FDR was elected first time in 1932, which was the bottom point of the Great Depression. He led us out of what was the worst of times. The man saved this country from Anarchy and Communism taking root.
He helped usher in Wall Street reforms which prevented future Depressions until the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act was passed and signed by Bill Clinton and enacted in Nov. of 1999.
He set up not only a quasi-insurance program (Social Security) but also the insurance program for bank runs which might wipe out depositors (FDIC). He also gave us the SEC to investigate Wall Street malfeasance.
FDR had the cajones to help stop Prohibition as soon as he was elected over the howls of temperance movements and the Conservative Coalition which was in hock to those early Evangelicals.
During the remnants of Prohibition and the years of the Great Depression, one in four men of working age in this country were unemployed. FDR put them to work in the CCC and the WPA. These men who were promised three hots and a cot were also instructed to send home part of their pay to loved ones in need.
These American conscripts, many working with nothing more than a shovel or pick axe, built things such as Skyline Drive in the Blue Ridge Mountains and planted treelines out West to help prevent Dust Storms. Over 800 parks were built and over 3 billion trees planted by these men.
The Decade long Dust Bowl which was killing children and elderly with "black pnuemonia) (and destroying America's breadbasket) and whose soil was blown to Washington D.C. (FDR once wrote his name with his finger on his Oval Office desk in Texarkana soil which had fallen from one of the famous dust storms) ended under FDR when he also hired a conservationist whose specialty was soil. That one man showed farmers how to contour plow on the flat plains of Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska and the Dakotas, showing them how to rotate crops and prevent soil erosion. FDR started the
And he was so popular a leader, he was elected a 3rd time and almost lead us through WWII, beginning to end.
At the beginning of the War, America, with all its problems at home, was strongly Isolationist. FDR (along with Winston Churchill) was the conscience of Democracy. He pushed the USA to become the Arsenal of Democracy, starting the Lend-Lease Program to equip our allies in their war against the Axis.
During this time, one of the black marks of his Presidency took place: the internment of Japanese-Americans in camps out West.
During this time (up til 1942 when we entered WWII) unemployment had gone from 24% to 2%.
He was a geoplitical genius who set the USA up to dominate the world after WWII by being philanthropistic instead of militaristic, helping our enemies rebuild their countries and economies with planning made way before the war ended.
Without some of the social safety nets he installed, there would have been insurrection in the streets and a nation of Hoovervilles. Social Security, which takes a bit of every worker's paycheck and sets it aside, insured the elderly and needy did not end up in the streets.
FDR saved this country from being destroyed from within.
He was a wealthy man who felt compassion for the common man (unlike Mitt Romney and his vulture capitalistic buddies - see how many farmers out West who once called FDR a Communist or Socialist, turned up to his train stops during the Dust Bowl to applaud him and Big Gummint stepping in to help them.)
I'll take FDR over any President from either side since the late 1960s. To have led our Nation through all the travails of that time and to have done it with a debilitating disease ravaging his body shows me he was possibly the greatest President of the 20th Century.
I liked his trust busting cousin, Teddy, Ike, Truman and JFK too. But FDR led this country to greatness, to a little sanity (ending Prohibition was an extremely ballsy move with all the Christian groups pushing to keep in place. He was Episcopalian (Whiskeypalian)who actually believed in Compassionate Christianity.)
The world could use more FDRs to lead during Hard Times and less opportunistic Crony Capitalists selling off the Common Weal to their connected friends.
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