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Brain trust was a term that originally described a group of close advisers to a political candidate or incumbent; these were often academics who were prized for their expertise in particular fields. The term is most associated with the group of advisers of Franklin D. Roosevelt during his presidential administration. More recently, however, the use of the term has expanded beyond politics to encompass any specialized group of advisers aligned to a decision maker.
Around the same time the term "brain trust" was employed in a slightly different sense by journalists covering Henry Cabot Lodge. During the Spanish–American War in 1898, a group of journalists would gather in Senator Lodge's committee room and discuss with him the progress of the war. Lodge called this group his "board of strategy," but the Senate press corp called it "the brain trust." Subscription required.
The sense of the term as depicting a collection of well informed experts was this sense that seemed to catch hold. For example, in 1901 a group of journalists in a state press association was called a "brain trust" by the Deseret Evening News. It was not long before the term described a group that was so expert that their advice would be almost inevitably agreed to and acted upon. Such was the reference to the eight senators who made up the "Brain Trust of the Senate" as described by William Allen White in the Saturday Evening Post.White's designation of the brain trust was commented on in That use became regular for the next two decades, as can be seen from the use by Time magazine in 1928, which ran a headline on a meeting of the American Council on Learned Societies titled "Brain Trust".Safire, William Safire's Political Dictionary (2008)
The core of the Roosevelt brain trust initially consisted of a group of Columbia Law School professors (Moley, Tugwell, and Berle). These men played a key role in shaping the policies of the First New Deal (1933). Although they never met together as a group, they each had Roosevelt's ear. Many newspaper editorials and editorial cartoons ridiculed them as impractical idealists. The core group later shifted to men associated with Harvard Law School (Cohen, Corcoran, and Frankfurter), who played a key role in shaping the policies of the Second New Deal (1935–1936).
Rosenman recruited Moley and two of his colleagues at Columbia University, Rexford Tugwell and Adolf Berle. Their impact was immediate. The three men used their network in academia to connect Roosevelt with experts in business, agriculture, and labor. Roosevelt would invite these experts to extravagant dinners at the Governor's Mansion, prompting his guests with questions about their field that would spark riveting intellectual conversations. Before Roosevelt assumed the presidency, the members of the brain trust largely acted as speech writers, infusing their ideas on government and economics into the narratives used by Roosevelt to market himself to the American electorate. In the 1932 Presidential election, Berle authored Roosevelt's famous "Commonwealth Club Address", the speech the outlined his plan to use government to both save and make better the economy. Stephen E. Lucas and Martin J. Medhurst, "American Public Address: The Top One Hundred Speeches of the Twentieth Century," paper presented at the National Communication Association, November 2000, Seattle, Washington. Cited in FDR'S Commonwealth Club Address: Redefining Individualism, Adjudicating Greatness, by Davis W. Houck Moley is largely credited with writing the majority of Roosevelt's first inaugural address. The idea of likening Roosevelt's coming task to commanding a war effort originated from Moley.
By the time Roosevelt entered the White House in January 1933, his brain trust advisors were preparing him to make big government decisions about banking and securities, agriculture, and industry - actions that would become the crux of the First New Deal. Harry Hopkins, an early addition to the brain trust, soon emerged as the most profound example of the new governing ethic ushered in by the brain trust. Hopkins, who is best known for leading the Works Progress Administration (WPA), profusely believed in using government to strengthen the welfare of American citizens."American Made: The Enduring Legacy of the WPA" (Bantam Books 2009) pp. 420 This ethic extended across the group's members and would largely come to define the enduring legacy of the brain trust as a political force.
The "first New Deal" lasted from about 1933-34, and was used primarily for the recovery of the economy, with the secondary priorities of relief and reform. The most important structural achievements of the first New Deal were the establishment of the National Recovery Administration (NRA) and the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, both conceived in large part by members of Roosevelt's brain trust. Hugh Johnson, another early addition to the brain trust, was appointed to lead the NRA. Rexford Tugwell was appointed to lead the AAA, which he largely designed, until it was ruled unconstitutional.
The brain trust was hardly a monolithic unit. Some members, such as Berle, largely served as informal advisors to Roosevelt, while others, such as Hopkins, were shuffled throughout the executive branch based on where they were most needed. The members also were not always allies in their service to the president. The most famous example of this is in what Roosevelt himself dubbed a "stimulating rivalry": the competition between Harry Hopkins and later brain trust member Harold Ickes. By the time of the "second New Deal" (roughly 1935-36), the brain trust members were largely (but not exclusively) operating in formal roles throughout the federal bureaucracy. Ickes served as head of the Public Works Administration (PWA), while Hopkins was leading the WPA. While both administrations were used to relieve unemployment brought on by the Great Depression, their respective leaders had competing philosophies on how best to achieve that end. Hopkins favored larger range of shorter-term projects to maximize employment opportunity. Ickes, on the other hand, supported larger scale and long-term projects that were designed to create stable jobs that would produce critical infrastructure. The two leaders frequently criticized the others' philosophy and projects, and both men competed for Roosevelt's favor. Presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin attributes the existence of this rivalry, and the lack of an attempt by Roosevelt to mitigate its obviousness, to the president's fervent belief in stimulating competition and debate, the result of which is the betterment of public policy.
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