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The Real Deal (Reconsidering our reverence for FDR)
Wall Street Journal ^ | July 1, 2007 | Amity Shales

Posted on 07/01/2007 12:39:00 PM PDT by RWR8189

The late Arthur Schlesinger Jr. was a true liberal--a man who welcomed debate. Just before he died this winter, he wrote, quoting someone else, that history is an argument without end. That, Schlesinger added, "is why we love it so."

Yet concerning Schlesinger's own period of study, the 1930s, there has been curiously little argument. The American consensus is Schlesinger's consensus: that FDR saved democracy from fascism by co-opting the left and far right with his alphabet programs. Certainly, an observer might criticize various aspects of the period, but scrutiny of the New Deal edifice in its entirety is something that ought to be postponed for another era--or so we learned long ago. Indeed, to take a skeptical look at the New Deal as a whole has been considered downright immoral.

The real question about the 1930s is not whether it is wrong to scrutinize the New Deal. Rather, the question is why it has taken us all so long. Roosevelt did famously well by one measure, the political poll. He flunked by two other meters that we today know are critically important: the unemployment rate and the Dow Jones Industrial Average. In his first inaugural address, Roosevelt spoke of a primary goal: "to put people to work." Unemployment stood at 20% in 1937, five years into the New Deal. As for the Dow, it did not come back to its 1929 level until the 1950s. International factors and monetary errors cannot entirely account for these abysmal showings.

When I went back to study those years for a book, I realized two things. The first was that the picture we received growing up was distorted in a number of important regards. The second was that the old argument about the immorality of scrutinizing the New Deal was counterproductive.

The premier

(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Editorial; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: amityshlaes; fdr; forgottenman; govwatch; greatdepression; newdeal; socialsecurity
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To: jpl
Recall that at the time of Lend-Lease the US was a neutral country. Convoying, support to British Navy, ... were illegal.
21 posted on 07/01/2007 2:20:45 PM PDT by jamaksin
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To: Verginius Rufus

Over the years, I’ve read a lot about Henry A Wallace.

Though I do not like his politics, I found him to be an extremely deep and intellectual person. In short, I find him fascinating.

But like many intellectuals of his type, he displayed an incredibly naivete not only towards the Soviets but also to Democrat politics. His inability to win the 1944 nomination for VP was in part due to his lack of political skills.

Getting back to the Soviets, he was in many ways an apologist for them. His 1948 campaign (for President) reflected that.

In 1950, he broke with the Progressive Party over his support for US intervention in Korea. In 1952, he wrote an article for Look magazine called “Where I Was Wrong”. He admitted that he was duped and uninformed about Stalin’s excesses. He later considered himself to be an anti-Communist.


22 posted on 07/01/2007 2:32:52 PM PDT by MplsSteve
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To: jpl
The British and the Russians did a lot more fighting and dying on that front than we Americans did.

Bollocks. I couldn't find relevant stats, but sure, the English and the Ruskies lost a lot of lives, military and civilian - after all Hitler invaded Russia and had blitzed England it preparation for an invasion. But the Ruskies had a non-aggression pact with the Krauts until Hitler broke it, and the English had laid themselves open to it by appeasing the Krauts at Munich. The English were hunkered down on their island redoubt, waiting for the Yanks to come rescue them, and then then complained about the Yanks being "over here, over paid, and over sexed":

"Interviewer: Do you think it was true, the over here, over paid, and over sexed thing?
Mrs Hall: I've got a lovely poem, not about that, but I've got a lovely poem about them, something about, 'Dear old England's not the same, we dreaded invasion when it came, but now it's not the beastly hun, the God damned Yankee army's come. We see them in the train and bus, there isn't room for all of us, we walk to let them have our seat, and then get run over by their jeep.'".

My English neighbors still complain about the 'Mericans taking so long to get there.

Try reading Patton instead of Montgomery and Stalin.
23 posted on 07/01/2007 2:43:05 PM PDT by caveat emptor
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To: Colonel Kangaroo
Why did Roosevelt appoint 2 communist spies, Lauchlin Currie and Harry Hopkins, as his personal advisors that actually lived in the White House? The Venona Secrets
24 posted on 07/01/2007 2:45:17 PM PDT by subrosa sam (subrosasam)
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To: jpl

In taking time to tidy up the previous post I neglected to mention North Africa, Sicily, Italy, Normandy, the Ardennes, and on to Berlin.


