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FDR's dismal record

When I was in high school and college, we were taught that FDR was practically the savior of our nation. All sorts of socialist programs were instituted, but we were told they were all for our own good, even the ones that failed. My mother and father never agreed on the worth of his presidency and programs and their entire lives cancelled each others votes. Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson are the three legs of the tippy stool of socialism we deal with today.

Today's WSJ reviews The Forgotten Man by Amity Shlaes (HarperCollins, 2007). "Roosevelt's dismal performance in the 1930s would not prevent him from becoming the most popular sitting president in American history," the reviewer writes.




From the left, he is viewed as

an inspirational leader who offered hope and

a wager of battles against evil capitalists

His critics on the right see the era of FDR differently

his policies prolonged the miseries of the Great Depression

he left behind the hard-working, middle class citizen

did far more damage than Hoover, who himself was a poor president

was soft on the cruelties and economic failures of the Soviet Union

developed a class-war rhetoric still in use today.

It will be interesting to see if my public library can find a way to purchase this title not friendly to an icon of the left. Publisher's Weekly, bible of all public librarians, includes in its review the usual put-downs : "breezy narrative," "tells an old story," "plausible history," but does concede that it is an even-tempered corrective to the unbalanced stories of this era. Since it just came out in June, it's probably not yet on order at public libraries. I'll try OhioLink in a few weeks.