Similarities, but no match between FDR and Barack Obama

Political pundits often compare the challenges faced by Barack Obama in 2008 to those faced by Franklin Roosevelt in 1933.  Both entered the Oval Office after the nation’s wealth had plummeted from a huge surplus to a devastating deficit. 

      But times were quite different.  FDR had to create mechanisms to restore stability and replace fear with hope.  Obama’s challenge was to skillfully use  mechanisms FDR had invented.

      FDR worked with a panicked Congress that welcomed his leadership and supported his programs.  Albeit, with mixed emotions. 

     Obama had to convince a sharply divided Congress to come together to preserve the republic.  Both men had to urge legislators to put nation before party, and seek middle ground. 

      FDR heard the rumblings of war in Japan and Germany, but at that moment faced no immediate threat from outside his own beleaguered nation.  Those threats would materialize soon enough into World War II, with devastating consequences.

      Obama, on the other hand, inherited two unnecessary wars financed with borrowed money, chiefly from China.  The staggering costs of those wars were not included in the nation’s budget.  And they continue to burden our nation and take the lives of our troops;  wars seemingly without end.

FDR’s first 100 days: 

     Within his first 100 days in office, FDR regulated the banking system and created millions of jobs that would, in a remarkably short time, restore the nation’s infrastructure, provide flood control, and build schools, dams, roads, and parks.  He stopped foreclosures, worked with farmers to assure a return on their investment, and created the Tennessee Valley Authority. 

      Obama propped up the automobile industry until it could again function  on its own, infused failing markets with cash, but believed private industry in all fields would provide the jobs.  Sadly, employers’ confidence is not yet fully restored.  Major firms tend to build up reserves rather than create jobs.  Too often, they transfer manufacturing facilities offshore where operating costs are lower. Unemployment in the U.S. remains disturbingly high, except, of course, on Wall Street where market manipulators who created the financial crisis are still operating handsomely with few constraints.

      Both FDR and Obama crossed swords with the Supreme Court,  believing its decisions undercut their initiatives and blunted the will of both Congress and the people. 

      FDR clumsily tried and failed to pack the Court with his own appointees, an effort roundly criticized by his supporters and his opponents.  Obama has publicly voiced his displeasure with the Court’s rulings. 

       FDR-type programs had a rebirth in the 1960s under Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society,” with the passage of Medicare, Civil Rights legislation, expanded educational opportunities, the “war on poverty,” and the Freedom of Information Act.  But conservative have been trying to destroy Franklin Roosevelt’s programs ever since the 32^nd president put them in place during his unprecedented four-term administration that stretched through the Great Depression almost to the end of World War II. 

       And those efforts to destroy the last remnants of FDR’s “New Deal,” John Kennedy’s, “New Frontier,” and Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society,”  have never been more strident than today.  Social programs are anathema to those who believe government should shrink overall and abandon or dilute its hand in the social welfare of the people.

Medicare as a single payer system:

       When Medicare was written in 1965 as a single payer system managed by government, with major, essential participation of insurance and pharmaceutical companies, conservatives screamed to the white House and Capitol Hill that a single payer concept was blatantly socialistic.

       After fierce lobbying, and with great reluctance, the bill was substantially modified.  Medicare’s primary author, Wilbur Cohen, who as a young social welfare professor at the University of Michigan had helped to draft FDR’s Social Security legislation, was then undersecretary of Health,
Education, and Welfare.  He was bitterly disappointed.  But as a veteran of dozens of legislative battles, Cohen was a key force in implementing the version enacted, with the fervent hope the original concept might be employed at a later time.

         Cohen’s original draft would have avoided the multi-layered, unnecessarily costly program legislators are trying to rewrite today.  Only the very bold even speak of single payer today, although privately most agree it would work most efficiently and cost-effectively.  The basic, long unresolved question, of course, is the legitimate role of government.

       Conservatives do not revere Franklin Roosevelt’s memory, or the course he set for the nation.  But the poor and voiceless of that era revered him.  The rich and powerful said he was a traitor to his class.  Their descendents on Capitol Hill and in the marketplace are the ones who rail against President Obama today.

       Obama has had to defend himself against ridiculous, scurrilous accusations about his citizenship, his scholarly achievements, his community accomplishments, and even his commitment to democracy.

       FDR was compared to Italy’s strutting dictator, Benito Mussolini. When he ran for a second term in 1936, his opponents circulated thousands of fliers saying his disability from polio was actually third stage syphilis.  FDR’s satisfaction was a resounding victory.  But he did not forgive the outrageous attempt to defile his character.

        In FDR’s time, national radio was the principal means of communicating with the people, and he used it masterfully, delivering dozens of “fireside chats” to inform and inspire the people.  In a conversational style, he took the people into his confidence, explaining his plans, later reporting on the progress of  the war, and emphasizing the need for national unity.

        He could not have imagined the range of instant communication media that Obama has at his fingertips today.  President Obama is a masterful orator.  He has a brilliant mind and a thoughtful demeanor.  Perhaps he will  learn to be more conversational. 

        The question today is how well and how honestly leaders in government and business employ modern communication. Truth is still elusive.  Clever propaganda is too often applauded.  And vicious, unfounded accusations still characterize political campaigns.

        On that President Obama and FDR would fully agree.

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Carlton E. Spitzer