Raymond Moley

Raymond Moley (born Sept. 27, 1886, Berea, Ohio, U.S.—died Feb. 18, 1975, Phoenix, Ariz.) was an American journalist and public figure, leader of the so-called Brain Trust of advisers to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

After graduating from Baldwin-Wallace College in his hometown, Moley took a job as superintendent of schools at Olmstead Falls, Ohio. He then attended Oberlin College, where he received his master’s degree in 1913. Five years later he received his doctorate in political science from Columbia University, and in 1923 he joined the Columbia faculty. It was while teaching at Columbia that Moley came to the attention of Louis Howe, a close associate of Franklin Roosevelt.

Howe first hired Moley to study criminal justice in a number of cities, and then in 1928 he persuaded Moley to work for Roosevelt’s election as governor of New York. When Roosevelt was preparing for the presidential race of 1932, Moley recruited fellow Columbia professors Rexford G. Tugwell and Adolph A. Berle, Jr., to form the Brain Trust (Howe’s designation) to advise the Democratic nominee on national issues.

In a departure from the traditional conservative laissez-faire and progressive antibusiness ideologies, Moley and the Brain Trust counseled cooperation between government and business to resuscitate the moribund American economy. Moley wrote many Roosevelt campaign speeches and invented the famous label “New Deal” for Roosevelt’s political program. He soon became chief policy adviser to the president-elect.

As the Roosevelt administration began, Moley was a central figure in the day-to-day operation of the executive branch. During the hectic “hundred days,” he was the chief liaison between the White House and Congress. But he lost considerable prestige over a disagreement with Roosevelt during the London Economic Conference of 1933, and, soon after, he resigned his State Department post.

Moley thereafter became disenchanted with what he believed to be the too-radical drift of the New Deal. By 1936 he had broken with Roosevelt and the Democratic Party, and thereafter he endorsed Republicans (including Wendell Willkie, Barry Goldwater, and Richard Nixon) for the presidency. Never again active in electoral politics, Moley spent the remainder of his life as a writer, publishing numerous books of political theory and commentary.