25 posted on 07/01/2007 2:49:50 PM PDT by caveat emptor
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To: jpl

In taking time to tidy up the previous comment I neglected to mention North Africa, Sicily, Italy, Normandy, the Ardennes, and on to Berlin.


26 posted on 07/01/2007 2:51:02 PM PDT by caveat emptor
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To: TopQuark
I am surprised that the author has missed the most obvious reason for the absence of a critical reevaluation of Roosevelt, namely, that the “thinkers” of the second part of the century actually share Roosevelt’s leftist views and see no contradictions in them.

These are the same communist/socialist "thinkers" who have established the template for Joe McCarthy.

27 posted on 07/01/2007 2:56:52 PM PDT by Lancey Howard
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To: farmer18th
Who ever HAD reverence for FDR?

My Aunt from Alabama. She was up here in the north visiting a few years ago, and something came up about politics or something that prompted me to say something less than glowing about Roosevelt. She took off on me, about how FDR was the greatest president ever, that his programs kept people from starving during the depression, that he saved this country, and that we should still be thanking him today that this country is what it is. My goodness, I was surprised. She had never been particularly political that I could see; she was always fun to be around, but a gracious southern lady too. I was taken aback by that attack, and stayed away from the FDR subject after that!

28 posted on 07/01/2007 3:08:04 PM PDT by Kay Ludlow (Free market, but cautious about what I support with my dollars)
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To: Cicero

“I was a little boy when Roosevelt was president,...”

My father lived through the Great Depression. In fact, he lost his job because he was the only one on the crew who wasn’t married. He lost the job the day before he got married.

I asked him once about FDR. His comment was “GD socialist”. He normally didn’t cuss.


29 posted on 07/01/2007 3:15:32 PM PDT by DugwayDuke (A patriot will cast their vote in the manner most likely to deny power to democrats.)
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To: MplsSteve
From what I've read, FDR forced Wallace on the convention in 1940 over a lot of opposition. In 1944 a lot of the big shots in the party were afraid that FDR would not live out another term so they were determined not to allow Wallace to remain on the ticket. So Wallace's being dropped had less to do with any political skills than with being seen as unsuitable by powerful figures in the party.

Of course his father, Henry C. Wallace, had been Secretary of Agriculture for a Republican President (Harding--continued for a while under Coolidge).

30 posted on 07/01/2007 3:31:26 PM PDT by Verginius Rufus
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To: Verginius Rufus

Your point is well taken. There was much opposition to Wallace from within the Democrat Party.

What I meant to say (and didn’t explain myself too well) is that Wallace did have a chance to secure the 1944 VP nomination and didn’t act upon it. The book “American Dreamer” by John Culver explains what happened at the ‘44 National Convention.

Roosevelt, in typical fashion, hemmed and hawed to pro and anti-Wallace factions as to whether Henry Wallace would be on the ticket again in ‘44. His comments led both sides to assume that either (a) Wallace would be removed from the ticket or (b) Wallace would be the VP nominee.

Rexford Tugwell said it best about Roosevelt “He had a trick of seeming to listen, and to agree or to differ partly and pleasantly, which was flattering. This was more highly developed as he progressed in his career and it was responsible for some misunderstanding. Finally no one could tell what he was thinking, to say nothing of what he was feeling.”


31 posted on 07/01/2007 4:03:12 PM PDT by MplsSteve
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To: RWR8189

I was born in 1943 and growing up heard plenty of folks say that FDR put us on the road to socialism.....this was especially true in the 60s when LBJ started cranking up EVEN MORE entitlement programs....my great uncle who owned a lumber/coal business was especially angry at the course FDR put the country on.


32 posted on 07/01/2007 4:15:17 PM PDT by STONEWALLS
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To: Kay Ludlow

I had an uncle like that—Federal Civil Servant. He worshiped at the shrine too.


33 posted on 07/01/2007 4:44:52 PM PDT by farmer18th
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To: MplsSteve
I once heard a historian who was working on FDR tell this story--

An advisor comes into the Oval Office and outlines some proposals. FDR nods and tells him, "By golly, I think you're right!" The man leaves thinking FDR is in agreement with him.

A second advisor comes in with a diametrically opposed set of proposals. FDR nods and tells him, "By golly, I think you're right!" The second man leaves convinced FDR agrees with him.

Meanwhile Eleanor had been sitting quietly watching all this. After the second man leaves she explodes and chews out FDR for misleading the two men into thinking they had his support. He listens to her, then nods, and says, "By golly, I think you're right!"

