Ivan,
FDR's economic policies were mostly empty feel-good guestures that did not address the true causes of the depression.
However, as I stated on another thread today, on the one big issue of his time, the war agaist Nazi Germany and an expansionist Japan, he was dead on. He did everything he could to get the country ready for war while far too many people had blinders on about the coming threat. He also did everything he could to keep the British Empire in the war (and yes the Soviets too....).
These actions (lend-lease, the draft and the rebuilding of a shell of a military) were critical to saving the world and overshadow the major domestic mistakes of 1933-1939 and the foreign policy mistakes of late 1944-early 1945.
In this he is like Tony Blair, who is wrong on so many things, (don't get me started), but who has kept Britian in the current war. (Though Blair is more wrong and not as right as FDR was, FDR did not weaken the armed forces in the middle of a war the way Labour has.)
When looking at FDR you have to keep the big picture in mind.
Yes, you do.
FDR was the American leader who saved the world.
Had America actually listened to the Republican Isolationists of the time and implemented their policies against rearmament, and against the draft, etc., America would have lost the Second World War.
On the biggest of the big issues, the greatest and most dangerous war in human history, FDR was THE leader who saved the world. It was indirect, but nevertheless he saved Britain. Indirectly, he saved Russia. Directly, he had the atomic bomb built. Directly, he drove forward the military preparations that had the US ready for war.
And when the time came to decide where, and when, and how, and who, once again he was dead on.
FDR was a great President.
Had there been no war, he would have been simply a left-winger. And had there been no war, George Washington would have been simply a tobacco farmer.
But there was a war, and he saved the world.
Let's not lose the forest for the trees here.
Dislike his economics if you must, but look at how he handled the war, and remember, he is the LAST PRESIDENT to get it right. When the time came, he stood before Congress and demanded a formal Declaration of War, meaning that the country could not go back, meaning that opposing the war after that was sedition, meaning that the press could be muzzled to prevent defeating morale, meaning that the political opposition could not use opposition to the war as a platform, meaning that those who deserted the military and ran away were put to death, meaning that potential enemies inside the US were rounded up and put in camps, and captured spies were put to death.
THAT is how you fight a war. THAT is what the Constitution demands. FDR was the last President to obey the US Constitution when he took America to war. And THAT is why he was a greater war leader than Truman, or Eisenhower, or Kennedy or LBJ or Nixon or Reagan or either Bush. If you go to war without a Declaration of War, you set the country up for defeat. You'd think we would have learnt that by now.
FDR was the last President to obey the Constitution when it came to the war power.
We won decisively.
Since then, no President has gone to Congress and asked for a DoW before committing forces. And we've fought to draws or defeat, able to win battles, but never achieving our strategic objectives...because the naysayers at home can still bloviate. With a DoW, they are legally silenced. Sedition is illegal in time of war.
Too bad we don't just emulate FDR when it comes to war.
Declare it.
Forcibly silence domestic opposition.
Imprison enemy nationals and don't let them go.
Demand unconditional surrender.
Firebomb resisting cities and rip the guts out of enemy populations that support your enemies.
He got it right.
We have it wrong.
He also started the draft. I know my cousin should have been out, the draft at that time was to be for one year, the first of Nov. 1941.
For some reason he did not get home. Then of course we all know what happened 12-7-41.
I have repeated this over and over, but am not going to look up the figures.
In 1936, FDR's first reelection campaign, his DEFICIT was larger that his receipts. I say his because he had a congress that rubber stamped everything he put before them. That is until he tried to pack the Supreme Court and that started some of the solid south starting to question.
My son has looked up unemployment when he took over and what is was when we got into war.he says it was lower when he took COMMAND.
Can you imagine what kind of deficit we would have today if any president tried that.
You might want to check it out. I don't know how.