We ought to consider the last U.S. President who came into office at a time of economic turmoil and used not only his first hundred days but all the years of his administrations to transform American society into one intended to be a union for mutual benefit. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jr. had an extraordinary sense of political-social empathy, the ability to relate to Americans completely unlike him in background but whose loyalty and trust he earned as he demonstrated how government could provide emergency relief without breaking individual taxpayers' backs or pushing U.S. businesses into collapse. Then, when the worst economic turbulence settled, F.D.R. worked with the legislature and the courts to introduce political oversight of the economy - not micromanagement - but oversight to keep greed and avarice from interfering with the cooperation necessary for mutual prosperity.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt arrived in office with years of public service and political experience. He served in lower level offices - e.g. Assistant Secretary of the Navy - as well higher level ones - e.g. Governor of New York. He had honed his political acumen and his reputation for his commitment to the Democratic Party as a whole. He had seen rural poverty in Georgia and urban poverty in New York City. He had crisscrossed the country as a Vice-Presidential candidate. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jr. had flaws and faults (no human being does not) and he certainly had ambition. But he was that rare politician who almost always played to his strengths and who understood the importance of channeling personal ambition into a promoting a political agenda that would serve the many, not just the one.
Some excerpts from The White House presidential biography series (emphasis added):
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Assuming the Presidency at the depth of the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt helped the American people regain faith in themselves. He brought hope as he promised prompt, vigorous action, and asserted in his [first] Inaugural Address, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
Following the example of his fifth cousin, President Theodore Roosevelt, whom he greatly admired, Franklin D. Roosevelt entered public service through politics, but as a Democrat. He won election to the New York Senate in 1910. President Wilson appointed him Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and he was the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 1920.
In the summer of 1921, when he was 39, disaster hit-he was stricken with poliomyelitis. Demonstrating indomitable courage, he fought to regain the use of his legs, particularly through swimming. At the 1924 Democratic Convention he dramatically appeared on crutches to nominate Alfred E. Smith as "the Happy Warrior." In 1928 Roosevelt became Governor of New York.
He was elected President in November 1932, to the first of four terms. By March there were 13,000,000 unemployed, and almost every bank was closed. In his first "hundred days," he proposed, and Congress enacted, a sweeping program to bring recovery to business and agriculture, relief to the unemployed and to those in danger of losing farms and homes, and reform, especially through the establishment of the Tennessee Valley Authority. By 1935 the Nation had achieved some measure of recovery, but businessmen and bankers were turning more and more against Roosevelt's New Deal program. They feared his experiments, were appalled because he had taken the Nation off the gold standard and allowed deficits in the budget, and disliked the concessions to labor. Roosevelt responded with a new program of reform: Social Security, heavier taxes on the wealthy, new controls over banks and public utilities, and an enormous work relief program for the unemployed. In 1936 he was re-elected by a top-heavy margin. Feeling he was armed with a popular mandate, he sought legislation to enlarge the Supreme Court, which had been invalidating key New Deal measures. Roosevelt lost the Supreme Court battle, but a revolution in constitutional law took place. Thereafter the Government could legally regulate the economy.
Sadly, the current leadership of The Democratic Party has denied the country the opportunity to elect this year a President who could have delivered a ReNewed Deal for all those who live and work in the United States of America. As Chief Executive, Hillary Rodham Clinton would have started on day one to help the American people regain faith in themselves and in one another, not in an ethereal vague way but by pursuing practical policies and policies honed over many years of public and political service. The Democratic Party must be reformed so that it never deprives the country of such an opportunity again.
If you, like me, are For Democratic Reform (FDR), please consider donating to Democrats for Principle Before Party and one of Senator Clinton's campaign funds (donation links are in the side bars).
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