The FDR Tradition: Shadow Boxing

Franklin D. Roosevelt led the United States through the Great Depression and World War II, the worst crises any contemporary voter remembers. During his 12 years in office, moreover, Democrats and Republicans sorted themselves into the ideological pattern that still survives today. Before the 1930s, it was hard to tell conservatives from self-proclaimed progressives; thereafter, though cultural differences sometimes shattered economic alliances and electoral appeals still tended to obfuscate,...