Rhetorical Analysis Of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Address To The Commonwealth Club

My friends:
I want to speak not of politics, but of government. I want to speak not of parties, but of universal principles. They are not political, except in that larger sense in which a great American once expressed a definition of politics, that nothing in all of human life is foreign to the science of politics… The issue of government has always been whether individual men and women will have to serve some system of government and economics, or whether a system of government and economics exists to serve individual men and women. On questions relating to these things men have differed, and for time immemorial it is probable that honest men will continue to differ.
Thus began Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s address to the Commonwealth Club

of San Francisco on September 23, 1932, in the midst of the Great Depression and the 1932 presidential campaign. This speech can be accessed from the American Rhetoric Online Speech Bank. In it, he tackles the nation’s social and economic woes, while radically redefining individualism and the government’s role in the economy and responsibility to its citizens. The vision he lays out in this address paves the way to his election and provides the philosophical basis for the New Deal, which reinvigorates the American economy.
To analyze the greatness of this address, we can utilize Lloyd Bitzer’s understanding of the rhetorical situation.

According to Bitzer, a rhetorical situation is the context in which a speaker or writer creates rhetorical discourse. The goal of an effective speech in this model is to modify the situation by responding to an exigence, which Bitzer defines as ”an imperfection marked by urgency”, and compelling an audience, or group of interested individuals with the ability to induce change, to take action, all while meeting or overcoming constraints, which limit action, and are either a part of the situation or imposed by the speaker. In this case, Roosevelt’s situation is the dire economic state of the country, and his exigence is the continued suffering of the victims of that state and the rise of the emerging economic oligarchy who caused it. His audience is twofold; in the immediate term, it is the members of the prestigious Commonwealth Club, all of whom are influential, and very capable of making change. In a broader sense, it is the American people, whose ability to modify the situation comes both from their personal actions, and through the ballot box. In the next excerpt, Roosevelt will begin to lay out a progressive economic history of America, giving him a means to clarify the present

situation.
The American colonies were born in this struggle. The American Revolution was a turning point in it. After the revolution, the struggle continued and shaped itself in the public life of the country. Mr. Jefferson, in the summer of 1776, after drafting the Declaration of Independence turned his mind to the problem. Jefferson realized that the exercise of property rights might so interfere with the rights of the individual that the government, without whose assistance the property rights could not exist, must intervene, not to destroy individualism but to protect it. So began the day in which individualism was made the great watchword of American political life. No one, who did not shirk the task of earning a living, was entirely without opportunity to do so. There was always the possibility of climbing into a covered wagon and moving west where the untilled prairies afforded a haven for men to whom the East did not provide a place.
In this excerpt, Roosevelt begins to present his progressive economic history of the United States. His talk of past economic prosperity, independence, and timely recovery was easily contrasted with the prolonged drudgery and desperation of the time, helping to clarify the situation for the audience. His invocation of Thomas Jefferson, a founding-father and American icon, allows him to ground his new progressive vision in the ideals and traditions of America and reassure his audience that his intent is to restore American values, not betray them. Here we can also see Roosevelt’s rethinking of individualism, not as something associated with absolute economic freedom, but as something that can be protected by means of collective action against entrenched economic interests. In the next excerpt, Roosevelt castigates the undue power of corporations and their irresponsible executives for their role in bringing about the nation’s dire economic situation, and starkly articulates his exigence.
In retrospect we can now see that the turn of the tide came with the turn of the century. We were reaching our last frontier; there was no more free land and our industrial combinations had become great uncontrolled and irresponsible units of power within the state. Clear-sighted men saw with fear the danger that opportunity would no longer be equal; that the growing corporation, might threaten the economic freedom of individuals to earn a living. In that hour, Theodore Roosevelt, the first great Republican progressive, fought a Presidential campaign on the issue of “trust busting” and talked freely about malefactors of great wealth. A glance at the situation today only too clearly indicates that equality of opportunity as we have known it no longer exists. The unfeeling statistics of the past three decades show that the independent business man is running a losing race. Recently a careful study was made of the concentration of business in the United States. It showed that our economic life was dominated by some six hundred odd corporations who controlled two-thirds of American industry. Ten million small business men divided the other third. More striking still, it appeared that if the process of concentration goes on at the same rate, at the end of another century we shall have all American industry controlled by a dozen corporations, and run by perhaps a hundred men. Put plainly, we are steering a steady course toward economic oligarchy, if we are not there already.
In this excerpt, Roosevelt explains the history of the rise of corporate power in the United States and its economic implications.

