I heard a snippet of a - perhaps the - program on FDR that you're talking about. It didn't seem to me to be a fawning description; it pointed out that FDR couldn't have gotten elected to a third term without the issue of WWII and FDR's promise to keep us out of it.The book The New Dealers' War suggests, tho, that FDR used the "magic" crypo intelligence (predicting the Japanese would break off diplomatic negotiations on Dec 7 1941) as an occasion to leak a War Department plan for waging war on Germany and Japan. Which precipitated antiwar demonstations on December 7 - right when the Japanese were bombing Pearl Harbor.
I was also fascinated to learn that in point of fact Herbert Hoover set records for public works expenditures during his term, and that FDR couldn't have done more in 1929-1933 than Hoover himself did in that regard. The bottom line is that although FDR heaped scorn of Hoover for the Depression, FDR had no consistent economic program, and just floundered around and raised taxes. So it should really be thought of as the Hoover-Roosevelt Depression.
Certainly FDR's economic performance doesn't put you in mind of Reagan's turnaround of the Carter stagflation.
There's an interesting lecture you can get online for free from www.fee.org which goes through each of the stupid things Hoover and Roosevelt did. Roosevelt really didn't know anything about economics. He really didn't seem to have a guiding economic policy vision either. He seemed to want to just get votes. At one time, he was presented with 2 drafts for a speech. One advocated cutting taxes. The other advocated raising taxes. Roosevelt told his speechwriters to mix the two speeches into 1.
I've read this, and I don't buy it. The "plan" was a standard plan that everyone knew about---like saying we have a "plan" to invade Iran. Of course we do. Conservatives need to give up the witch hunt of trying to pin Pearl Harbor on FDR and stick to his REAL crimes, which were numerous and devastating.
The FDR program strongly suggested that it was FDR himself who leaked the plan to go to war to the Chicago Tribune, which published that plan as a front page, headlining article on Dec. 4, 1941.
The program also criticized FDR for his decision to intern Japanese Americans, and pointed out that Eleanor was strongly against that idea. Later, Reagan was credited for denouncing that decision.
I thought it was an interesting and balanced feature that provided insight into FDR's presidency. It was actually more of a hit piece than I expected. One common theme that ran throughout was how FDR made so many decisions on his own, alienating his cabinet and everyone around him. He was much more of a one man show (read Cowboy in today's parlance) than the press of today could stomach. The press back then gave him a pass probably because of his disability.