President-elect Trump’s unexpected victory generated an analysis avalanche along with a host of mea culpas on the part of big-name media personalities. Lifted by a complex set of social, economic and political forces and driven by the power of his personality and purse, Trump ended his campaign by referring to what he hoped to accomplish for the United States’ “Forgotten Man.” It’s likely Trump’s advisers knew exactly what they were doing with that reference, but why is it so easy to forget the Forgotten Man?

The expression came from Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s famous April 7, 1932, Depression-era campaign speech. He began by referring to the horrors of World War I and claimed the 1932 crisis was far more serious. He then made reference to the policies of the Hoover administration and introduced the Forgotten Man: