I have a number of things in common with Obama. We're the same age, we both like basketball, and neither one of us can quite believe that we're arguing about the New Deal, particularly when the "argument" is based on such a ridiculous, nonfactual, ideological interpretation.
Too strange, isn't it? I have some old Republican relatives who've waxed poetic about Reagan, G.H.W. Bush, and even Dubya, until it was too much for them to stand, and they've always praised FDR in reverent terms. Some of the stories about the Great Depression are frightening. Stories I heard from them and my more moderate and liberal relatives, who either grew up then, remembering the ordeal, or were grown and coping with it. Let's hope that as bad as things are, and as bad as they are becoming, that nothing on that scale happens because of this crisis. People would flip out.
When I allow it, I'm very pessimistic. I'm not sure we as a nation have the psychological make up to deal with this.
Warren G. Harding was a template for George W. Bush. An appealing but intellectually obtuse man led on a leash by a cadre of corrupt and morally decrepit power-mongers. Good things may have happened on his watch, but I would dispute any implication that it was his doing.
I didn't post it as fact. I posted it because people seem to think that the American people were all for FDR's policies. The guy in your article may be right about a pull back of spending, but it wasn't because the Republicans pressuring FDR, but rather public perception about deficit spending. There are two sides to everything. Nobody knows for sure what would have or could have been. It is all guess based on what we see. I think massive spending is wrong. I think the market needs a massive correction, one that it can't acheive with massive government intervention. We are delaying a collapse, not fixing it.
My point. Truman is #5, ahead of Jefferson. I think that starting the atmosphere of continual war should put you closer to last than first, but history tends to like the "decider men", regardless of how badly they screwed the country.
jfk is ranked 6th in that survey, and clinton 15th, so it's hard to take that particular ranking too seriously.
