FDR: A Presidency Revealed

19 April 2005 | bobjam

[bobjam]

Last night the History Channel finished its two part series on the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt. Anyone have any thoughts?

[bobjam]

In regards to the Depression, the show pointed out that the New Deal really hadn't done a whole lot of good. FDR had tripled taxes and the private sector still had not come back. FDR's positive and confident personality (in contrast to Hoover's "there's little we can do about it" attitude) probably did more to help the situation than any alphabet soup program. WWII put many back to work, but the economy sank back into recession after the war ended. It wouldn;t be until the 50's that we had the depression beat.

[Texas_Jarhead]

My impression: I found the show interesting even though it was mostly a fawning production with only minimal token criticism.

[LS]

You probably should see what we have to say in "A Patriot's History of the United States." We are not too kind to Franklin.

[StonyBurk]

Thank you-didn't watch it- Don't have history chanel(or cable) and I believe FDR was not the Saint but probably the
most destructive US President ever.From New Deal, and reconstructed Supreme Court- to submisison to the extra-
Constitutional United Nations shoe in to Communist dictatorship. Can't imagine any left leaning production that would portray him warts and all.. . as they would say
Nixon.

[clee1]

Yeah, It provided further credence to the notion that if FDR totally had his way, we'd be completely Socialist by now.

[canucksvt]

I am not seeing a picture of this book you speak of. Could you post the ISBN # please? Thank you.

[7thson]

I read FDR's Folly last year, which pretty much lets the reader know the FDR legend is pure PR. His New Deal alphabet soup program was purely a vote getting machine. He rewarded states he needed for vote for reelection and ignored other states that were in the bag. The south he nearly completely ignored. They were in the bag. Funny when you read the book. States today that are totally blue such as Maryland and California were Republican states. However, the difference between Repubs and Dems were nearly indistinguishable as many Repubs during the time had socialist leanings. My opinion - FDR was one of the most dangerous and inept presidents we ever had. He happened to be President at the start of WW II but I give more credit to George C. Marshall Ernest King than to FDR. Marshall - though never holding a field command during wartime - kept a black book of individuals who impressed him during the 20's and 30's. When the war hit, he had a ready list of men to lead the military machine. FDR was a dimwit who thought he knew what he was talking about.

[patj]

I particularly liked the info that Hopkins and FDR came up with the lend-lease program with Churchill. FDR talked to Nonie in his cabinet about it, much less Congress. The narrator made note of the fact that this was business as usual for FDR. And the press makes such a big deal out of Bush's secrecy.

[fireforeffect]

Do not have cable, so did not see. But given the distortions usual to the history channel, I am surprised that any criticism of his policies occurred.

In grade school english class I had to write an essay on the depression, specifically based on an interview with a relative who lived through it. My paternal Grandmother and maternal Grandfather had nothing good to say about FDR. Interesting enough, both were government employees. One USPS and the other Army.

Another good story is told by Bill Buckley. When he was in OCS FDR died. Another candidate said, "Good, now I can say bad things about that SOB." He was gone the next day.

[Bonaparte]

A Patriot's History of the United States by Larry Schweikart and Michael Patrick Allen.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

I heard a snippet of a - perhaps the - program on FDR that you're talking about. It didn't seem to me to be a fawning description; it pointed out that FDR couldn't have gotten elected to a third term without the issue of WWII and FDR's promise to keep us out of it.

The book The New Dealers' War suggests, tho, that FDR used the "magic" crypo intelligence (predicting the Japanese would break off diplomatic negotiations on Dec 7 1941) as an occasion to leak a War Department plan for waging war on Germany and Japan. Which precipitated antiwar demonstations on December 7 - right when the Japanese were bombing Pearl Harbor.

I was also fascinated to learn that in point of fact Herbert Hoover set records for public works expenditures during his term, and that FDR couldn't have done more in 1929-1933 than Hoover himself did in that regard. The bottom line is that although FDR heaped scorn of Hoover for the Depression, FDR had no consistent economic program, and just floundered around and raised taxes. So it should really be thought of as the Hoover-Roosevelt Depression.

