It's funny what the warp of time does.
Here, I think, is what happened.
America, circa 1930, was a tough place. There were mobsters in Chicago, and there was lots of crime everywhere else too. There was a dust bowl and a Depression. People were not shrinking violets on any side in 1930. Right wingers were folks like Lindbergh, brave, but mentally inclined to side with the Nazis when the time came and the Nazis showed guts. Left wingers were folks like the Union guys, not modern blow-dried metrosexuals, but bare-fisted Communists. It was a tough world of men, and men of the left were not shrinking weasels wetting their pants the way they do today. Neither were men of the right. Women didn't like pantywaist men either. Men were men. Women were women. Life was tough as hell. And crying, mewling, puking weakness was no recommendation for anything.
FDR was crippled by polio. People knew it. Polio was scary stuff. People's kids got it and ended up in iron lungs for the rest of their lives. That someone got polio, was crippled and made good anyway, that was inspiring. People knew it, but nobody was in awe. Blind people, mutilated men from the First World War, all of the miseries of the world were there. You didn't bitch and moan. You loaded your 16 tons and worked till you dropped. Never complain, never explain.
FDR had polio.
Had he whined about it, it would have made him weak and nobody would have voted for weakness.
Had he trumpeted it, it would have made him weak, and nobody would have applauded bringing attention to himself in that way.
People knew it, it didn't affect his job, they admired that it didn't stop him, and that was that.
Now let the time pass.
Along come the 1960s, when everything is a conspiracy, and everything done by every past generation was hypocrisy and evil. Such was the mantra. The politics of victimhood became locked into power in the 1970s. There was nothing wrong with the concept of the Americans With Disabilities Act, but the whole professionalization of whining about one's weaknesses, as though they were recommendations: this was (and is) the way of the world since then.
So, therefore, looking back and "discovering" that FDR was crippled. Well, SURELY, since everyone who was adult back then was a hypocrite and evil and oppressive, FDR had to HIDE the truth, because he would have been rejected by an unfeeling, uncaring society. That's the legend. It's ridiculous. FDR had his cross to bear, and so did everyone else in 1930. FDR was elected because he offered enough people what they wanted. If he hadn't, he wouldn't have been elected. That he was crippled was not a recommendation for anything, and it wasn't a disqualification. It wasn't like he was CATHOLIC or something egregious. Unlucky in health, perhaps, but so what?
So, by the 1980s and 1990s you've not got so many folks around anymore who were already voting, aware ADULTS back in 1930, and the breathless professional victims types can "discover" that FDR...whom they're inclined to lionize because they thing, wrongly, he was a socialist...was a cripple, and use this as part of a fantasy about how mean and cruel and hypocritical the world all was back then (as contrasted with our enlightened, gentle, and vegan world of today). There aren't a lot of folks around of an age and health to debate it to say, "Uh, actually everybody knew that FDR was a cripple. So what?" 75 year-olds don't sit in college classrooms to correct the instructors, or in college dorms to correct the students on what they think happened.
And so the past gets warped.
FDR should be primarily brought up in this day and age for two specific things that particularly show his character in a way that his lionizers and demonizers don't see.
The Firebombing of Europe.
And the Japanese Concentration Camps.
This was a man for whom winning was everything, and who was willing to kill to do it.
Men like him are hard to find these days.
We should remember that we have the personal endorsement of the greatness of FDR from one other man, FDR's greatest fan: Ronald Wilson Reagan. Reagan was an FDR Democrat. And when Nancy Reagan said that her husband would NEVER want his face to replace FDR's on the Dime, he meant it.
The reason FDR was put on the dime in 1946, after his death, was the March of Dimes, the fund for polio cripples and other diabled kids. It was not by ACCIDENT that this happened. People knew. It was no disqualifier. Of course, had FDR REVELLED in his weakness, it would have been a complete disqualifier to the tough people of that tough age.
FDR would abhor being remembered as a cripple.
But he would be proud of Dresden and Hiroshima (though he did not live to order the latter, and may well have ordered the bomb dropped on Tokyo instead).
It is difficult today to conceive of anybody being PROUD of a war strategy that reposed on firebombing cities. And that shows you just how wide the ocean of perception is between then and now.
They were different people, with different passions.
Today, FDR would be seen as a fascist mass-murdering fanatic.
That one statement says it all.
FDR had to lie to the American people because he brought socialism to our country and made it acceptable.
He was more communist dictator than leader of the free world.
His legacy is the giving away of eastern Europe to the communists and putting millions into slavery.
His legacy is social security which is a ponzi scheme.
His legacy is more government and less freedom.
His legacy is the Income tax.
Today, FDR would be seen as a fascist mass-murdering fanatic.
Nope...he is thought of as Franklin the Red Delano Roosevelt.
He was a socialist...he prolonged the war and brought us the cold war. He prolonged the depression with his policies.
He brought greater power to the federal government and he made sure that the Soviets survived.
we would have been better off with Germany controlling the Soviets and let them sink into a guerilla war with the Soviet people.
Many American lives would have been saved.
And don't forget the Japanese..who was goaded into war with the US via Roosevelt's policies.
We would hae been better off to let the Chinese fight the Japanese via guerilla warefare than to loose all those American men.
Seems to me that the only party in the WWII tragedy that we saved worth a damn is the English. WE gave up Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe to the Russians and we paid the price of the cold war...the #1 legacy of FDR.