The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - "The Only Thing To Fear, Is .... (pause for affect).... Fear Itself.

Episode Date: May 5, 2020

Looking for lessons in crisis leadership? Look no further than 1933.

and hello there peter mansbridge here with the latest episode of the bridge daily as i mentioned As I mentioned yesterday, today's bridge for Tuesday is kind of, well, what do we say, pre-canned, pre-recorded. If it's Tuesday for you right now, I recorded this yesterday on Monday. And the reason I'm doing that is actually because of what we talked about yesterday. We talked yesterday about this being the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Netherlands, in large part by Canadian troops. And as a result of that, I'll be doing a number of special programs tomorrow, not on the podcast, but special programs along with General Rick Hillier, the former Chief of the Defence Staff, with True Patriot Love, we're doing special, kind of like a Zoom broadcast,

to bring together some of the facts of that day, some of the celebrations attached to it in remembering what happened in terms of that liberation, and the large costs at which it came in terms of lives, including many Canadian troops. So we'll be doing that program tomorrow at 4 o'clock Eastern time, and you can track it down by going through the True Patriot Love website. So that'll be a busy day for me on Tuesday.

And as a result, Tuesday's podcast is being recorded on Monday for airing on Tuesday. And that's what you're listening to now. Now for some time, you've heard me talk about leadership. How difficult leadership is good, solid leadership. How difficult leadership is, good solid leadership. Some of my examples of you know good leadership through this crisis, the COVID-19 crisis. My hero from the past being Winston Churchill and especially his leadership through mainly 1940, 41, after he became prime minister in May of 1940,

and the very difficult times that England faced at that point and how through his inspiring speeches and leadership helped turn the corner. So Churchill was one. In this current crisis, I've often pointed to Angela Merkel of Germany. I've talked about Andrew Cuomo in the state of New York. I've talked about Dr. Bonnie Henry in BC. I've talked about a number of the leaders in our country, both public health officials in Ottawa and in the provinces, political leaders in Ottawa and the provinces. And I've also talked a little bit about Donald Trump at different times,

who I have no admiration for his leadership through this at all, zero. And I don't even want to go there to even talk about it. However, there's one person in terms of history who i haven't talked about and i've saved it for this and this is why i wanted to focus on this today because i'm going to use a couple of examples of the leadership qualities of this particular person because i think they're i think we can learn from them and i think we can learn from them. And I think leaders can learn from them. And young people who listen to this podcast, and I know there are more than a few because I hear from them in the mail,

can listen to these quotes. They may well have heard some of them before, but I think they are a lesson in leadership. I'm talking about Franklin Delano Roosevelt, FDR, President of the United States, elected as President in late 1932, became President in early 1933. You know how it works in the States

between the election day and inauguration day. He had been Governor of New York in the term previous, so he was aware of the terrible situation that was facing the country as a result of the stock market crash in 1929 and the Great Depression that followed. He'd promised a new deal for America. Well, it wasn't going to be easy. As he stepped up to the podium for his inauguration speech,

keep in mind what the landscape was as the Great Depression hit. It was literally tearing a society apart. There were 25 million people out of work. 40 million on the verge of starvation. 40 million on the verge of starvation. Even those lucky enough to be working were, you know, totally afraid they were going to lose their jobs. And that they too would have joined those vast armies of unemployed who were across the country, you know,

men having to leave their families and, you know, get on board trains, you know, jumping up onto freight cars to travel the country looking for a job. It was a desperate time as FDR became president. And the inauguration speech was set for outside the Capitol building in early March. March. Now, we're used to inaugurations taking place in January,

usually January 20th. Election in early November, inauguration two months later. Not then. It was like four months later. They were in March. And this was the last one. So FDR was going to become president.

As it turned out, he would never leave the presidency until the day he died in 1945. He won four elections, back to back to back to back. He died in office. But on this day, in March of 1933, he becomes president for the first time.

