Jonathan Alter: "Lightweight" FDR Should Give Democrats Hope

[Judi Lynn]

Jonathan Alter: "Lightweight" FDR Should Give Democrats Hope

Mon May 1, 2:04 PM ET

(From HuffingtonPost.com)

After appearing on Imus this morning to promote my new book on Franklin D. Roosevelt, I got an angry voicemail from a woman complaining that I agreed too readily with Imus that John McCain compared favorably with FDR. (I mentioned that both had been deepened by suffering). She was probably right. It's simply impossible to know before someone reaches the White House whether he or she has the potential for greatness. FDR was considered a "lightweight" right up until what I call "The Defining Moment"--when he took office amid despair and saved both capitalism and democracy in the space of a few weeks.

Democrats who today despair of finding a leader should take heart from how unpopular FDR was within the party before he became president. In 1932, he was seen as weak and not especially bright, so unprincipled that he was dubbed the "corkscrew candidate" for acting as if the shortest distance between two points was a corkscrew. He flip-flopped on the League of Nations and so straddled the Prohibition issue that he was labeled neither a "wet" nor a "dry" but a "damp." All of the top pundits thought he was the worst possible candidate for the Democrats and a likely loser to Herbert Hoover. The New York delegation to the 1932 Democratic Convention was so opposed to its own governor that his campaign manager, Jim Farley, couldn't even get a seat in the delegation. (Can you imagine the same thing happening to Karl Rove in the 2000 or 2004 Texas delegation?). When he was (barely) nominated for president on the fourth ballot, the galleries booed.
(snip/...)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20060501/cm_huffpost/020151

[saltpoint]

1. We have the luxury of knowing how much FDR was capable of now,

and that NY delegation didn't. I acknowledge the flaws in the man, even if different historians differ on degree, but mostly I honor the greatness. Members of my parents' generation would not have passed along a Democratic legacy to me and my cousins without FDR at the helm all those years.

It is kind of shocking to read that he was booed on the convention floor. It offends our sense of owed respect. To those naysayers he wasn't "our" FDR yet.

Good post.

[bklyncowgirl]

2. We judge our current leaders against an idealized past.

No one can measure up to a legend.

We conveniently forget about the faults and failures of the historical figures we admire and judge our all too human contemporary leaders against giants that we have manufactured in our minds.

FDR was the right leader for his times but that he was the right leader was by no means clear to 100% of his contemporaries.

Keep that in mind as you view the current crop of leaders. With the possible exception of George W. Bush, a man who should have never gotten anywhere near the Presidency, they are no better or no worse than those that have run our country since its inception.

[yurbud]

4. I think he was more of an anomaly--the right has been fighting him

ever since.

Probably the only president with a legacy that enduring is Lincoln, who some Southerners still like to piss on.

[rodeodance]

3. FDR decided to trust the people rather than impose 'executive' orders

That is the message I got from Jonathan's book.