How was Franklin D. Roosevelt's tenure as president considered an imperial presidency ?

Question

Besides the fact that he ran for presidency 4 times and got elected 4 times , what else made his stay in office an "imperial" one ?

Thanks !

Answer 1

His was the longest presidential term in office.  It is owing to FDR that the "limitation of terms" to two came about.

Answer 2

Roosevelt felt that the United States domination of other countries was necessary to protect these countries from communism, colonization etc until they were strong/stable enough to stand on their own.  He felt he was being a humanist; whereas others thought him to be an imperialist leader.

Answer 3

HE HAD A DEMOCRATIC CONGRESS WHICH PRETTY MUCH RUBBER STAMPED HIS PROPOSALS, NOT TO SAY HIS PROPOSALS WERE NOT GREAT IDEAS, AND THE PEOPLE LOOKED ON HIM AS THE SAVIOR FROM THE GREAT DEPRESSION.

Answer 4

I think it might be called that in two senses of word.

On the one hand, he was elected four times, though he died before completing the fourth term, but his long tenure in office was more like that of a monarch than an elected president.  Also, due to the emergency powers he attempted to exercise, first to alleviate the economic impact of the Great Depression, and later by exercising broader executive authority under the Constitution's "war powers" provisions, FDR enjoyed much greater authority than most Presidents do in relation to Congress.  While early on the Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional many of his economic relief packages--the Works Projects Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps, and the like, owing to his extraordinary tenure in office, he was gradually able to appoint enough Justices to vacancies resulting from death or retirement that the Court became less of an impediment to his "imperial" style of governance.  At one point, in 1937, he even attempted to pack the Court with as many as six additional Justices to remove the judicial thorn in his side, but even his heavily Democratic allies in Congress could not quite bring themselves to approve that, and it narrowly failed passage.

In another sense of the word "imperial", as it relates to imperialism or territorial aggrandizement, the consequences of FDR's foreign policies might also be thusly defined.  Opposed to Japanese expansion in the Pacific at the expense of American influence, he initiated trade embargoes against Japan to strangle her supplies of natural resources--a fateful decision that helped propel Japan to attack Pearl Harbor.  And, although Roosevelt did not live to see so very much of it, one consequence of his war policies was the U.S. acquistion of numerous islands, naval bases, and air-strips around the world, an imperial expansion as it were, and many of these holdings are still in U.S. possession to this day.