And he's facing that landscape that I just explained to you. Brutal. A brutal situation. So we look to his words for leadership. Imagine you're listening to these words. You're in the audience in Washington. Or you're hearing it if you're lucky enough to have a radio.

And you're worried about the future. And you're wondering what this new guy, what's he going to tell you to make you less fearful of what's happening? I'm just going to play not even a minute of this first inauguration address. Listen to this. Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

In every dark hour of our national life, a leadership of frankness and of vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves, which is essential to victory. And I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days. So there you have it. FDR from his inaugural address. Early March, 1933. And that one quote that lives forever, only thing we have to fear is, and that deliberate pause for effect, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

So that became the main lesson out of that inaugural address in a phrase that would live forever. And it's used again now, over and over again. You'll hear people use it during this crisis when they're trying to address this issue of fear. Well, I mean, it's commonly felt, well, that turned the corner for FDR. It gave him the support he would need of the public at large. Well, there were indications of that, but it did not gain immediate acceptance.

In fact, things got worse immediately after that speech. In the days that immediately followed, there was a run on the banks. People were scared of how bad things were. They were in fear. They wanted to get their money out. And when one person heard that his neighbor had gone to look for money at the bank, their money, he or she went as well. And when one town heard the town next to them was doing this, they went.

And it spread right across the country, and there was a run on the banks. People were desperate to get the money out. The president was told, you've got to do something about this. You've got to calm people down. But the only way to do that is tell them the truth. Okay? So the next week after the inauguration,

FDR begins what would become a series of, I think it was more than 30, 36, I think, what they ended up calling fireside chats. Now, they didn't call them fireside chats because he was sitting next to the fire. They call them fireside chats because most people were sitting next to fires. First of all, most people didn't have radios in the early 1930s. Certainly the people who were broken, busted, and living in tents didn't have radios. But a lot of people did have radios

and they would gather around the radio next to the fire and listen to, in this case, their president speaking to them about the crisis at hand. No TVs back then, no video games, radio. And radio that was powerful in its ability to gather people around.

And if you knew there was a radio across the street, you didn't have one, but your neighbor had one, you'd go to your neighbors to listen to these big moments. And this was the first of the big moments. Now, I'm going to play this one a little longer, four or five minutes, and I'm playing it for a reason. The issue was the banks, right? And people convinced that the banks had lost all their money because the banks ended up being closed after this run on the bank. They were closed for, FDR declared a bank holiday for four days while they tried to get their act together.

So he had to go explain what was happening to the banks, to the money, to their money. And so this is how he went about it. And I want you to listen because, first of all, it's scratchy. Scratchy radio. Don't you love it? I just love it because it's scratchy. Scratchy radio. Don't you love it? I just love it. Because it takes you back.

It takes you back to the early 1930s in the midst of the Great Depression. So this is what it would have sounded like. If you were sitting next to the fire, you were with your family. You thought you'd lost everything. And you wanted to be convinced you had not. So this is what you would have listened to. I'm not going to play the whole speech. They all ran about 10 or 15 minutes, these fireside chats.

Let's play about five, because you'll certainly understand what I'm getting at. Some of it's a little in the weeds about banking, but not a lot of it. This is like, this is what you wanted to hear in the midst of this chaos. So here we go. Let me just make sure I got it all ready.

I think I have. Let's give it a try. Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States. My friends, I want to talk for a few minutes with the people of the United States about banking. To talk with the comparatively few who understand the mechanics of banking, but more particularly with the overwhelming majority of you who use banks for the making of deposits and the drawing of checks. I want to tell you what has been done in the last few days

and why it was done and what the next steps are going to be. I recognize that the many proclamations from state capitals and from Washington, the legislation, the treasury regulations and so forth, couched for the most part in banking and legal terms, ought to be explained for the benefit of the average citizen. I owe this in particular because of the fortitude and the good temper with which everybody has accepted the inconvenience and the hardships of the banking holiday. And I know that when you understand what we in Washington have been about, I shall continue to have your cooperation as fully as I have had your sympathy and your

