Talk:Commonwealth Club Address

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Discussed in The American Political Tradition by Richard Hofstadter, who apparently did not consider it one of Roosevelt's best speeches, and certainly not one of the most-farsighted, but revealing of one particular moment in the early New Deal... AnonMoos (talk) 22:31, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Moley on origins

So much has been said about the origins of the Commonwealth speech that I think it is only fair to describe them. Roosevelt had originally planned to deliver merely a brief and unimportant greeting to the Club, which was meeting at noon. Knowing that it was an association of extraordinarily intelligent men devoted to the nonpartisan discussion of great public issues, I urged him to make a major speech there-to sum up, in fact, his political philosophy. He agreed. The idea of such a summary had come from Dalton and Bob Straus early in August, although they had no idea of how it should be done or where delivered, and I had asked Berle to make a draft of the ideas we had all been discussing from April through to September" - the ideas that were the basic chart of thought by which Roosevelt had been guided. Berle sent a fine draft to me while I was on the train, after going over it with Baruch and Johnson. Pittman and I worked on it, on and off, as did Roosevelt himself. It passed through the same mill that every other speech went through, and was not finally completed until the early morning before it was delivered. Raymond Moley, After Seven Years, 1939, p. 58 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.28.102.57 (talk) 03:02, 13 February 2018 (UTC)