and Roosevelt's influential confidante, Louis Howe, who was
responsible for important changes in the speech's later drafts,
including the famous aphorism.

   Although the book focuses primarily on the speech and its
drafting, Houck also offers telling glimpses of Roosevelt's complex
relationship with his wife, who dreaded her new duties as First
Lady, and his deep, personal dislike of Herbert Hoover, all the
while conveying a strong sense of the urgency of the times. The
text of this compelling address is provided in its entirety so that
students and others may experience for themselves the full power
of the rhetoric.

_________________________________________________________

DAVIS W. HOUCK, an assistant professor of communication at
Florida State University, has written several works on presidential
rhetoric, including Rhetoric as Currency: Hoover, Roosevelt, and
the Great Depression, also published by Texas A&M University
Press. He lives in Tallahassee, Florida.


The Library of Presidential Rhetoric