![]() Most great leaders have had an idea they wanted to impose, noted a contemporary critic, "whereas Roosevelt, if he has one, has successfully concealed it." Similarly, the political scientist C. Roosevelt has been castigated especially for his inability to develop any grand design. Even a historian who thought well of him, Allan Nevins, wrote that "his mind, compared with that of Woodrow Wilson, sometimes appears superficial, and.he possessed no such intellectual versatility as Thomas Jefferson - to say nothing of Winston Churchill." Nevins added: "In respect to character, similarly, he had traits of an admirable kind but.even in combination they fell short of a truly Roman weight of virtue." New Left writers have chided him for offering a "profoundly conservative" response to a situation that had the potential for revolutionary change, while commentators of no particular persuasion have criticized him for failing to bring the country out of the Depression short of war, for maneuvering America into World War II (or for not taking the nation to war soon enough, for refusing to advocate civil rights legislation, for permitting Jews to perish in Hitler's death camps, and for sanctioning the internment of Japanese-Americans. Mencken said, "If he became convinced tomorrow that coming out for cannibalism would get him the votes he so sorely needs, he would begin fattening a missionary in the White House backyard come Wednesday." The Sage of Baltimore declared, "I am advocating making him king in order that we may behead him in case he goes too far beyond the limits of the endurable."Ī good number of historians as well have found fault with FDR. Herbert Hoover called him a "chameleon on plaid," while H. Roosevelt, his critics maintained, had shown himself to be a man without principles. The Communist leader Earl Browder said that FDR was "carrying out more thoroughly and brutally than even Hoover the capitalist attack against the masses," and the domestic fascist William Dudley Pelley called the President the "lowest form of human worm - according to Gentile standards." One critic accused him of "blathering platitudes like a parson on vacation." and another wrote to him savagely, "If you were a good honest man, Jesus Christ would not have crippled you." It was in a formal address to the Chicago Bar Association, not in a harangue to an extremist rally, that a United States Senator from Minnesota did not hesitate to liken Roosevelt to the beast of the Apocalypse," "who set his slimy mark on everything." (Which he was there, his wife ran off with a traveling salesman.)Īt neither end of the ideological spectrum did respect for civility of discourse restrain the Roosevelt-haters. Morgan's family kept newspapers with pictures of Roosevelt out of his sight, and in one Connecticut country ntion of his name was forbidden as a health measure against apoplexy." In Kansas a man went down into his cyclone cellar and announced he would not emerge until Roosevelt was out of office. If he is not dead you don't need to tell me anything else.'" One of FDR's Hudson Valley Neighbors, who viewed the President as "a swollen headed nit-wit," exiled himself to the Bahamas until Roosevelt was no longer in the White House, and the radio manufacturer Atwater Kent retired because he would not do business while "That Man" was there. This very high rating would have appalled many of the contemporaries of "that megalomaniac cripple in the White House." In the spring of 1937 an American who had been traveling extensively in the Caribbean confided, "During all the time I was gone, if anybody asked me if I wanted any news, my reply was always - `there is only one bit of news I want to hear and that is the death of Franklin D. the presidency began to undergo not a shift but rather a metamorphosis." Indeed, so powerful an impression did FDR leave on the office that in the most recent survey of historians he was ranked as the second greatest president in our history, surpassed only by the legendary Abraham Lincoln. Greenstein has observed, "With Franklin Roosevelt's administration. In this century, too, both Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson showed that the White House could radiate power. ![]() To be sure, many of the rudiments of the executive office date from the earliest years of the republic, and, in the nineteenth century, figures such as Andrew Jackson demonstrated how the president could serve as tribune of the people. The presidency as we know it today begins with Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Go to Book World's ReviewĬhapter One: Franklin D. ![]() The FDR Years: On Roosevelt and His Legacy ![]()
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