Franklin D. Roosevelt — 32nd President (1933–1945)

**Franklin D. Roosevelt** served longer than any other president — four terms spanning the Great Depression and World War II. He inherited 25% unemployment and left behind the architecture of the modern American state: Social Security, the SEC, the FDIC, the minimum wage, and the framework for defeating fascism. He governed from a wheelchair (concealed from the public), overcame polio, and projected such confidence that his first inaugural address — "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself" — became the most important pep talk in American history.