The article “American President A Reference Resource–Franklin Delano Roosevelt Front Page” gives our President a guideline to follow to help the bottom 99%.
The article, in its The Campaign and Election of 1932 regarding Franklin Delano Roosevelt states “FDR told Americans that only by working together could the nation overcome the economic crisis, a sharp contrast to Hoover’s paeans to American individualism in the face of the depression. In a speech in San Francisco, FDR outlined the expansive role that the federal government should play in resuscitating the economy, in easing the burden of the suffering, and in insuring that all Americans had an opportunity to lead successful and rewarding lives.”
Doesn’t that seem to mimic President Obama’s 2008 campaign?
The article regarding The Campaign and Election of 1936 states “The economy remained sluggish and eight million Americans still were without jobs.”
FDR didn’t care about important groups disagreeing with him as the article states “Likewise, by 1936 FDR had lost most of the backing he once held in the business community because of his support for the Wagner Act and the Social Security Act.”
Bush 43 wanted to privatize Social Security and the Tea Party wants to abolish all of the US social safety net programs including FDR’s New Deal.
The article states ” Roosevelt seemed to relish the attacks of Republicans, maintaining that he and his New Deal protected the average American against the predations of the rich and powerful, Referring to “business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking,” FDR crowed, “Never before have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me-and I welcome their hatred.”
Remember President Clinton feeling your pain? The article states “Roosevelt’s supporters believed their candidate understood and sympathized with them. As one worker put it in 1936, Roosevelt “is the first man in the White House to understand that my boss is a son of a (expletive.)”
President Obama has to emulate President Clinton’s and FDR’s ability to empathize with the bottom 99%.
President Obama has to stop being concerned with the independents as the article states “What the 1936 election made most clear was that because of FDR and the New Deal, the Democratic Party was now the majority party in the nation.”
The article “Another article “On Jobs, Obama Should Channel FDR” describes that President Obama must emulate FDR if he wants “Change we can Believe in” to succeed.
The article states “How did President Franklin D. Roosevelt in his first term respond to unprecedented unemployment in the Great Depression? He threw everything he could think of at it, an alphabet soup of spending programs and jobs programs, including the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the Tennessee Valley Authority Act, and the National Industrial Recovery Act.
FDR created the Federal Emergency Relief Administration and the Civil Works Administration to distribute stimulus funding to states and cities. He created the Civilian Conservation Corps, which gave training and employment to millions of young unemployed Americans. The Works Progress Administration provided employment for additional millions of Americans. Social Security was created to provide relief and old-age pensions. The National Labor Relations Act strengthened the rights of American workers to bargain collectively.”
The GOP fought him, but FDR didn’t care as earlier noted. The article states “Whenever one of his ideas was blocked by Republicans or overturned by the courts, he would just try something else. The deficit spending forced the Roosevelt administration to both borrow more money, increasing the national debt, and raise taxes.”
Who was more bitterly attacked FDR or President Obama? The article states “The passionate opposition to FDR’s jobs program exceeded the enmity directed at President Obama today. But FDR responded in kind. The speech he delivered at Madison Square Garden on October 31, 1936, rings as powerfully today as it did then. Can you imagine President Obama delivering a speech like this:
“For nearly four years you have had an Administration which instead of twirling its thumbs has rolled up its sleeves. We will keep our sleeves rolled up.
We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace-business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.
They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.”
This mess our country is in now has a political impact also. Let’s say you are an extreme leftist enflamed with President Obama’s concessions to the GOP. Where would we be if another Bush 43 were in office? Sarah Palin would eliminate the entire US social safety net. The Tea Party believes in some variation of Reagan’s tough love and would abolish any government help for the bottom 99% including the New Deal, the Great Society Programs and President Obama’s Affordable Health Care reform if they had their way.
The Tea Party has everyone, including other GOP politicians and President Obama quaking in their boots. Occasionally President Obama remarks that policies he wants to enact would ensure that he’d only have one term. So be it, but we need help!
The article states “Americans in hard times want a president who is fighting for them. Whether particular initiatives succeed or fail, get passed or get blocked, get upheld or overturned by the courts, is all less important than having a leader who understands their suffering and who is working every day to make their lives less difficult. They had that in FDR.”
Filibusters, anonymous holds, and other obstructionary tactics have become the rule for the party of no during President Obama’s term. If President Obama proposes items to resolve joblessness that the Tea Party immediately rejects then nothing gets accomplished, but if he follows what the Tea Party requests then only the top 1% gets help.
What can he do? “The president wants to work with Republicans and Democrats to create jobs and grow the economy,” said Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director. “If nothing happens, it will be because Republicans in Congress made a conscious decision to do nothing. And that is a choice that will have tremendous consequences for the country.”
If President Obama doesn’t want to directly attack GOP that’s fine. Surrogates such as Pfeiffer have been an acceptable mode of communication for generations.
Democrats in the House can do this as well. “It’s very important for the president to set forth his vision,” said Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the senior Democrat on the House Budget Committee. “I don’t think he should limit his vision to what may or may not pass the House of Representatives.”
What is Bush 43’s “compassionate conservatism” and the Tea Party’s vitriol other than an updated version of the GOP’s attempt to eliminate the “New Deal” and help for the bottom 99%.
The only group the GOP’s policies have ever benefitted is their top 1% cronies simply because the proles are too apathetic to read the writing on the wall.