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Obama Should Borrow A Page From FDR This Labor Day
President Obama will speak in Milwaukee this Labor Day, his second Wisconsin appearance in as many months.
The president's attentiveness to the state is notable, if perhaps somewhat less than altruistic.
This is, after all, an election year. And Wisconsin is the swingingest of swing states -- a state where a governorship that has been in Democratic hands could be lost, and where a Senate seat and at least one U.S. House seat are vulnerable.
So, this Labor Day, Obama wants to reconnect with voters in a state that gave him overwhelming support in his 2008 campaigns for the Democratic presidential nomination and the presidency.
Unfortunately, polls suggest that Wisconsinites -- like residents of other Midwestern swing states -- are not quite so impressed with Obama as they were two years ago. It is not that the people of the state have given up on the guy. But they are looking for something more than managerial pronouncements about the economic shambles that he inherited from George Bush and Dick Cheney.
Midwesterners are not naive and nostalgic. They know that Bush and Cheney did not "get it."
What they're not so sure about is whether Obama "gets" it.
To answer the question, the president would do well to borrow a page from the wisest of his predecessors.
Seventy-six years ago this summer, Franklin Roosevelt came to another Wisconsin city, Green Bay, at a similar point in his presidency.
Like Obama, FDR had been elected on a promise of "hope" and "change."
Like Obama, FDR had tried with mixed success to deliver on that promise.
In Green Bay, in the summer of 1934, the 32nd president needed to explain to a crowd that was sympathetic but worried that the economic wrangling in which he and his administration was engaged had to be seen in perspective - not just the perspective of the presidency of the man he replaced, Herbert Hoover, but the perspective of the long American struggle between a privileged few that engaged in the "private means of exploitation" and the great many that had "waged a long and bitter fight for (their) rights."
Roosevelt did this with a history lesson, of a sort, in which he traced back to the founding of the republic in to recount the long fight "against those forces which disregard human cooperation and human rights in seeking that kind of individual profit which is gained at the expense of his fellows."
That fight between patriotic proponents of economic justice and the Tory defenders of an old economic royalism had, Roosevelt argued, come to a head with the arrival of the Great Depression.
Recalling the 1932 election that swept Democrats to power and ushered in the New Deal era, the president argued, "In the great national movement that culminated over a year ago, people joined with enthusiasm. They lent hand and voice to the common cause, irrespective of many older political traditions. They saw the dawn of a new day. They were on the march; they were coming back into the possession of their own home land."
"As the humble instruments of their vision and their power, those of us who were chosen to serve them in 1932 turned to the great task," Roosevelt continued. "In one year and five months, the people of the United States have received at least a partial answer to their demands for action; and neither the demand nor the action has reached the end of the road."
The primary barrier to action, the president explained, was erected by those who still entertained the fantasy who argued that FDR could restore confidence only by "(telling) tell the people of the United States that all supervision by all forms of Government, Federal and State, over all forms of human activity called business should be forthwith abolished."
So, like Obama, Roosevelt faced an opposition that claimed government was the problem.
Unlike Obama, however, Roosevelt refused to even entertain - let alone embrace - the absurd constructs of the private-sector fabulists who "would repeal all laws, State or national, which regulate business-that a utility could henceforth charge any rate, unreasonable or otherwise; that the railroads could go back to rebates and other secret agreements; that the processors of food stuffs could disregard all rules of health and of good faith; that the unregulated wild-cat banking of a century ago could be restored; that fraudulent securities and watered stock could be palmed off on the public; that stock manipulation which caused panics and enriched insiders could go unchecked."
"In fact," the president continued, "if we were to listen to (the anti-government crowd), the old law of the tooth and the claw would reign in our Nation once more."
"The people of the United States will not restore that ancient order," thundered Roosevelt. "There is no lack of confidence on the part of those business men, farmers and workers who clearly read the signs of the times. Sound economic improvement comes from the improved conditions of the whole population and not a small fraction thereof."
With those words, Roosevelt took a side.
He did not imagine that it was possible to compromise with those who wanted to return to the "tooth and claw" past.
No, he would stand against the Tories and for the new order where it was understood that the purpose of government was to achieve "the improved conditions of the whole population and not a small fraction thereof."
Were Obama to take a similar stand this Labor Day, were he to echo Roosevelt's call for economic justice, the energy of this election year would shift - in Wisconsin and nationally - because voters would know, finally, which side their president was on.
124 Comments so far
Show AllExpect something small and weak, nicely phrased. We know this man.
Obama has nothing in common with FDR other than cigarette smoking.
Maybe he doesn't. But his the Democratic Party's marketing people probably wanted the public to sense a certain "FDR"ishness during the campaign season.
Now, the Republicans use this fake FDRishness to attack bank-darling Obama as being a socialist - something FDR actually was.
