Ideas: History, Pivoting On the Unpredictable

Newsweek, December, 2006 by Michael Beschloss

It was the summer of 1937, and Franklin Roosevelt was depending on his Senate majority leader, Joe Robinson, to pass perhaps the most important bill of his second term--packing the hostile Supreme Court with pro-FDR justices. Colleagues said that only Robinson had the clout and I.O.U.s to turn the tide in Roosevelt's favor.

But almost on the eve of the roll call, a housemaid found Robinson dead of a heart attack in his apartment, the Congressional Record at his side. With Robinson dead, Vice President John Nance Garner told Roosevelt, "You haven't got the votes." When they quashed FDR's court-packing bill, conservative Democrats found they could oppose the president and wake up alive the next day. And so they started striking down bill after Roosevelt bill, turning FDR's...

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