Franklin Roosevelt is the single most important President and World Leader of all time. To begin with, Roosevelt’s wife, Eleanor was the first major figure in the Country since the Civil War to openly denounce Segregation and advised Franklin to hire African Americans to advisory positions, establishing the “Black Cabinet.” In addition to this, Franklin was the first sitting President to meet with the President of the NAACP. Roosevelt also signed the first anti-discrimination order since the Civil War with Executive Order 8802 which banned discriminatory hiring practices in the arms industry. The New Deal drew black voters to the Democratic Party, and Roosevelt became the first Democrat to ever win the African American vote in 1936 and that vote has only become more solidly Democratic since, with Roosevelt protégé Lyndon Johnson going on to win 95% of the black vote in 1964.

Roosevelt also fundamentally changed the concept of Government, with fellow Democrat Grover Cleveland’s quote “Though the people support the government, the government should not support the people,” being the dominant view of those in Government at the time, Roosevelt flipped this idea on its head and suddenly the Government was both helping the people and being supported by the people through Programs like the Works Progress Administration and the Tennessee Valley Administration, and the biggest overhaul came in the form of the Social Security Administration, which would prove to be perhaps the most important piece of legislation of the 20^th century and would become the basis of similar laws throughout the world after World War II. Also, Franklin Roosevelt helped invent Physical Therapy after he opened the nation’s first rehabilitation centers in Warm Springs, Georgia, meaning that there are very likely people who can walk today because of Franklin Roosevelt.

He led the nation through the greatest trials it has ever faced, in which he saved both Capitalism through his New Deal policies and Freedom itself through his policy on Nazis. Even after he died, he continued to affect the nation, with John F. Kennedy’s family getting started in politics with his Securities Exchange Commission, Lyndon Johnson becoming so obsessed with Franklin Roosevelt that he quit his job as a High School Teacher to run for Congress and Ronald Reagan actually starting to care about politics by voting for Franklin at least three times. So, Franklin Roosevelt is everywhere around us and is the cornerstone for American politics between 1933 and 1993.