help during the past week. First of all, let me state the simple fact that when you deposit money in a bank, the bank does not put the money into a safe deposit vault. It invests your money in many different forms of credit, in bonds, in commercial paper, in mortgages, and in many other kinds of loans. In other words, the bank puts your money to work to keep the wheels of industry and of agriculture turning around. A comparatively small part of the money that you put into the bank is kept in currency, an amount which in normal times is wholly sufficient to cover the cash needs of the average citizen. In other words, the total amount of all the currency in the country

is only a comparatively small proportion of the total deposits in all the banks of the country. What then happened during the last few days of February and the first few days of March? Because of undermined confidence on the part of the public, there was a general rush by a large portion of our population to turn bank deposits into currency or gold. A rush so great that the soundest banks couldn't get enough currency to meet the demand. The reason for this was that on the spur of the moment, it was, of course, impossible to sell perfectly sound assets of a bank

and convert them into cash, except at panic prices far below their real value. By the afternoon of March 3rd, a week ago last Friday, scarcely a bank in the country was open to do business. Proclamations closing them in whole or in part had been issued by the governors in almost all of the states. It was then that I issued the proclamation providing for the national bank holiday.

And this was the first step in the government's reconstruction of our financial and economic fabric. The second step, last Thursday, was the legislation promptly and patriotically passed by the Congress confirming my proclamation and broadening my powers so that it became possible in view of the requirement of time to extend the holiday and lift the ban of that holiday gradually in the days to come. This law also gave authority to develop a program of rehabilitation of

our banking facilities and I want to tell our citizens in every part of the nation that the National Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, showed by this action a devotion to public welfare and a realization of the emergency and the necessity for speed that it is difficult to match in all our history. Well, there you go. All right, so that's FDR in what was the first of his fireside chats. And that's just the beginning of it.

As I said, it goes on for like 15 minutes. But here's the beauty of that and why to me that's leadership. You know, they say that nobody who listened to that speech ever forgot it. First, the times. It was chaotic. Society was on the verge of splitting apart.

People were incredibly fearful of what had happened and what could happen. And so they crowded around the radio to listen to their president, who took them inside the banking system in a very understanding way, explaining to them exactly what happens to your money when you put it in a bank and what doesn't happen to it. All this to try and lower the temperature. It wasn't going to solve the Great Depression. There was lots more needed than that. But it obviously, they had to start somewhere.

And they had a banking crisis. That's where they started. And it had an immediate impact. He didn't talk, it wasn't a river of eyes, if you know what I mean. I did this and I did that and I saved this and I saved that. It wasn't that president talking like that. This was a president explaining the situation, being very deliberate in walking through what was happening

and why you could still have confidence in the system. And in the leadership, not of his, but of the leadership of government, and the bipartisan nature of the U.S. Congress confronting this situation. Together, they were going to provide leadership that would make a difference. So it's no wonder why people point to FDR. That was, the guy had been president for a week. Right? A week. One of the reasons why he would go on to win the election in 36, the election in 1940, the election in 1944, died in 45, just before the war ended. And Harry Truman became the U.S. president.

So think about FDR. Here's a guy who faced two huge crises in his presidency. Not one. Some never face one. He faced two. He stared down the Great Depression. And then he stared down the Nazis and the war in the Pacific. That's a leader.

Right? We can all learn from that. All right. As I said said this was a special broadcast for this day and tomorrow we'll get back to back to things COVID-19 although I think even in these past two days we've seen qualities

about the people we've discussed and talked about whether they were in the final days of the war We've seen qualities about the people we've discussed and talked about, whether they were in the final days of the war in Europe in 1945, or whether they were in the earliest days of dealing with the Great Depression with FDR in the early 1930s. So thanks for listening in. This is Peter Mansbridge with The Bridge Daily, and we'll be back again in seven days.

Did I really say in seven days? I meant in 24 hours. Okay? All right, all meant in 24 hours. Okay? All right, all right. 24 hours, we'll be back tomorrow. Don't miss it. you