Posted on 06/08/2004 6:19:25 AM PDT by Theodore R.
Was Roosevelt a good president?
Posted: June 8, 2004 1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
Condoleeza Rice said in a newspaper interview last week that President Bush will some day rank in leadership history alongside Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.
Which begs the question: Was Roosevelt a good president?
If Roosevelt is George W. Bush's model for leadership, his first term begins to make sense.
Roosevelt led the nation through World War II and certainly contributed to the defeat of Nazi Germany and imperial Japan – for which we should all be thankful.
However, Roosevelt also arguably presided over the creation of more unconstitutional domestic action by the federal government than any of his modern predecessors. As such, he remains the hero of modern-day socialists and an icon for today's Democratic Party extremists.
Is that what Bush wants to be remembered for?
If so, he must give himself extremely high marks. Yes, he has ably led the nation in the war on terrorism. But his administration has also given us unprecedented domestic spending increases.
Perhaps Rice and Bush should also be reminded that while Churchill provided great leadership of the United Kingdom in World War II, he was quickly turned out of office at the war's conclusion.
My guess is Bush will be turned out of office long before American achieves a victory in the war on terrorism. So, perhaps there is some validity to that comparison as well.
Notice that Rice did not compare Bush to a more recent popular Republican, two-term president – Ronald Reagan. Perhaps she understood that such a comparison would be laughable to too many Americans – especially those Bush still hopes to win over before Election Day.
"Statesmanship has to be judged first and foremost by whether you recognize historic opportunities and seize them," Rice said in an interview with Cox Newspapers.
I would agree. But I would not agree that Bush has met the challenge.
He came into office with Republicans controlling the House of Representatives and Senate. He saw that control strengthened in mid-term elections in 2002. Yet he governed like a Democrat – expanding spending for the Department of Education and other agencies the GOP once swore to eliminate.
"When you think of statesmen, you think of people who seized historic opportunities to change the world for the better, people like Roosevelt, people like Churchill, and people like Truman, who understood the challenges of communism. And this president has been an agent of change for the better – historic change for the better," said Rice.
Roosevelt and Truman understood the challenges of communism? Who does she think gave us Alger Hiss? And who does she think sold Chiang Kai-Shek down the Yangtze River?
Until I read this interview, I had an extraordinary amount of respect for Rice's intellectual achievements and her understanding of history. No longer. But it gets worse.
It was Bush, she said, who first recognized "that it was time to stop mumbling about the need for a Palestinian state" and spoke out in favor of a two-state solution to the decades-old Arab-Israeli conflict.
Indeed he did – one of the foreign policy tragedies of his administration. In fact, he has retreated from that position recently, suggesting there was no longer any rush to create a Palestinian state. And why should we want to create a new Middle East state that was founded on terrorism? Why should we support a state whose official policy is "no Jews allowed"? Why should we want to continue to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results?
Does Rice really believe all she said in this interview? Or is she just being a good political soldier? It's hard to know for sure.
But now I know why the Bush administration has achieved so little in four years. Apparently, from the get-go, it never had the right goals.
I don't have any experience at that, but I'll do whatever I can to help.
"Modern Welfare has no comparison to the WPA."
It was nothing but welfare, designed to make sure that we didn't come out of the depression until the industrial wealth had been stolen and secured. Only when that haqd beern accomplished did he negotiate the attack on Pearl so that the people would accept our entry into WW2.
The proper course of action would have been to award contracts for the WPA work putting the entire economy back into action using equipment to do the work and putting the manufactures of equipment, maintainance, repair, fueling, etc. which would have brought the depression to an end. Just feeding people does nothing but make them subjects of the central government.
As far as Germany, we should have let them destroy Russia before laying them to waste.
I doubt seriously that you had to live through that era and are spouting what some government school planted into your head.
Probably not a good idea in this case.
I never claimed to live through it. I wasn't born until 1954. But my parents and grandparents lived through the era. Most of what I know about history did not come from public schools. Even in the 60's public schools could not be trusted with history.
