General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: 7 years! [View all]Hekate
(90,677 posts)...as the rewrite of Ronald Reagan by the GOP if we are not careful.
My mother was an anomaly in many ways. She was deeply scarred by growing up in the Great Depression, in which her father lost his business and went on the road to work for the CCC. She admired FDR, but she had to think her way past her father's anti-Semitism ("Rooosenfelt" etc.). The KKK was active in Colorado when she was growing up there, and they hated the Roman Catholics (her family, in other words) about as much as the Jews and the African Americans, so that also gave her a lot to think about.
She admired FDR for all the good things he did, but here's one thing she taught me when I was still in grade school: he interned the Japanese Americans, and while it doesn't negate the good he did, that was an un-American and horrifying thing to do. Ditto turning away a boatload of Jewish refugees.
People are not all one thing. My heroes are not plaster saints, which is why I can look at Thomas Jefferson, FDR, and Margaret Sanger and see their flaws but still call them my heroes.
Thanks for the kind words about President Obama, but in many respects the time shapes the leader. Obama's country has been very different from FDR's.
FDR took charge during a time of mass despair. He had a willing Congress. The country was still working its way out of the Depression when Pearl Harbor was attacked; suddenly the America Firsters were pretty much silenced and the rest of the country unified. Gearing up for a mechanized war gave jobs to millions of men and women, and millions of men were drafted into the Army -- coincidentally solving the unemployment problem.
Different times, different leaders.