Certainly FDR's economic performance doesn't put you in mind of Reagan's turnaround of the Carter stagflation.

[JesseHousman]

I wonder who has the "honor" of pushing this leftist fool's wheelchair up the ramp of the boat to hell?

Uncle Joe, indeed.

Between Franklin's pandering to Russia in agreeing to handing Eastern Europe over to Stalin and Truman's failure to admit Washington insiders were doing much to undermine what passed for "foreign policy" these two were lousy!

We can thank them for the WWII aftermath, Korea and Vietnam.

[SampleMan]

I've found the premise of the marketing for the show interesting. "FDR lied to us, but that was OK because he was doing what was best for us."

[TexasCajun]

I watched the episode on Richard Nixon was surprised to learn of an assassination attempt on his life by a Left-wing nut that high-jacked a plane on the ground, killing several people!

He killed both pilots, thus the idiot couldn't take off.
He killed himself about an officer fired a 357 Mag through the portal window in the door that hit the high-jacker.

His intention in 1974 was to fly the jet into the Whitehouse!

I did not know about this, did you?

[MichiganConservative]

There's an interesting lecture you can get online for free from www.fee.org which goes through each of the stupid things Hoover and Roosevelt did. Roosevelt really didn't know anything about economics. He really didn't seem to have a guiding economic policy vision either. He seemed to want to just get votes. At one time, he was presented with 2 drafts for a speech. One advocated cutting taxes. The other advocated raising taxes. Roosevelt told his speechwriters to mix the two speeches into 1.

[blackdog]

My daughter's AP US History class is teaching FDR's admin up to Ford right now. The class is really rough on FDR and his government solve all approach to economic pressures. Interestingly enough the class has taken the angle that America's lack of technology and efficiency was the root cause of economic woes. This was partially fixed as WWII demanded more labor and production efficiencies, but did not fix the idea that you built stuff by just throwing more people at the task.

It wasn't until Nixon's energy crisis that technology got the green light to move us ahead. The class is very rough on Nixon's attempted government mandated price controls and also blames all of Johnson's social spending which has broken our backs on Kennedy and the legislature. The notion is that Johnson could have gotten anything passed whatsoever as the congress was in a state of collective guilt over the assasination and would pass anything from the executive branch for quite some time if they thought it would make the public more secure in their limited skulls.

[300winmag]

He killed himself about an officer fired a 357 Mag through the portal window in the door that hit the high-jacker.

The hijacker was actually shot by a civilian who had the presence of mind, and the courage, to take the revolver from the dead rent-a-cop at the gate, and go after the crazed hijacker.

[katana]

My father reputedly gave a whoop and did a happy dance when the PA over the shop floor (aircraft engine factory in Cincinnati) announced FDR's passing. If a family can be politically incorrect at a genetic level then it's mine.

[TNCMAXQ]

I saw parts of the show and thought it was pretty even handed. They made no apologies for Roosevelt failing to act when it came to civil rights and an end to racism in the south. It was Eleanor who pushed for reform but Franklin knew it would cost the Dems the southern vote so he would not even support a federal anti lynching bill. This is shameful. I suspect if someone like Warren Harding or Calvin Coolidge were president at that time, they would have supported this legislation.

A black historian on the show said FDR was not a great president because he took no strong action on this issue. He said a great president is one who takes bold, decisive action even at the risk of losing political capital. Sounds to me like a decription of GWB.

[shhrubbery!]

I noticed that the scriptwriter blew off the theory that FDR knew in advance that there would be a Japanese attack on our navy.

The narrator devoted about ten words to that possibility --then dismissed it for having no "compelling" evidence.

Much attention was paid, however, to FDR's frustration over not being able to enter the war due to isolationism and anti-war sentiment...prior to Dec. 7, 1941.

I also noticed Alger Hiss, smiling broadly just behind FDR in the footage shot at the meeting with Stalin and Churchill in Teheran.

The narrator didn't note Hiss's presence.