You Lose Franklin

Illustration of a pair of six-sided dice displaying two pips and one pip.  Black text on a white background.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt served as the 32nd president of the United States for two terms before running for reelection in 1940. When he was first elected to office in 1932, the country was deep into the Great Depression with approximately 13,000,000 people unemployed. Roosevelt is credited with giving hope to the American people, beginning with his inaugural address which included his famous quote, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

In 1940, Roosevelt ran against Republican presidential candidate Wendell Wilkie, who launched an aggressive anti-Roosevelt campaign. Wilkie painted the New Deal—one of the Roosevelt administration’s greatest successes—as a waste and warned voters that the incumbent was secretly attempting to bring the nation into the Second World War. Despite his attacks on Roosevelt, Wilkie lost the general election with only 82 electoral votes to Roosevelt’s 449. After the 1940 election, Roosevelt was free to extend his time in office and serve a record-breaking third term.