Raymond Charles Moley (September 27, 1886 in Berea, Ohio — February 18, 1975 in Phoenix, Arizona) was a leading New Dealer who became its bitter opponent.

The son of Felix James and Agnes Fairchild Moley, he was educated at Baldwin-Wallace College and Oberlin College and received his PhD from Columbia University in 1918. He taught in several schools in Ohio until 1914. In 1916 he was appointed instructor and assistant professor of politics at Western Reserve University and from 1919 was director of the Cleveland Foundation.

In 1918–19 he was also director of Americanization work under the Ohio State Council of Defense. He joined the Barnard College faculty in 1923, then became a law professor at Columbia University from 1928–1954, where he was a specialist on the criminal justice system.

Moley supported then New York Governor Franklin Roosevelt and recruited fellow Columbia professors to form the original "Brain Trust" to advise Roosevelt during his presidential campaign of 1932. Despite ridicule from editorial and political cartoonists, the "Brain Trust" went to Washington and became powerful figures in Roosevelt's New Deal. Indeed, Moley claimed credit for inventing the term "New Deal,"Three phonotapes of interviews of Raymond Moley, 1970, relating to Franklin D. Roosevelt and The First New Deal and Moley's diary; Raymond Moley papers; Audio-Visual file; Hoover Institution Archives. though its precise provenance remains open to debate. Praising the new president's first moves in March 1933, Moley concluded that capitalism "was saved in eight days."

In mid-1933 he broke with Roosevelt and became a conservative Republican. As a columnist for Newsweek magazine from 1937–1968, he became one of the best known critics of the New Deal and liberalism in general. Moley's After Seven Years (New York: 1939) was one of the first in-depth attacks on the New Deal, and remains one of the most powerful.

Moley was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Richard Nixon on April 22, 1970.

He wrote the majority of Roosevelt's first inaugural address, although he is not credited with penning the famous line, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Raymond Moley also wrote various pamphlets and articles on the teaching of government.

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