FDR had his moment of greatness from the attack on Pearl Harbor to his death. While he was the grandfather of modern American big government and the welfare state, Roosevelt was a great war leader, and his management of the Federal government during the Second World War was the best wartime executive leadership in this nation’s history, Lincoln included.
FDR’s wartime performance is balanced by his mismanagement of the depression and ending of the American tradition of limited government. At best a wash for me . . . a big fat 0 . . .