Here he unequivocally declares the exigence, the threat of America’s rapid pace towards economic oligarchy, which has urgency in that it cannot be stopped once the oligarchs become so entrenched and acquire so much power that their rise cannot be reversed. Here FDR also keeps to his opening pledge of non-partisanship by invoking Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican, who shared his progressive values and provides a model to the audience for taking action to modify the situation that FDR decries. In the next excerpt, we hear Roosevelt lay out the actions he believes need to be taken to modify the situation, and introduce his constraints, both those provided by the situation, and those that he imposes

himself.
As I see it, the task of government in its relation to business is to assist the development of an economic declaration of rights.
Every man has a right to life; and this means that he has also a right to make a comfortable living. Our government owes to every one an avenue to possess a portion sufficient for his needs, through his own work.
Every man has a right to his own property; which means a right to be assured, to the fullest extent attainable, in the safety of his savings. If, in accord with this principle, we must restrict the operations of the speculator, the manipulator, even the financier, I believe we must accept the restriction as needful, not to hamper individualism but to protect it.
The responsible heads of finance and industry instead of acting each for himself, must work together to achieve this common end. Whenever in the pursuit of this objective, the unethical competitor, the Ishmael or Insull whose hand is against every man’s, declines to join in achieving an end recognized as being for the public welfare, the government must be swift to enter and protect the public interest.
In this section, Roosevelt expresses his vision for reinvigorating the American economy. This involves a far more activist approach than the government had previously taken, and provides the basis for his signature New Deal programs, which radically shift the economic policies of the Federal government toward Keynesianism; a shift which persists for generations, and is in many ways still present in federal policy. Here he also acknowledges the constraints of the situation and imposes some of his own. Constraints inherent to the situation include the constitution and laws of the United States and the situation’s economic realities. Those he himself imposes, center around his devotion to the economic interests of working people and and take the form of his economic declaration of rights, which is rooted in his Keynesian economic views and through which he intends to make the economic recovery work for everyone. A constraint he decides is improper and must be overcome is the precedent of prior U.S. economic policy.
This speech is great within Bitzer’s Rhetorical Situation because it was effectively used to bring about a modification of the situation, the nation’s economic state, by convincing an audience, the American people, to take action, while meeting and breaking its various constraints. It is great in a broader sense, because of the profound historical impact that Roosevelt’s election and New Deal policies left and because of the influence of the ideas articulated in the address. Roosevelt’s reconciliation of individualism and collective action became a central tenet of progressivism the new era of social-democratic government activism that he ushered in. The address also carries relevance to our modern situation; our economy is now plagued by vastly more inequality than it was in Roosevelt’s day. Even the term “economic oligarchy” that Roosevelt uses so powerfully is still present in our politics; having served as a rallying cry of Bernie Sanders during the 2016 presidential campaign. Listen now, as Roosevelt closes with a powerful call to action for the American people.
Faith in America, faith in our tradition of personal responsibility, faith in our institutions, faith in ourselves demands that we recognize the new terms of the old social contract. We shall fulfill them, as we fulfilled the obligation of the apparent Utopia which Jefferson imagined for us in 1776, and which Roosevelt sought to bring to realization. We must do so, lest a rising tide of misery engendered by our common failure, engulf us all. But failure is not an American habit; and in the strength of great hope we must all shoulder our common load.