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The Democrats Who Unleashed Wall Street and Got Away With It
That Lawrence Summers, a president emeritus of Harvard, is a consummate distorter of fact and logic is not a revelation. That he and Bill Clinton, the president he served as treasury secretary, can still get away with disclaiming responsibility for our financial meltdown is an insult to reason.
Yet, there they go again. Clinton is presented, in a fawning cover story in the current edition of Esquire magazine, as “Someone we can all agree on. ... Even his staunchest enemies now regard his presidency as the good old days.” In a softball interview, Clinton is once again allowed to pass himself off as a job creator without noting the subsequent loss of jobs resulting from the collapse of the housing derivatives bubble that his financial deregulatory policies promoted.
Former presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, right, share a laugh in 2006. Both men share blame for the economic collapse of 2008. It was Clinton’s financial deregulation that legalized the merger of commercial and investment banks, creating institutions that were both risky and too-big-to-fail.
At least Summers, in a testier interview by British journalist Krishnan Guru-Murthy of Channel 4 News, was asked some tough questions about his responsibility as Clinton’s treasury secretary for the financial collapse that occurred some years later. He, like Clinton, still defends the reversal of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, a 1999 repeal that destroyed the wall between investment and commercial banking put into place by Franklin Roosevelt in response to the Great Depression.
“I think the evidence is that I am right about that. If you look at the big players, Lehman and Bear Stearns were both standalone investment banks,” Summers replied, referring to two investment banks allowed to fold. Summers is very good at obscuring the obvious truth—that the too-big-to-fail banks, made legal by Clinton-era deregulation, required taxpayer bailouts.
The point of Glass-Steagall was to prevent jeopardizing commercial banks holding the savings of average citizens. Summers knows full well that the passage of the repeal of Glass-Steagall was pushed initially by Citigroup, a mammoth merger of investment and commercial banking that create the largest financial institution in the world, an institution that eventually had to be bailed out with taxpayer funds to avoid economic disaster for millions of ordinary Americans. He also knows that Citigroup—where Robert Rubin, who preceded Summers as Clinton’s treasury secretary, played leading roles during a critical time—specialized in precisely the mortgage and other debt packages and insurance scams that were the source of America’s economic crisis.
Even Clinton, in a rare moment of honest appraisal of his record, conceded that his signing of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA), legalizing those credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations, was based on bad advice. That advice would have had to come from Summers, his point man pushing the CFMA legislation, which Clinton signed into law during his lame-duck days.
When the British interviewer reminded him of Clinton’s comment, Summers, as is his style, simply bristled: “Again, you make everything so simple, when in fact it’s complicated. Would it have been better if the whole financial reform legislation had passed in 1999, or 1998, or 1992? Yes, of course it would have been better. But … at the time Bill Clinton was president, there essentially were no credit default swaps. So the issue that became a serious problem really wasn’t an issue that was on the horizon.”
That is a lie. Credit default swaps had been sold at least since 1991, and collateralized debt obligations of all sorts quickly became the rage during the Clinton years. Summers surely remembers that Brooksley Born, the legal expert on such matters that Clinton appointed to head the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), warned about the ballooning danger of those unregulated derivatives. Born, who served with Summers as one of four members of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, tried repeatedly and in vain to get her colleagues to act. When her pleas fell on deaf ears she issued a “concept release” calling attention to an unregulated derivatives market that was even then spiraling out of control.
The CFMA legislation that Summers pushed and Clinton signed was a specific rebuke to Born’s efforts. As Summers testified at the time before a Senate committee: “As you know, Mr. Chairman, the CFTC’s recent concept release has been a matter of great concern, not merely to Treasury, but to all those with an interest in the OTC [over-the-counter] derivatives market. In our view, the Release has cast the shadow of regulatory uncertainty over an otherwise thriving market—raising risks for stability and competitiveness of American derivative trading. We believe it quite important that the doubts be eliminated.”
Those doubts were eliminated by the new law exempting all of that troubling OTC derivatives trading from all existing regulations and regulatory agencies. Summers argued in his congressional testimony that there was no reason for any government regulation of what turned out to be tens of trillions of dollars in toxic assets:
“First, the parties to these kinds of contracts are largely sophisticated financial institutions that would appear to be eminently capable of protecting themselves from fraud and counterparty insolvencies and most of which are already subject to basic safety and soundness regulation under existing banking and securities law.