So the Democrat's spin is all the Republicans have to work with: nothing else has changed. The regulatory capture is proceeding as planned.
Hot off the Press:
Obama seeks massive tax break for business
I absolutely agree. He will only call forth the spirits of the devious hacks who write his speeches.
It is a positive step for President Obama to start nation building at home w/ the proposition to spend %50 billion on infrastructure...but Obama's "pragmatic" political calculation make me think he's afraid of being called a liberal by opponents, FDR would have been happy to be called a liberal.
And the King asked David to come forth . . .
But, he slipped on a banana peel and came fifth instead.
President Obama we are ready for a BOLD new initiative to get people back to work. Lets rebuild our crumbling infra structure. Let's give our unemployed youth something comparable to the CCC camps of the 30s. More HOPE and CHANGE.
This ain't the US of decades ago.
This man isn't FDR anymore than JFK or MLK. He is however, just like GWB; a murderer, a thief and a liar.
What a thinly disguised crock of you-know-what.
To the American public traumatized by the Bush Presidency, corporate America poured enormous amount of money to tout an African American man, Barack Obama, as the candidate of ‘Hope and Change’; however, once in office, President Obama kept Bush’s Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, in charge of the Military Industrial Complex and kept Bush’s Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, in charge of the Nation’s Banking System.
It just shows that some people are clueless dupes.
OilyBomber has most definitely shown which side he is on.
Thanks for the quotes from a great man even though he might have used Pearl Harbour and Manila Airbase as false flag incidents ( instigated the attacks through blocking Japan's access to OIL and purposely allowed the targets to be destroyed).
Oh lord please stop the false flag crap about Pearl Harbor.The Pacific is big, and nobody knew where the Japanese fleet was.The range of spotter planes was limited, and we had no radar.Putting the squeeze an Japan's oil was not intended to cause an attack on the US fleet. Give it up, already.It's amazing that people can believe this stuff.Have a beer and chill out.Maybe it's a nice day where you are.
Ricaedohead
On the contrary Glenn Ford's point was very well taken. Paul L. Atwood devotes a chapter in his book War and Empire: The American Way of Life to this topic which is entitled Pearl Harbor: The Spark But Not The Cause [Ch. 8] which describes how American and Western colonialism felt threatened by Japan's empire and needed a way to induce Japan to go to war. As Yale political scientist Bruce Russet [who wrote No Clear and Present Danger: A Skeptical View of US Entry Into World War II 1972] notes in Atwood's book, Japan was faced with what Russet calls 'Hobson's choice'. As Atwood writes:
"The island nation could accept subordinate status to the western powers in the international arena and thereby give up the efforts of a half century to meet the west on equal economic and military terms, or go to war. The first option was not really possible since the Japanese military would never have accepted such a humiliation, and Washington policy makers understood this. Therefore, war was essentially inevitable and desired. When the president froze Japanese assets in the US, then embargoed vital oil and steel exports, then in August 1941, and again even more harshly just ten days before Pearl Harbor, issued an ultimatum to Japan to withdraw its troops from China and Indochina, Japan's government concluded the US left a choice either to accede, and then suffer the certainty of a military coup, or go to war to protect the gains made over the previous decade. No serious politician could entertain any doubt about the choice Japan would make."
Atwood points out that "Washington knew from the [code-decrypting system] MAGIC intercepts that Japan would not accept the ultimatum to withdraw its troops from East Asia issued by Secretary [of State] Hull on FDR's orders in late November 1941, and that the Japanese had decided that war was their only solution."
Another book which goes into even more depth on this issue is Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor by Robert Stinnett [2000].
Nice quote, but it doesn't in any way make a direct connection between American policy and the actual attack on Pearl Harbor, which was a surprise.It was clear that war was inevitable, but not in this way.Sacrificing the Pacific Fleet was not in our gameplan.Maybe the military planners should have been paying attention to what the Japanese did to the Russian fleet at Port Arthur.Military bozos being what they are, it's no surprise that they didn't.They did know that the Japanese fleet was up to something, but taking that rather vague piece of information and coupling it with the idea of forcing the Japanese into war does not translate into an attack on Pearl Harbor. Any more than assuming that the "Truth" behind 9/11 is that the US planned the whole thing to give W a pretext for attacking Iraq.Have a nice Labor Day.
As I note in a comment above, the whole of the Pacific Fleet wasn't sacrificed--the carriers were nowhere near Hawaii. The radio intercept and cable traffic evidence presented in Day of Deceit is very substantial, and it's pointed out by the author that many requests for further documents were refused because of their security classification: Radio intercept logs from 1941 are still labled Top Secret--WHY? Why was so much of the material released by Wikileaks classified at all? They reveal crimes; that's why.
Karlof1
Very well said.
