When he died, his successor said he felt as though “the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me.”
Harry Truman was speaking of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Their tenure began at a time when, around the world, economic downturn led to unemployment, poverty, institutional failures. Populism was on the rise. The beginnings of WWII.
Seismic shifts in the role of government were required in order to combat the effects of the Great Depression and establish a New Deal with America. Government became a force strong enough, large enough, and compassionate enough to provide immediate relief and spark economic recovery. We began to reform how the institutions in our country operate – and for whom.
In the same period, Eleanor Roosevelt served as ‘First Lady to the World,’ working with the United Nations to draft a Universal Declaration of Human Rights. She built a platform of her own, using her weekly radio show and monthly opinion column to take a stand on civil and women’s rights.
They were born into immense wealth and near-absolute privilege. Infidelity, internment, civil liberties, privacy, free speech, gate-keeping… nostalgia is not the aim. Imperfect leaders navigated complex times and advanced imperfect efforts to rise to the occasion.
Aim & Arrow held its team retreat in Washington, D.C. last week to reflect on the role of government in the health and human service sectors. Our clients are rapidly building and rebuilding sustainability scenarios for their work. They are preparing for lawsuits to protect the data and the rights of the people they serve. Their grants are frozen. Their hands are tied. They are fighting but they are helpless, sometimes, in the face of this new role of government – this new deal being dealt to the people of America.
When we entered the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, we agreed to a contemplative, private walk through the ‘rooms’ of FDR’s presidency – each a term, each filled with quotations, waterscapes, relief panels, sculptures, projects, legislation, impact.
We didn’t reflect, together, on what the walk meant to each of us. But we met each other silently at the end of all the rooms, saying – look at how far we are now, from where we were then.
As far as the stretch of the moon. As the length between stars. As the fall of planets.