“Second, given the nature of the underlying assets involved—namely supplies of financial exchange and other financial instruments—there would seem to be little scope for market manipulation of the kind seen in traditional agricultural commodities, the supply of which is inherently limited and changeable.”
Has any economist ever gotten it so wrong?
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Show All"Has any economist ever gotten it so wrong?"
Not in my memory. But perhaps "getting it wrong" was the intent. Quite convenient how they can now pretend to have been clueless. Slick Willy is still proving that nothing sticks to him or his friends.
Although they advocate transaction taxes and CEO salary caps that will fix none of the underlying problems, few left of center pundits, economists or electeds are even suggesting serious reforms like restoring Glass-Steagall and the other New Deal regulations that were decriminalized during the past thrity years.
Former investment banker Nomi Prins recently observed that "investment bankers today can legally engage in the same fraud they could a decade ago...nothing has changed."
Precisely. Both Dems and Rethugs are the Corporate Party - period. Neither gives a rat's ass about average Amereichans, only about their rich buddies and corporate owners. Again - as always - it boils down to the 1% vs. the 99%. And the Dems and Rethugs are identical in every way that matters.
comment removed
"Slick Willy is still proving that nothing sticks to him or his friends."
Unless they are wearing a blue dress.
"Has any economist ever gotten it so wrong?"
Saying that is letting him off the hook.. They didn't get it wrong! They knew just what they were doing, and didn't care, as long as they and wall street cronies profited handsomely from it. This was wealth transfer on unprecedented scale.They knew if everything fell apart they could loot the US treasury.
And they are doing just fine, while the middle class and the poor pay as they always do with they jobs and loss of the homes in some cases.
At least Greenspan has for awhile had the smarts to keep his mouth shut!
What I can't seem to understand is why people continue to support a system that is stacked against them? Off to malls they still go with their credit cards in hand even after everything that as taken place.
Come-on people shut it down? Stop spending on those things you don't need.. You want to send a message that will scare the hell out of them? STOP SPENDING ALTOGETHER! SHUT IT DOWN!
And tell them, that until things are corrected we not spending a dime of our hard earned money. And also until the people who should be jail are in jail!
You can bet that if people take this seriously and slow down their spending, or even stop it altogether, that within a few days some heads will be sacrificed. They have all ready proved with their actions up to now, that they will do everything to save their baby, 'capitalism'.
I agree with you until you get about halfway through your post and deviate to the position that citizens can shut it all down.
The reason this whole fraud is as gigantic as it is, is that products themselves, are peripheral players. For instance, money is made on bets on loans... the product (in this case a good deal of housing) whch most loans are tangentially based upon, becomes immaterial in this sort of product-less casino style capitalism.
BILLIONS of dollars have been "made" through this shadow game that substitutes gambling on others' unpaid investments for a substantive economy. It's a house of cards, a hall of elaborate mirrors, the black magician's dream. Nonetheless, given the sums involved, it's been relatively easy to purchase politicians to go along with it! And they lent these heists the imprimatur of legality.
The fact that NOTHING has been corrected, while taxpayers have been placed on the hook to bail out the banksters' catastrophic debts, is a recipe for insanity as well as VAST crimes against the citizenry that's been looted. No one has plugged the dam as the money flows out towards the very sources that set this crime into motion. And then they plead the 5th, try to tell us, with their Ivy League pedigrees in Economics, that no one saw it coming, that no one was at fault. Notice how this runs parallel with the same sorts of cowardly dismissals of accountability regarding the very planned, engineered, and deliberate urge to launch a War Of Aggression on FIXED "cause."
USA, in its post-law phase. We have a king as figurehead, with law meaning only what HE determines... as his puppet strings are manipulated by a shadowy set of underworld figures!
It is naive to think that if you don't purchase items at Wallmart that such a boycott will divest a system ALREADY DIVORCED FROM PRODUCTS of its "wealth."
Keep in mind, now on the table is covering trillions from Bank of America... as its high execs bought into these non-product illusions.
That is an excellent analysis, SR. Thanks.
Siouxrose,
Yet another excellent contribution to add to your extensive collection of excellent contributions. Keep on writing Siouxrose........
Thank you my friend.
Thomas Gilbert-
Half of the people in the country, or more, are struggling to pay for necessities and it is getting worse. How can you lecture people to "stop spending" and present that as a solution to anything?
