Franklin D. Roosevelt Franklin D. Roosevelt, thirty-second President of the United Sates, greatly expanded the role of the federal government with a wide-ranging economic and social program, the New Deal, designed to counter the Great Depression of the 1930s. He also led the nation through most of its participation in the global struggle of World War II. Roosevelt attended a high-class high school and later graduated from Harvard in 1903. He quickly gained recognition by his leadership of upstate New York Democrats in a fight against Tammany Hall's nominee for the U.S. Senate. At the 1912 Democratic National Convention he b