The hypocrisy of President FDR

[Kingpoleon]

The billionaire who became a left wing hero: FDR called Herbert Hoover a “timid castrated rooster of a man.” He accused Hoover of “reckless and extravagant” budgetary expenditures, since he had overseen the most spending in the country’s history in peacetime. The Roosevelt-Garner campaign warned America countless times: Herbert Hoover is “leading America down the path of socialism.”

Such actions, alongside the authoritarian borderline dictatorship of the Roosevelt Administration - which I think ought to be despised, not admired - all too often reminds me of a certain other President, and I was curious what you guys thought of it.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

I mean, yeah, FDR, like Trump, was a personally immoral bombastic rich guy who was impatient with American democratic procedure and had no real ideology beyond Making America Great Again. We've been knowing this. The difference, and it's a huge one, is that FDR's personal definition of national greatness happened to align with what most people needed in order to improve their lives, and Trump's does not.

[Kingpoleon]

I mean, yeah, FDR, like Trump, was a personally immoral bombastic rich guy who was impatient with American democratic procedure and had no real ideology beyond Making America Great Again. We've been knowing this. The difference, and it's a huge one, is that FDR's personal definition of national greatness happened to align with what most people needed in order to improve their lives, and Trump's does not.

I actually started out with Reagan in mind as a comparison, but then the anti-socialist rhetoric and tasteless insults seemed too Trumpian to not draw the comparison.

I should note that FDR’s definition left behind millions of Japanese Americans and African Americans, far more than any “racist” policies of Trump by comparison.

[OSR stands with Israel]

Comparing FDR to Trump is ridiculous in every way

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

FDR was a billionaire? News to me.

[Intell]

I mean, yeah, FDR, like Trump, was a personally immoral bombastic rich guy who was impatient with American democratic procedure and had no real ideology beyond Making America Great Again. We've been knowing this. The difference, and it's a huge one, is that FDR's personal definition of national greatness happened to align with what most people needed in order to improve their lives, and Trump's does not.

I actually started out with Reagan in mind as a comparison, but then the anti-socialist rhetoric and tasteless insults seemed too Trumpian to not draw the comparison.

I should note that FDR’s definition left behind millions of Japanese Americans and African Americans, far more than any “racist” policies of Trump by comparison.

It left behind southern African Americans based on the way new deal policies were administered by state government whom refused new deal policies to blacks. For all other African Americans new deal policies helped them immensely along with unionisation drives and blacks switched from strongly hoover/republican in 1932 to strongly democratic in 1934 onwards for a reason

[RaphaelDLG]

FDR and his advisors 1) were trying to win an election and 2) like everyone else believed in certain economic paradigms of proper / improper.  No one had any idea what to do in a situation like the great depression like we do today.

Unlike Hoover, they were willing to stop clinging to their rigid ideology and try different things until the material position of normal people improved.  FDR also had an empathy for poor people unlike that of the vast, vast majority of the presidents that followed him.

[Kingpoleon]

It left behind southern African Americans based on the way new deal policies were administered by state government whom refused new deal policies to blacks. For all other African Americans new deal policies helped them immensely along with unionisation drives and blacks switched from strongly hoover/republican in 1932 to strongly democratic in 1934 onwards for a reason

The Roosevelt Administration implemented redlining, the chief driver for hard economic times that left black unemployment at very high levels for decades and directly hurt the African American community.

FDR and his advisors 1) were trying to win an election and 2) like everyone else believed in certain economic paradigms of proper / improper.  No one had any idea what to do in a situation like the great depression like we do today.

Unlike Hoover, they were willing to stop clinging to their rigid ideology and try different things until the material position of normal people improved.  FDR also had an empathy for poor people unlike that of the vast, vast majority of the presidents that followed him.

Not true! Hoover oversaw the beginning of a New Deal.
“[Doing nothing] would have been utter ruin. Instead we met the [Depression] with proposals to private business and to the Congress of the most gigantic program of economic defense and counterattack ever evolved in the history of the Republic.”

As President, Hoover had the government take charge in ways inconceivable to his predecessors. He spent so much that FDR said he was spending too much money on public works, economic reforms, and tax cuts - all things that FDR adopted when he took the Presidency. Contrary to popular belief, there was little difference between Roosevelt and Hoover economically.

[Intell]

It left behind southern African Americans based on the way new deal policies were administered by state government whom refused new deal policies to blacks. For all other African Americans new deal policies helped them immensely along with unionisation drives and blacks switched from strongly hoover/republican in 1932 to strongly democratic in 1934 onwards for a reason

The Roosevelt Administration implemented redlining, the chief driver for hard economic times that left black unemployment at very high levels for decades and directly hurt the African American community.