You are entitled to whatever opinion you wish and you might be given some credence if you act civil without your personal attacks. If you wish to attack my education or thinking I can only assume that you are a bit of a delusional "My way or the highway" extremist.
If I misinterpreted your comments on a personal level, I apologize. If I did not, please accept this as my invitation to "buzz off".
Have a nice day.
Oh, still no teacher. Okay, what book should I read to know how to hijack a thread and sell it on the black market?
What he did, with the USSR, with economics and with the military was nothing less than brilliant and changed the shape of the country even more profoundly than FDR. We live in a Reaganite future. Clinton was even a Reaganite Democrat, whose presidency was more effected by the paradigms put in place by RR than those of FDR.
Lincoln was great, but his entire presidency is seen through the context of the Civil War and the plans he had for reconstruction, which differed from the poor plans that were actually carried out. I would even say that there wasn't a Lincolnite era that followed. To my mind, the presidents who ushered in eras were Washington, Jefferson, TR, FDR and Reagan.
It is not a science, it is an art. It is very organic in execution. No set rules other than hanging loose. This is not the thread to do it on though. The extremists are present.
The extremists are present.
To put it mildly.
Had the Fed allowed low-interest loans, that might have happened. However, that would have interfered with their plan to destroy individual sovereignty and set up the mechanism for socialism. High interest rates during that period kept money short for many years, allowing a massive transfer theft of equity/property/wealth.
For survival, the common folk had to trade/contract their sovereign Citizenship and its attendant liberties for 14th Amendment federal contract citizenship. . . that which was created by congress. What congress creates, congress rules.
So was this accidental or by design? I think it was by design.
He even admired both socialist systems. He was the equivalent of Clinton in the 1930s until events caught up with him.
Also Ronald Reagan adopted FDR's "rendezvous with destiny" line and voted for him four times. Reagan found FDR great because of his political inspiration, not so much because of his actual success. It's what Rush Limbaugh calls the triumph of "good intentions" over actual results for Democrats.
There is only one way to kill capitalism – by taxes, taxes, and more taxes. – Karl Marx
We are going to tax and tax, and spend and spend, and elect and elect. --FDR
To my mind, the presidents who ushered in eras were Washington, Jefferson, TR, FDR and Reagan.
Yes, this is sound thinking. Of those presidents the voters repudiated TR in the 1912 Republican convention and the general election as well. I think one of the most overrated presidents is HST (whose reputation has been buoyed by Goldwater, Reagan, and Gingrich) and one of the underrated is James Monroe, often called the man who followed Madison.
Patton lemented in his memories that he had to slow down to let the Russians gain more ground first. Roosevelt didn't have to allow such a large "Soviet" sphere of influence.
Henry Wallace, a former IA Republican (his father was Harding's agriculture secretary), was FDR's first agriculture secretary (1933-41) and second vice president from 1941-45. The delegates replaced him with HST at the 1944 convention. I am still unsure if FDR wanted Wallace purged, or if the delegates did that on their own. Prior to WWII, convention delegates often selected v.p. candidates regardless of the preferences of the presidential candidate. McKinley's people for instance did not want TR as the v.p. choice. Coolidge did not get along at all with Charles Gates Dawes. Harding did not select Coolidge either: the delegates did. Surely Garfield had little to do with the selection of Chester Alan (pronounced EH LON) Arthur.
So Hoover = engineer
Carter = engineer
So should we elect no engineers president?
Monroe didn't effect things to come. BTW, I should have added Andrew Jackson in that continuum.
What was "Buchanan's blunder"? I missed that. Did it have to do with sending troops to UT in 1857 or so in a dispute over the proposed state of Deseret?
Yes, Farah admits to voting for the popular engineer, GA Jimmy, in 1976 and 1980, but he left the Democrat party in the early 80s. Now he is hostile toward both national parties.
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