Charlie Rose

robertg  01/17/2011 07:48 PM Report

REMant is a bad historian. He gets (at least) one fact wrong--FDR did not support Herbert Hoover in 1928, but rather Al Smith. During the interregnum, Walter Lippmann (so long as we're using him) recommended to FDR that he might need to assume dictatorial power. Maynard Keynes said that there had been no crisis so severe since the dark ages. These anecdotes suggest just how severe the situation was when FDR took office, something REMant seems unable to imagine. The odds that liberal democracy would survive, in 1932 and again in 1940, were long indeed. That it did is FDR's great achievement. That FDR didn't assume dictatorial power--when the biggest applause line in his first inaugural intimated, somewhat ambiguously, extra-constitutional powers--belies REMant's insinuation that FDR was some kind of Caesarist. Why fetishize the two term precedent--especially when Hitler controls most of continental Europe, as he did in 1940?

The suggestion that the Great Depression was caused by WWI and Woodrow Wilson is at least novel. The idea that FDR was a warmonger isn't. To align with Charles Lindbergh, with his fondness for Hitler, and the American First Movement, with its chauvinism approaching fascism, should discredit REMant's other complaints about FDR as a quasi-dictator (most dictators don't face four fair elections). But does REMant really blame FDR for not "securing peace?" Hitler and the Japanese jingoes deserve much more blame--all of it, I'd say. Nonetheless it's fair to say that FDR got America into WWII--with the help of the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor and Hitler's declaration of war. But I think it's to his great credit. That America's victory resulted in the Cold War and the "Americanization" of so many global cultures should be regretted, but imagining the alternative--a Fascist world--should make cynics like REMant pause and reconsider.

REMant  04/21/2010 01:37 PM Report

Well, I certainly think a lot less of FDR than he does, but I see no reason why NYC should take a back seat to DC in the monument business, tho I am not sure what good this will do 3rd Freedom-wise. The plan certainly looks no worse than any in the nation's capitol, for instance, the WWII memorial. Everyone in the early 30's, I think, agreed with the assessment of Walter Lippmann: "He is a pleasant man, who, without any important qualifications for the office, would very much like to be President." So much so, that unlike any other president in US history, he ran four times, necessitating a constitutional amendment to keep it from happening again, and without either ending the Depression or securing peace. He had backed Hoover for president, and later followed his policies, yet ran on a populist platform and refused to help him during the lame duck period when it was vital. People were convinced for a long time, and no doubt some still are, that he maneuvered the country into the war. They must have had some reason for believing that. Of his Court-packing plan a congressman said: "This is more power than a good man should want, or a bad man should have." That Ronald Reagan voted for him all four times can certainly be no recommendation. BTW, the Depression came about as a direct result of WWI and its settlement, as well as, an overweening righteousness concerning America and its liberal philosophy, all having far less to do with the GOP than with Woodrow Wilson. We might have been a lot better off with the five-cent cigar.