FDR

While watching The Roosevelts series by Ken Burns, I was reminded of research that I did years ago on presidential management styles. 

President Franklin D. Roosevelt's approach was highly pragmatic but it was also manipulative and chaotic. He sometimes assigned the same task to different members of his Cabinet just to see which one prevailed and he kept enormous amounts of responsibilities on his desk; in many cases jobs which clearly should have been delegated. 

Although he was quite good about deferring to his generals when it came to the military conduct of the war - a practice in stark contrast to Hitler's - he hogged turf on the home front. By 1944 there were 47 war agencies directly reporting to him.

That is one reason why film footage of his last days shows an exhausted man. FDR was an extraordinary president who accomplished a great deal but he worked himself to death in the process.