Please appreciate the distinction. The idiot Bush child and his cadre of psychopaths and autocrats were handed the 911 plot outline by his own intellegence services (an oxymoron if their ever was one ) and did nothing about it. FDR may have had an idea but not much else. He would not have sacrificed US sailors' lives so cynically, that's a GOP MO.
The "911 plot outline" was developed by planners at the USA's Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1962 and was called Operation Northwoods. And it's very clear that BushCo indeed did "plenty about it."
FWIW, I "worked" for an electronic warfare/signal intelligence company during my military stint 1979-1985 and learned a whole lot about the capabilities of US and other countries's Intelligence Services. Thus this question: What promted Mossad agents to be in the perfect position to film the jets hitting the towers on 9/11? The witnesses describe them as dancing and clapping prior to the arrival of the police, who arrested them. They were swiftly released and their recordings and equipment returned. All facts. And there are many other very inconvenient facts that rubish the official conspiracy theory and the "inquiry" that dittoed it.
FDR had Hoover compile a list of all Hawaiin Japanese leaders, who would be interned in the event of war, over a year prior Pearl Harbour.
These leaders were rounded up the day after Pearl Harbour.
Maybe the USA Admirals did remember the Russian fleet in Harbour Annilation, get it huh huh?
Read the story of what occured at the USA Manila airfleet base a few days after Pearl Harbour.
The USA pilots spotted the Japanese circling in the fog attempting to locate the USA airbase, and wanted to go to standard operating procedure and go aloft so as to protect their aircraft.
The USA pilots were ordered to stand down and watched in horror as nearly all their planes were destroyed by Japanese fighterbombers.
Building another air and naval fleet sure does kickstart an economy.
What a coincidence!
Fine. I'll accept your argument.
With that said, where was our trillion-dollar a year military the (entire) morning of 9-11?
Care to answer?
And FDR did so love to wear his gold cufflinks, billionaire and "old money" of the rich nobility that he was.
Surely he gave us nothing he absolutely did not have to, as he said himself then to a bunch of bankers,
"The only thing standing between you and pitchforks, is me!"
Right. Eleanor made him do it, and a good thing it was too.
why wouldn't fdr cut off the japanese when they took the side of hitler?
of course fdr knew that war was coming w/ the japanese - and he was supposed to help them build their war machine?
Actually, it was the cutting of gasoiline exports, not raw crude, that pushed Tojo over the edge. The Japanese vision was an Empire fueled by the oil in Dutch Indonesia, and the only way it thought it could secure that was to attack and neutralize the British and US Pacific Fleets. It was well known that the UK wouldn't be able to replace its warships; whereas to triumph over the USA, the ENTIRE Pacific Fleet needed to be taken out in order to allow enough time for the Japanese to fortify their Empire against the counterattack the USA would be able to mount because of its superior resource base. FDR knew about the impending attack and the overall Japanese strategy, which is why the carriers were NOT anywhere near Hawaii on December 7, 1941. Those undamaged carriers were able to almost immediately launch the counteroffensive in early 1942, many years before the Japanese thought probable. FDR may have deliberately induced the war with Japan and ultimately US entry into the European half of WW2, but he made certain the seeds of victory survived, a fact most who vilify FDR for starting the war with Japan ignore.
Another in the seemingly endless series of what-Obama-should-do articles -- showing us what we need, and most likely will not get, from Obama.
"The president's attentiveness to the state is notable, if perhaps somewhat less than altruistic."
My favorite sentence in the whole article. Obama's raison d'etre is endless campaigning.
A cynical piece like this could only have come from The Nation.
Obama is doing everything in his power to DISMANTLE the legacy of FDR, as this has been the most important goal of the American ruling elite since Richard Nixon. And Obama is forging right ahead with bank bailouts, health care scams and corrupt deals with corporations like the one with auto makers. His next little project: privatize the Social Security cow.
We need articles exposing Obama, not telling us what we already know he should be doing and already know he won't.
delia: I completely agree with you!
We are all far too aware of what Obama, his appointed officials and our very own elected officials are NOT doing. And, we also know that they continue to fund the wars and the banksters. There is NO money left for anything else -- oh, except they continue to receive their salaries and benefit packages, paid for by US, "we the people."
How much more can be left to take?
Another thing -- in order for Obama to be a full-fledged FDR, he would need an ELEANOR beside him. Michelle is NO Eleanor.
A cynical piece like this could only have come from The Nation.
I remember, as a child, seeing my father, a radical socialist, reading the Nation magazine. Whoever thought that one day the Nation would accurately be described as "cynical".
"We need articles exposing Obama, not telling us what we already know he should be doing and already know he won't."
This cannot be emphasized enough. Paul Street is one of the few writing such articles and books, and I arranged a substantial contribution to his current book promotion campaign. But he has NEVER had one of his articles published by CD, although CD has published many Zinn and even a few Chomsky essays.
"We need articles exposing Obama, not telling us what we already know he should be doing and already know he won't."
