FDR's biggest mistake

[MarkD]

For this poll, I vote for the internment camps issue but I want to add this observation: FDR's mistake was that he unquestioningly believed the intelligence report he received in which it was claimed that the Japanese military was planning a sneak invasion into the west coast of the US. That was in a report written by intelligence-gathering agents, but it was a lie -- a falsehood concocted by some bigoted member of the intelligence agency. The fact that he automatically trusted his agents without verifying whether anyone else had also discovered the same information was the president's mistake.

In terms of the Court-packing plan, I think it is important to recognize that a major factor that entered into play why the public and Congress declined to support his proposal was because FDR was originally not honest about why he was proposing. When he first told the public about what he was going to propose to Congress, he dishonestly said that the "nine old men" were overburdened in their workload and needed some additional assistance. Everybody knew that explanation was very misleading, and he eventually got around to giving a more honest explanation for the plan -- that he wanted to change the ideological direction of the Court so it would stop striking down New Deal legislation. But the fact that he was initially dishonest might have been an important reason why the public and Congress chose to oppose the idea.