34 posted on 07/01/2007 4:57:57 PM PDT by Verginius Rufus
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To: subrosa sam
Roosevelt was gullible. His whole administration was filled with the gullible. That does not make him a comminist himself. Lenin also said that the capitalists would sell him the rope to hang themselves. Some tried to sell him that rope too. That does not meant those foolish capitalists were commies either. the Reds made a lot of hay on the delusions of Westerners.
35 posted on 07/01/2007 5:07:49 PM PDT by Colonel Kangaroo
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To: jamaksin; FreeKeys; farmer18th
I’ve got to disagree with your selection of books (a few of which can be read at http://www.rooseveltmyth.com/), as well as that of John Flynn by Freekeys. Each one of them follows Charles Beard, the far-left economic historian, in blaming the United States for responding to Pearl Harbor by making the case that the U.S. was not neutral prior to being attacked. Jim Powell’s book also suffers when it leaves economics to tackle foreign policy, as do all of his books on presidents when they leave the field of economics.

FDR was an economic populist whose administration was riddled with, if not communists, fellow travelers. Alger Hiss, Harry Hopkins, Henry Wallace-— the list goes on and on of those who may have been working for the USSR and, in any case, acted as though they did. He prolonged the Great Depression sparked by Hoover’s Smoot-Hawley Tariff though his tightening of the money supply at exactly the wrong time. FDR tried to become "a king", as my grandfather told me, when he tried to pack the court. A soldier who'd fought under Patton, he, like Ronald Reagan, appreciated the hope and determination FDR conveyed during the war-— but he never could forgive Roosevelt for that. Was FDR an economic ignoramus, at best?

Of course.

But it is also true that FDR’s strength and conviction carried this nation through the time that the United States needed it the most and the world most needed the United States. One only need think of President Carter's time in office to see the deadly harm the lack of those qualities in a chief executive can do, and how fatal that lack would have been during the war. And for all her inane leftism, Eleanor Roosevelt opened the White House to black pioneers of education like Mary McLeod-Bethune-— something that may seem small, but helped set the Democratic Party on the road to dominating the the black vote because in politics, symbolism has substance and that one wasn’t small at the time.

Without U.S. aid to Russia and England, those nations would have been over-run by Hitler, as Oliver North related in describing the dangers the Merchant Marines went through on “War Stories” the other day.

farmer18th asks, “who ever had reverence for FDR?”

Well, Ronald Reagan, for one--- and that should tell us something.

36 posted on 07/01/2007 5:55:40 PM PDT by mjolnir ("All great change in America begins at the dinner table.")
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To: Colonel Kangaroo; Cicero; x

Even if he was sympathetic to them, FDR was not a commie. My suspicion, for which I have no proof, is that he looked upon the pinkos as useful idiots.

FDR became a man and a politician during the progressive era. He was a NY state politician who cut his cloth by opposing Tammany, which in those days made one a “reformer” but not a republican. Even while his cousin, Teddy Roosevelt, ran for president in 1912, FDR stayed democratic, principally, I believe, as a means of maintaining a political edge.

Meanwhile, he came to believe in the Wilson WWI centralized economy, and he refused to admit of its failures. When he took office in ‘33, it was to Wilson’s WWI schemes that he immediately turned: wage/price controls, government control of labor disputes, and government allocation of resources. As a progressive, and throughout his term of office, his policies promoted big business at the expense of small business.

As a progressive, he blamed all ills on competition and consumerism. He believed that credit was the source of all 1930s evil and that competitive forces would ruin the earth.

He was a fool. But he was not a communist. His goal was to nationalize the economy without taking ownership over it. If there’s any system akin to it, it’s called national socialism. The progressives taught him how.


37 posted on 07/01/2007 6:39:38 PM PDT by nicollo (all economics are politics)
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To: mjolnir

Beard actually turned on Roosevelt over the US entry to WWII.

Beard was an isolationist (from the Left) who thought that Roosevelt engineered Pearl Harbor. Beard saw the 1940 election as a repeat of 1916, when Wilson ran on an isolationist platform but did everything possible to get the US into the European war. FDR was right there.


38 posted on 07/01/2007 6:46:38 PM PDT by nicollo (all economics are politics)
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To: Cicero

What do you mean “our” reverance for FDR? Speak for yourself, Tonto.


39 posted on 07/01/2007 6:48:01 PM PDT by freedomdefender
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To: farmer18th
Father-in-law (retired Federal worker) and mother-in-law also worship FDR.
40 posted on 07/01/2007 8:03:08 PM PDT by ChessExpert (Liberals like any policy - provided that it is mandatory)
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