"Democratic National Planning" Stemmed from a Faith in Expert Knowledge based on Social Scientific Research; Planners Retained a Disproportionate Faith in Presidential Power

Congressional critics were striking out at a false god--regimented, totalitarian state planning. No such beast existed in America. The planners' notion of advisory national planning did not contain the rigidities of fascist, Nazi, or Soviet command-style economic planning dominated by the state. Their idea of "democratic national planning" stemmed from an inordinate faith in the utility of expert knowledge based on social scientific research by participants in the organizational nexus built since the 1920s. The planners retained a disproportionate, at times almost irrational, faith in presidential power as exercised by Franklin D. Roosevelt. Liberal Democrats in the postwar period carried this faith in the presidency, little realizing the implicit dangers of what eventually came to be called the imperial presidency.

--Patrick D. Reagan, Designing a New America: The Origins of New Deal Planning, 1890-1943, Political Development of the American Nation: Studies in Politics and History (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999), e-book, 232.