Obama Can Learn From FDR

I was recently reading the biography, "The Three Roosevelts" by James MacGregor Burns and Susan Dunn - when I was almost knocked senseless by the following paragraph which appeared at the top of page 310:

"[N]ot only had the president [Franklin Roosevelt] attacked the motives of the financial and industrial elite, assailing 'a decade of debauch, of group selfishness,' he had also battered the foundations of their self esteem. Following in the footsteps of [Theodore Roosevelt], FDR had exploded one of the most popular and deeply entrenched myths in America, he had dissociated the concept of wealth from the concept of virtue. Not only did he refuse to portray business leaders as virtuous men, he compared them to the fascist menace abroad. While countries dominated by 'aristocracy and aggression' threatened the United states from without, he charged that the nation was threatened by its own 'resplendent economic autocracy' from within - economic autocrats who wanted nothing but 'power for themselves, enslavement for the public.'"

Therein lies the tragedy of Barack Obama. He has tried to maintain the appearance of being "above it all". He has tried to be too much of an amiable gentleman - when he should have been fighting these plutocratic thugs with all the rhetorical thunder he could muster. The lesson that the thirty-second president learned over seventy-five years ago seems to have been lost on the forty-fourth. Pity.

Late in campaign of 2008, Senator Obama's handlers made much of the fact that he was in the process of reading "Team of Rivals", the biography of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin that was published around that period. He was reading the right author but the wrong book. The book he should have been reading was her bio of President and Mrs. Roosevelt, "No Ordinary Time". Let's just hope that he is able to spare the time to read her upcoming book on Franklin's distant cousin Theodore.

Is the president serious when he tells us that he plans on "working with" the opposition party in the next two years? Part of me has to believe that he's not, that he's merely taking on the guise of the good loser, holding his cards close to his vest. The last thing in the world he wants to do at this stage in the game is to even think about "working with" these reactionary assholes. As history tells us, that's impossible. He must realize this by now. Or does he? If he doesn't he is about to make the same fatal mistake made by Bill Clinton in 1994.

When the Republicans took back the House that year for the first time since the 1950s, Clinton naively decided that if he couldn't beat the hideous bastards, he would join them, so to speak. In the process he moved the Democratic party far enough to the right that by the early spring of 1998, "the party if Franklin Delano Roosevelt" was virtually unrecognizable. That was the year I bolted the Dems forever and never looked back. If Clinton was expecting a fair shake from the GOP for his appeasement he was tragically mistaken. Later on that same year they impeached him for lying about a fling with a half-witted intern. Wasn't that a time? Isn't this as well?

Should Obama expect the same type of treatment from the one-hundred and twelfth congress? The answer to that question is, quite simply: DUH!!! As they did twelve years ago, they plan on bringing the executive branch of our government to a screeching halt. These people are morally bankrupt and they are decades past the time when they could rely on the quaint concept of "reasoned discoursed". All they have going for them at this point in their weird and twisted history is their ability to obfuscate and their power to obstruct. The following two years will see the persecution of Barack Obama. The wheels are already in motion.

MESSAGE TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:

Dear President Obama;

First of all, I want to thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to read my blog. I am truly and indescribably humbled. [Hey, I can dream, can't I? Cut me some slack!] Mr. President, now is not the time for humility. Now is the time to fight. As weird as the opposition was during the last congressional session, they're only going to be worse in the next. Remember that there are a lot more of them now. For you to even attempt to find common cause with these jackasses is beyond naive - it is politically suicidal. Given what happened to Bill Clinton, and taking into consideration their disgusting behavior during the first two years of your administration, by now it should be obvious to you that they want to destroy you. And they will destroy you - if you allow them to. Hell, most of these nitwits refuse to concede that you were born in the United States! They're not rational people, Mr. President. You cannot - you will not - be able to "meet them half way". Don't be an idiot.

There. I said it. Forgive my harsh tone, Mr. President, but it needed to be said. Give Sasha and Malia and hug for me, will you? And send my love to Michelle. I've got a wicked crush on that gal. Seriously!

Here are some instructive quotations:

"I should like to have it said of my first administration that in it, the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second administration that in it, these forces met their master."

"Those newspapers of the nation which most loudly cried "dictatorship" against me would have been the first to justify the beginnings of a dictatorship by somebody else."

"Whoever seeks to set one religion against the other seeks to destroy all religion."

"Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate of me - and I welcome their hatred."

"There is nothing I love as much as a good fight."

-Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Them's fightin' words, pardner! Man! I feel like wagin' a little class warfare, baby! (Nonviolently, of course).

As the title of this little ditty of mine suggests, the forty-fourth president of the United States could learn a hell-of-a-lot from the actions of the thirty-second. As I write these words, a discussion is taking place on the Morning Joe program. Mike Barnacle has just wondered aloud whether or not Obama has Clinton's ability to "sit down with the Republicans." Mike!!! You're completely missing the point! What good did Clinton's "sitting down" with the GOP do us in the long run? What are the positive results all these years later? NAFTA? Have another sip. Sixty-five years after his death, we still benefit from FDR's New Deal - or what's left of it. What are the present-day benefits of Bubbah's so-called "New Covenant"? On second thought, don't ask, don't tell.

Let's give Bill Clinton credit. He was in many ways an able and intelligent chief executive. But ultimately he was a bitter disappointment because of his tendency to cave in to the right wing. We can only hope that Barack Obama doesn't make the same mistake.

There are a lot of good reasons why Franklin D. Roosevelt is usually rated by historians as one of the three greatest presidents in the history of this country. One of those reasons is because the guy loved a good fight - and never shied away from one. He never tried to appear "above it all". He loved to say, "We must take action. NOW!" And he took action, Buster - you'd better believe it. That is why most people hold him in such high regard today. FDR was a fighter.

Are you listening, Mr. President?

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
tomdegan@frontiernet.net

SUGGESTED READING:

The Three Roosevelts
by James MacGregor Burns and Susan Dunn

If it is not available at your local, independently owned bookstore (go there first), you can probably pick it up on Amazon.com. It's a page-turner.

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For more recent postings on this cesspool of left wing propaganda, please go to the link below:

"The Rant" by Tom Degan

Happy reading, kiddies!