Although President Franklin Delano Roosevelt neither came from
the working and lower classes nor always acted in their
interests, he did, at significant moments, speak for and to the
“forgotten man.” One of those key moments came in January 1937
when he was inaugurated for his second term—the first time that
the presidential inauguration was held on January 20 rather than
March 4 (a change brought about by the twentieth amendment).
Roosevelt’s stirring words help explain why that one-third of
the nation went to the polls in November 1936 and reelected him
in one of the great landslides in American political
history.Listen to Audio: My fellow countrymen. When four years
ago we met to inaugurate a President, the Republic, single-
minded in anxiety, stood in spirit here. We dedicated ourselves
to the fulfillment of a vision—to speed the time when there
would be for all the people that security and peace essential to
the pursuit of happiness. We of the Republic pledged ourselves
to drive from the temple of our anc