vision and focus is the sheer number of new initiatives that were launched, many of which overlapped or were abandoned. The resultant alphabet soup - WPA, CCC, WPC and the rest - might seem to betray a lack of a coherent programme. In one of his early fireside chats Roosevelt defended these measures as not just a collection of haphazard schemes, but rather the orderly component parts of a connected and logical whole. He may have been overstating his case: a year earlier, in 1932, he had talked of the need for bold, persistent experimentation, intimating that some policy failures along the way were to be expected. What this should not hide is that his ultimate objective of a new birth for the American Dream, adapted for a modern world, was there from the start and remained with him, even though the New Deal was pragmatic and many new ideas were tried out and failed. Its guiding principle throughout was that it was the national governments duty to look after the whole nation. If the rest of government shirked this responsibility, as indeed occurred, then the Presidency was prepared to take up the slack. The New Deal arrived at a time when America desperately needed leadership to drag it out of the hole it was in. No other institution of government - state or federal - was able or willing to cope with this responsibility. FDR arrived promising hope and change, and America believed him. It was not by accident that the presidency in Washington became powerful: it was because, ultimately, the American people wanted a leader, and the President was prepared to fill that role. By the time he was gone, he had performed this task so ably, with such vigour, and for so long, that he had effectively changed the course of US government and politics....