Redlining is definitely bad but new deal programs helped black people as they did other poor groups.  On the whole the FDR administration improved the lives of black people (outside of the deep south) than any other president before him till like abolishing slavery.

[Orser67]

Hoover didn't begin the New Deal. He implemented a couple of relatively small programs that were dwarfed by the things FDR later did. FDR attacked him on spending in 1932, but FDR attacked him for everything in 1932 because that's how campaigns worked in the era when the parties weren't sorted by ideology.

FDR does deserve some criticism for the court-packing bill, and his administration wasn't great on racial issues, but he was still a great president who implemented much-needed reforms, helped prevent our country from going the way of Italy or Germany, and then went on to lead our nation to victory in WW2.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Comparing FDR to Trump is ridiculous in every way

[RaphaelDLG]

It left behind southern African Americans based on the way new deal policies were administered by state government whom refused new deal policies to blacks. For all other African Americans new deal policies helped them immensely along with unionisation drives and blacks switched from strongly hoover/republican in 1932 to strongly democratic in 1934 onwards for a reason

The Roosevelt Administration implemented redlining, the chief driver for hard economic times that left black unemployment at very high levels for decades and directly hurt the African American community.

FDR and his advisors 1) were trying to win an election and 2) like everyone else believed in certain economic paradigms of proper / improper.  No one had any idea what to do in a situation like the great depression like we do today.

Unlike Hoover, they were willing to stop clinging to their rigid ideology and try different things until the material position of normal people improved.  FDR also had an empathy for poor people unlike that of the vast, vast majority of the presidents that followed him.

Not true! Hoover oversaw the beginning of a New Deal.
“[Doing nothing] would have been utter ruin. Instead we met the [Depression] with proposals to private business and to the Congress of the most gigantic program of economic defense and counterattack ever evolved in the history of the Republic.”

As President, Hoover had the government take charge in ways inconceivable to his predecessors. He spent so much that FDR said he was spending too much money on public works, economic reforms, and tax cuts - all things that FDR adopted when he took the Presidency. Contrary to popular belief, there was little difference between Roosevelt and Hoover economically.

Little difference between Roosevelt and Hoover economically my a$$.

Yes, what Hoover did was unprecedented relative to the dramatically smaller expectations for government of the time, but he hesitated at the beginning of the depression in doing those things, and his solutions were basically just loan struggling businesses money, which disproportionately benefited the rich.  Also, he signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff which was devastating. 

Overall, his outlook was broadly rugged individualism (a term he coined), unlike Roosevelt who believed deeply that the power of government should be used to help people.  The difference shows.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

I mean, yeah, FDR, like Trump, was a personally immoral bombastic rich guy who was impatient with American democratic procedure and had no real ideology beyond Making America Great Again. We've been knowing this. The difference, and it's a huge one, is that FDR's personal definition of national greatness happened to align with what most people needed in order to improve their lives, and Trump's does not.

I actually started out with Reagan in mind as a comparison, but then the anti-socialist rhetoric and tasteless insults seemed too Trumpian to not draw the comparison.

I should note that FDR’s definition left behind millions of Japanese Americans and African Americans, far more than any “racist” policies of Trump by comparison.

Well, yes; that's why I'm saying "most". Redlining and Japanese internment were both inexcusable, and, while I honestly don't know how much blame for the former was the administration's and how much was Congress's, the blame for the latter is clearly FDR's.

ETA: If I can volunteer another thing about FDR that I don't care for, and that he also has in common with Trump, it's difficult to grasp just how godawful his instincts about other world leaders were. His misplaced trust in Stalin is well-known, but his ridiculous suspicion of de Gaulle is also remarkable considering that Churchill had to talk him out of attempting to "wean Petain away from the Axis"--wtf. American leadership in World War II was as successful as it was very much in spite of FDR's personal feelings about the other main figures involved.

[PSOL]

Meh, that’s why I preferred to have Huey Long win the presidency.

[RaphaelDLG]

I mean, yeah, FDR, like Trump, was a personally immoral bombastic rich guy who was impatient with American democratic procedure and had no real ideology beyond Making America Great Again. We've been knowing this. The difference, and it's a huge one, is that FDR's personal definition of national greatness happened to align with what most people needed in order to improve their lives, and Trump's does not.

I actually started out with Reagan in mind as a comparison, but then the anti-socialist rhetoric and tasteless insults seemed too Trumpian to not draw the comparison.

I should note that FDR’s definition left behind millions of Japanese Americans and African Americans, far more than any “racist” policies of Trump by comparison.

Well, yes; that's why I'm saying "most". Redlining and Japanese internment were both inexcusable, and, while I honestly don't know how much blame for the former was the administration's and how much was Congress's, the blame for the latter is clearly FDR's.