"We need articles exposing Obama, not telling us what we already know he should be doing and already know he won't."
"We need articles exposing Obama, not telling us what we already know he should be doing and already know he won't."
Obama is Hoover not Roosevelt. He benefits the rich not working people. Unfortunately for him, the more he lies the more he resembles Mickey Mouse.
Perhaps Stone meant that the more Barack Obama lies the more he resembles Pinocchio who was the wooden puppet whose nose would grow longer each time he told a lie.
No, I think he did mean Mickey Mouse. Obama certainly has the ears and lately, whenever he speaks, The Great One's voice has been unusually high and squeaky - like that recent speech telling us that it's all over in Iraq. "Hi, boys and girls, welcome to the Magic Kingdom where war is peace, depression is unprecedented economic opportunity and my boys Larry Summers and Timmy Geithner are really, if you'll all just close your eyes and wish upon a star, are really Joseph Stiglitz and Nouriel Roubini."
Yeah, and what's Mickey Mouse hiding under those "Hope and Change" white gloves?
Hoover is to the Left of Obama on many issues. The president Obama most resembles is W Bush.
"Hoover is to the Left of Obama on many issues."
___________________________________
Astonishingly, this is also true of J. Edgar Hoover. ;)
It no longer matters what Obama says. The man has shown us clearly and repeatedly that he is a liar. It is not interesting to read about what he "should" say.
Truer words were never spoken. It's boring to read about what he "should" do. Nichols' conclusion perfectly reflects the mindset of the faux Progressives:
"Were Obama to take a similar stand this Labor Day, were he to echo Roosevelt's call for economic justice, the energy of this election year would shift - in Wisconsin and nationally - because voters would know, finally, which side their president was on."
Take a stand and echo Roosevelt, because then voters would know which side Obama is on? Yap, yap, yap with pretty words and the people will trust the words of this guy, after all his broken promises? Nichols sounds desperate.
Obama Should Borrow A Page From FDR This Labor Day
Why would a right wing asshole like Obama want to do that?
To wipe his.....nevermind.
Happy Labor Day!
"'Sound economic improvement comes from the improved conditions of the whole population and not a small fraction thereof.'
With those words, Roosevelt took a side."
The corporate lawn jockey also took a side. The side of the tooth and claw.
Nichols might as well ask whether Oilbomber can walk on the water.
No, that was the smarter president from "Being There".
WISDOM --- COMES NOT FROM INTELLIGENCE
A man's wealth gives him power most absolute, so the rich do as they please while their corporate media create a smokescreen to fool the gullible.
So the solution all depends on if a majority of people stop being gullible. A solution I see that only destiny can resolve, for common horse sense, either your born with it or your not.
I wish Obama had not been so gullible as to give away all the taxpayers money to the Banksters with no strings attached in the first few months of office.
He wasn't gullible. He was ready to do it. Be careful of how sneaky devils like Bush and Obama mislead voters into thinking they're gullible. They're not. They're slick pros.
I know they are all purveyors of toxic mendacity. The oligarchy just throws lies, bread and circuses at the crowds of plebeians no matter who is president. I think Obama is gullible because I think he actually believes his own bullshit, that's why he hired Summers and Geitner. Obama thinks that the Banksters deserve their "reward" for being "smart" with money! This idea of a financial "Reward" is preached constantly in some of the worst churches, and presented as God's generosity for a "job" well done. Obama thinks he is the great “compromiser”; heir to the crumbling Empire of the great “decider”.
But now that Obama gave it up to the Republicans on the first date (Or, they threatened to break his legs in a back room), he's trying to close the barn door after the horse has escaped. And he's crying "Unfair!",
So the corporate media presents him as a "beleaguered progressive"!
That’s how the spin continues. It is sick.
"Were Obama to take a similar stand this Labor Day, were he to echo Roosevelt's call for economic justice, the energy of this election year would shift - in Wisconsin and nationally - because voters would know, finally, which side their president was on."
ROTFLOL. This guy Nichols has a wonderful sense of humor. He should try writing for the Onion.
Here, he is talking about the side he wishes Obama would be on. The voters already know what side he is really on. When he is sent packing in 2012, he will be handsomely rewarded by the plutocracy he served so well in his shameful one term.
It is a disgrace to compare this lying corporatist tool to FDR.
I expect the president to give a heartfelt and moving speech showing his unwavering support for the laborers who toil in the unforgiving conditions of the Wall Street banking houses; for the selfless workers punching their time clocks in the cubicles of K Street; and for those factory grunts, working in plants from sea to shining sea, who churn out the munitions so desperately needed throughout the world.
Yes, doesn’t our imperial Christian Empire just keep getting bigger and better then ever?
And his empathy with Hedge fund managers who make $900,000 per hour. And that is no snark.
Is that Take home pay?