Posted on 01/31/2009 10:08:34 PM PST by Steelfish
FDR Was a Great Leader, But His Economic Plan Isn't One to Follow
By Amity Shlaes Sunday, February 1, 2009
One evening in the 1930s, a 13-year-old named William Troeller hanged himself from the transom of his bedroom in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
William's father was laid up in Kings County Hospital awaiting surgery for an injury he'd suffered on the job at Brooklyn Edison. A federal jobs program was paying William's older brother Harold for temporary work.
But the amount wasn't nearly enough to make ends meet. Gas and electricity to the family's apartment had been shut off for half a year.
Harold told a New York Times reporter that both hunger and modesty had driven William to act. "He was reluctant about asking for food," read the headline in the paper.
The surprising part of this story is not that it happened; most Americans know that after the 1929 stock-market crash, hard times sometimes led to suicide.
The surprising part is that William Troeller killed himself not in 1930, when Herbert Hoover was president, but in 1937, in Franklin D. Roosevelt's second term.
The New Deal was almost five years old, but the economy was not back. In fact, the country seemed farther from recovery than before.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
This was in WaPo? Wow. Since I won’t grace their site with my presence, this is all I’ll get to read, but it says a lot about FDR the Infallible, doesn’t it?
I think WaPo wants the The One to take heed since the MSM are joined at the hip with him and if he falls they crash as well.
Good point.
Shaes book, The Forgotten Man, is a wonderful piece of scholarship about the depression. Read it and be afraid.
Yes it does. Our most overrated president, thanks to Hitler and Tojo.
The only thing great he did was listen to Churchill re the European front and make good speeches. (words, words, words)
great book
My favorite incident she recalls is when FDR is in his bed at 10 o’clock in the morning trying to manipulate the price of gold.
Economic recovery is the last thing on Barack Hussein’s mind. The crisis (real and perceived) has presented a window of opportunity, and like FDR, he plans to exploit it to the fullest.
didn’t O tell Charlie Gibson he planned to follow his ideas even if they hurt the economy???
FDR was not a great leader, either. At least not if “great” means good and right for this country! Hitler was a “great” leader because he succeeded quite well. Of course, FDR was not even close to as evil as Hitler, but FDR was not a “great” leader as in a good one for America. He was as anti-American as any socialist of his era. He wanted to destroy everything that came before and remake it in the light of Marxist theory. So, yes, he succeeded at that. But that is NOT a “great” thing. It is horrible and has led to the decline of this country. I mark FDR as worse than Carter who was himself one of the worst presidents in history. Carter was merely a laughed at failure, but FDR actually succeeded at ruining this country. So, FDR may be “great” because his desire to ruin this country was a monumental success, but that does not make him a positive force in the USA. “Great” has to be quantified before we accept the term.
I remember P. J. O’Rourke telling a stunned Jay Leno that when the postage stamp came out his mother couldn’t decide which side to spit on.
I will do the same thing when Hussein’s stamp comes out (or is it out already?).
Yes Libearls consider internment camps for US Citizens the sign of a great leader.
Just how does FDR get credit for turning around the economy with the “New Deal” when it took 10 years!
You could just as well credit sunspots for turning it around.
I disagree.
FDR was not a great leader.
He was the architect of the Great Depression and the founder of the largest Ponzi Scheme the world has ever seen (Social Security).
Not only that, but he lost the most important battle of WWII thereby losing the war for the nations of Central Europe. America had won all the fighting, and the idiot handed Central and Eastern Europe to Stalin at Yalta, thereby subjecting millions to lives under Communism. He just gave away East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Yugoslavia, the Baltic States, Hungary to Commie butchers - and delivered the Russians weapons after the fighting was done.
The real winner of WWII was Stalin, and only thanks to the supreme idiocy of FDR. He dealt with Hitler to just divide up Poland, and got much more than he bargained for... he got half of Europe. This, only thanks to the idiot FDR - the biggest failure of a President America has ever seen.
I just wish the article could have been from one of the regular writers at WaPo. Never-the-less, page B-01 coverage is pretty good.
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