ETA: If I can volunteer another thing about FDR that I don't care for, and that he also has in common with Trump, it's difficult to grasp just how godawful his instincts about other world leaders were. His misplaced trust in Stalin is well-known, but his ridiculous suspicion of de Gaulle is also remarkable considering that Churchill had to talk him out of attempting to "wean Petain away from the Axis"--wtf. American leadership in World War II was as successful as it was very much in spite of FDR's personal feelings about the other main figures involved.

Yeah, I don't know if I agree with you, dude. 

You can make an argument that the soviet expansionism in eastern Europe and central asia was more out of fear of a west that the Soviet Union had great reason to distrust / was constantly invading it, rather than some deep-seated imperialism, and that FDR's approach, if continued, would have lessened cold war tensions, in contrast to Truman, Eisenhower, et al. 

Also, one reason why FDR was nicer to Stalin than those two was that, before we had the bomb, we really needed Russia in the pacific theater.

Furthermore, FDR had amazing vision both during the 1930s when he was one of the only people in America/the west that tried (at political cost!) to try to promote an international effort to stop the rise of totalitarianism, and in the early 1940s, where he foresaw the possibility of a future liberal internationalist order and was by far the person / leader most responsible for its post-war rise.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

Oh, FDR's overall vision for the international order was fantastic and is one of my favorite things about him; I'm not objecting to that at all. It's specifically which individual other world leaders he did and didn't trust that I'm faulting. Your counterfactual about the foreign policy of a postwar USSR that didn't meet with unmitigated hostility from the West is well-taken, but I'm not sure I agree with it.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

FDR was a pupil of Wilson, and proponent of Wilson's policies of: Direct elections of Senators, income tax and Right of Women to vote, and ran as a Veep candidate to Cox, that lost to Harding in 1920. Income tax is how he passed his New Deal, Payroll tax.

FDR also appointed Eisehower to defeat the NAZIS in WWII. He is the cousin of Teddy Roosevelt who said the inheritance tax was capitalism. Joe Kennedy was a pupil of FDR. FDR also appointed Hugo Black, Robert H Jackson and Femix Frankfurter that integrated schools in Brown case. It's hard to argue such greatness😎😎😎😎

Wilson, Jennings-Bryan and FDR were WC newspaper boys who represented Labour Unions

[Orser67]

FDR knew quite well that the Soviets couldn't be trusted. But he also understood that a)he needed their "help" (by which I mean that they were the ones doing the heavy lifting) to beat Germany, b)it would have taken another war to prevent the Soviets from forcing Eastern Europe into their sphere of influence, and c)he needed their approval to establish the UN and other post-war international organizations that he believed could help prevent future wars and international economic crises.

His suspicion of de Gaulle was a bit much, but it also points to something that FDR critics often overlook, which is that he really pressed decolonization on Britain, France, and the Netherlands (in addition to Japan, obviously).

[H. Ross Peron]

https://twitter.com/rauchway/status/1142148046362255360

This thread by a noted historian of FDR makes it pretty clear that he ran on a solid centre-left, progressive agenda in 1932 against Herbert Hoover. He may have made some fiscally conservative statements over the course of the campaign but later Democrats such as Mondale and Clinton have also done that and it doesn't seem to have been the focus of his campaign as opposed to extending relief and opportunity to ordinary Americans.

I don't really blame FDR for pursuing courtpacking against a reactionary Supreme Court that threatened to throttle nearly any relevant federal social legislation. If anything, I wish FDR had used the window of opportunity in the Thirties to push more fundamental constitutional reform such as expansion of the House, moving to a more propotional system of elections etc.

[junior chįmp]

https://twitter.com/rauchway/status/1142148046362255360

This thread by a noted historian of FDR makes it pretty clear that he ran on a solid centre-left, progressive agenda in 1932 against Herbert Hoover. He may have made some fiscally conservative statements over the course of the campaign but later Democrats such as Mondale and Clinton have also done that and it doesn't seem to have been the focus of his campaign as opposed to extending relief and opportunity to ordinary Americans.

I don't really blame FDR for pursuing courtpacking against a reactionary Supreme Court that threatened to throttle nearly any relevant federal social legislation. If anything, I wish FDR had used the window of opportunity in the Thirties to push more fundamental constitutional reform such as expansion of the House, moving to a more propotional system of elections etc.

This also depends on whose narrative you believe, the DNC chairman at the time considered Roosevelt a radical:

Because of speeches like this one, writes historian Patrick J. Maney, Democrats like John Jacob Raskob, the party chairman, “considered [FDR] to be an out-and-out radical” and sought to block his nomination. Al Smith responded to Roosevelt’s “bottom up” speech with fire: “I will take off my coat and vest and fight to the end against any candidate who persists in any demagogic appeal to the masses…to destroy themselves by setting class against class and rich against poor.”

