SOURCE: "Roosevelt's Fireside Chats," in Speech Monographs, Vol. XXII, No. 5, November, 1955, pp. 290-302.

In the following essay, Braden and Brandenburg explore the significance and effectiveness of Roosevelt's direct communication with the American people via radio with his so-called "Fireside Chats. "

At a tense moment in his career Franklin D. Roosevelt opened one of his speeches with these sentences:

Our government, happily, is a democracy. As part of the democratic process, your President is again taking an opportunity to report on the progress of national affairs to the real rulers of this country—the voting public.

1

Herein Roosevelt expressed succinctly a major tenet of his political creed. Throughout his career when he needed support, he frequently took his case to the people, hoping to create sufficient pressure to assure the success of his program. Grace Tully, his private secretary for many years, noted that he "had a profound respect...