ABSTRACT
The "essential weakness of the American situation," Laski wrote, was that the Depression had "put a Liberal into office at a time when both the historic parties in America represented a confused and unintelligent Conservatism." In early March, 1938, Laski wrote the White House that he would be lecturing at George Washington University from April 2 to the 12, and would like to exchange "words of comfort and friendship during those days" with the president. "The New Deal," he wrote, had "made the man in the street recognize that the State is, for good or ill, a positive instrument by whose activities the contours of his life are set." "A state," Laski observed, "is known by the quality of its legislators," and in this respect the New Deal had "not always been well served by the men upon whom it has had to rely.".