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2016/03/how-franklin-roosevelt-won-the-contested-1932-convention-and-the-white-house.html

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

What about hypocrisy of Nixon or Reagan or Dubya, who came in on false pretenses saying they would make America better and the rich got richer, as well as Trump.

The GOP may be in the minority again since 2008 and there wont be no Obamacare rebellion to get them back in the majority like in 2010. Dems will be in charge of reapportionment since 1990

[dead0man]

What about hypocrisy of Nixon or Reagan or Dubya, who came in on false pretenses saying they would make America better and the rich got richer, as well as Trump.

The GOP may be in the minority again since 2008 and there wont be no Obamacare rebellion to get them back in the majority like in 2010. Dems will be in charge of reapportionment since 1990

I'll allow you, just this one time, to start a thread on that.

[Sumner 1868]

One hopes the people who criticize FDR for being exclusionary aren't the same "moderate heroes" who have demonized Henry Wallace for three-quarters of a century.

http://www.davidpietrusza.com/1948-progressive-party-platform.html

The Progressive Party holds that it is the first duty of a just government to secure for
all the people, regardless of race, creed, color, sex, national background, political
belief, or station in life, the inalienable rights proclaimed in the Declaration of
Independence and guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. The government must actively
protect these rights against the encroachments of public and private agencies.
The Progressive Party holds that a just government must use its powers to promote
an abundant life for its people.

The Progressive Party calls for the repeal of the anti-Catholic, anti-semitic
Displaced Persons Act of 1948 which permits the entry into the United States of
fascists and collaborators. We call for the enactment of legislation to open our
doors in the true American tradition to the victims of fascist persecution.

The Progressive Party condemns segregation and discrimination in all its forms
and in all places.

We demand full equality for the Negro people, the Jewish people, Spanish-
speaking Americans, Italian Americans, Japanese Americans, and all Other
nationality groups.

We call for a Presidential proclamation ending segregation and all forms of
discrimination in the armed services and Federal employment.

We demand Federal anti-lynch, anti-discrimination, and fair-employment-practices
legislation, and legislation abolishing segregation in interstate travel.

We call for immediate passage of anti-poll tax legislation, enactment of a universal
suffrage law to permit all citizens to vote in Federal elections, and the full use of
Federal enforcement powers to assure free exercise of the right to franchise.
We call for a Civil Rights Act for the District of Columbia to eliminate racial
segregation and discrimination in the nation's capital.

We demand the ending of segregation and discrimination in the Panama Canal
Zone and all territories, possessions and trusteeships.

We demand that Indians, the earliest Americans, be given full citizenship rights
without loss of reservation rights and be permitted to administer their own affairs.

We will develop special programs to raise the low standards of health, housing,
and educational facilities for Negroes, Indians and nationality groups, and will deny
Federal funds to any state or local authority which withholds opportunities or
benefits for reasons of race, creed, color, sex or national origin.

We will initiate a Federal program of education, in cooperation with state, local,
and private agencies to combat racial and religious prejudice.

We support the enactment of legislation making it a Federal crime to disseminate
anti-Semitic, anti-Negro, and all racist propaganda by mail, radio, motion picture or
other means of communication.

We call for a Constitutional amendment which will effectively prohibit every form of
discrimination against women—economic, educational, legal, and political.
We pledge to respect the freedom of conscience of sincere conscientious
objectors to war. We demand amnesty for conscientious objectors imprisoned in
World War II.

We advocate the right of the foreign born to obtain citizenship without
discrimination.

We advocate the repeal of discriminatory immigration laws based upon race,
national origin, religion, or political belief.

We recognize the just claims of the Japanese Americans for indemnity for the
losses suffered during their wartime internment, which was an outrageous violation
of our fundamental concepts of justice.

We support legislation facilitating naturalization of Filipinos, Koreans, Japanese,
Chinese, and other national groups now discriminated against by law.

The Progressive Party proposes to secure the rights of women and children and to
guarantee the security of the American family as a happy and democratic unit and
as the mainstay of our nation.

We propose to raise women to first-class citizens by removing all restrictions—
social, economic, and political—without jeopardizing the existing protective
legislation vital to women as mothers or future mothers.

We propose to extend fair labor standards for women, to guarantee them healthful
working conditions, equal job security with men, and their jobs back after the birth
of children.

Wallace was polling over a fifth of the vote at the very start of his campaign, but after months of extreme red-baiting from both the right-wing and the liberal elite press, he mustered only 2.37% in the general election.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

His suspicion of de Gaulle was a bit much, but it also points to something that FDR critics often overlook, which is that he really pressed decolonization on Britain, France, and the Netherlands (in addition to Japan, obviously).

Excellent point. Thanks for reminding me of this.