U.S. At War: Death of a Cause

To a stay-late guest at a White House press conference (the Cleveland Press's Preacher-Columnist Dilworth Lupton) Franklin Roosevelt confided that he wished reporters wouldn't use that term New Deal. There is no need of a New Deal now, said the President. He hoped somebody would think up a catchy way to sloganize "win the war."

Franklin Roosevelt had closed his speech and opened an era at Chicago in 1932 with his famed line: "I pledge you—I pledge myself—to a new deal for the American people."

But that mauve decade had died long ago, long before its ten years were up. The voters and...