Young Turks interview Jonathan Alter who compares Obama to FDR

[CherylK]

Run time: 11:51 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ijDbZxLjOo   Posted on YouTube: December 10, 2009 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: December 11, 2009 By DU Member: CherylK Views on DU: 844

 
http://www.newsweek.com/id/170363

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/226360/april-30-2009/obama-s-first-14-mondays---jonathan-alter

[Kievan Rus]

1. If his colleagues in the Congress keep on messing things up...

it'd be more apt to compare him to Jimmy Carter...lots of good ideas, but only one term in office.

The healthcare debacle is going to cost us seats in 2010 without a doubt. And I wouldn't be shocked if it costs us the White House in 2012.

[Goldstein1984]

2. Yeah. What happened to all those good ideas

that got Obama my vote? I'm not seeing them.

I voted for Jimmy Carter too--once.

[Mithreal]

3. K&R

[fasttense]

4. I'm not so sure I agree with Jonathan Alter's comparison.

I know he wrote a book about FDR, but it seems to me he was picking and choosing his comparison points.

I also don't agree with Alter's statement that all social legislation starts out ill defined, covering few people and then, over time, improves. I keep thinking of how the repukes and bushes bombed medicare with that awful part D, how Clinton devastated welfare, and how through manipulating the consumer price index, they have reduced the average payment to social security beneficiaries, so that current payouts are equal to about 1970 levels , some say 1950 levels.

[bigmonkey]

7. Your objections prove his point.

Unfortunately for anyone who cares about the planet or his or her fellow human beings, the right wing was able to "disimprove" those programs. They used precisely the mechanism Alter is referring to, but in their own evil direction. They weren't able to abolish them, just severely weaken them, that's the "social contract" part.

Social legislation is improvable over time is his point, I think, once its existence is no longer in doubt. You picked and chose your examples to show that it's also possible to weaken it over time. What I don't understand in discussions here is the implication that social legislation never improves over time, something that the critics see as self-evident. They never make a good tight case for their point of view, because they can't.

[mmonk]

5. I wrote from the opposite viewpoint that when we needed an FDR,

we got a Clinton. I'm pretty sure my assessment is closer to reality.

[izquierdista]

6. I'd compare him to RFD

Lots of yakking around the pickle barrel, but not much actually going on.