Demoralization and alienation are the inevitable effect of deteriorating conditions, and the deteriorating conditions are being forcibly imposed on people, those deteriorating conditions are not the result of the demoralization and alienation.
not so fast with the swirling logic bro
you are right but you are wrong, logic bomb
first off, it is good advice to stop spending money to support corporations who are intent upon our destruction - and that would be most of them
verizon can't force you to buy their products ya know, one has to do it willingly
and if you don't want to - you can stop. its called choice
if, however as you point out, you are discussing those whop are wiped out and have nothing you don't need to tell them to stop - by definition that have - they got no money
sending back credit cards you can't afford, cancelling your cable and other pay tv channels, living within your means and paying cash for what you consume are all viable options for those who still have some cash flow
keeping as much as you can for a rainy day is not a bad idea, demoralization and alienation notwithstanding
starving jp morgan and bank of america on the other hand is a good idea
even for those in a good frame of mind let alone those suffering from demoralization and alienation
I support, and practice, all of the personal choices you advocate. I have done so for 40 years.
If, as you say, those who are wiped out do not need to be told to stop spending, then at best the politics of personal choice only apply to half of the population.
The politics of personal choice and lifestyle are closely aligned with consumerism, individualism, and idealism. That is all part of the mythology of the "American Dream" and and it is time we wake up from that dream.
So long as the few control the fruits of our labor, they have the power to withhold resources and capital from us. We have no such power over them. We do have the power to withhold out labor and our cooperation.
With water, communications, education, medicine, food and natural resources all being privatized, is it realistic to expect people to give things up as a political strategy, or that this would bring the rulers to their knees?
The solution to being strangled is not to stop breathing.
"So long as the few control the fruits of our labor" - there you have it bro - i know your heart is in the right place.
no one is saying give up - i say give up on the political system that you have succinctly described
we are wage slaves and this would be seen as a complete disaster for amerikans right up to the mid 1800's
we may never bring "the rulers" as you call them to their knees - but we can, and should, get off ours
I think it's a pretty good start at a solution. Six members of the Walton family own more wealth than the bottom 30% of Americans. If the bottom 30% would just boycott Walmart, what might happen? Walmart would fold. It *is* that simple. If someone is stealing from you, or is bad for society, don't do business with them.
"Has any economist ever gotten it so wrong?"
Summers didn't "get it wrong," any more than someone who breaks your car window and steals the CD player "gets it wrong."
He did a "wrong" thing, but he "got" what he was after.
Luckily for Clinton, Summers, Obama and the rest of these crooks, our "justice" system is now two-tiered, so that poor guys who steal a CD player are charged and jailed, but rich guys who enable the theft of billions of dollars (to say nothing of killing hundreds of thousands people), get a pass.
CORRECTION: That should be TRILLIONS, with a T.
Mainstream economists have gotten nothing right that I am aware of, since their basic premise is eternal growth on a finite planet--not to mention that the $$$ is their only God.
I suspect there is only job that Clinton created and will be remembered for.
The minute I saw the title I knew it was Roberto's continuing, now somewhat comical, Bill bashing.
Just for shits and giggles let's suppose Clinton's most powerful opponent got the nod in '92.
voted for the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act which repealed the Glass–Steagall Act in 1999, defending his position against opposition by stating, "The concerns that we will have a meltdown like 1929 are dramatically overblown,".[8]
Republicans cotnrolled congress in 1998. Republicans repealed the act by a veto proof majority. Democrats had no power to stop it.
"The bills were introduced in the Senate by Phil Gramm (R-TX) and in the House of Representatives by James Leach (R-IA). The bills were passed by a 54-44 vote along party lines with Republican support in the Senate[1] and by a 343-86 vote in the House of Representatives[2]. Nov 4, 1999: After passing both the Senate and House the bill was moved to a conference committee to work out the differences between the Senate and House versions. The final bill resolving the differences was passed in the Senate 90-8-1 and in the House: 362-57-15. This veto proof legislation was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on November 12, 1999. "
Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm-Leach…
If I remember correctly, Phil Gramm, as head of the Senate Finance committee, inserted a large amendment into the bill deregulating derivatives (written by the industry), after the conference committee approved the bill. Then the thing was sent to Clinton to sign. So what Clinton signed was not approved by Congress.
Wikipedia (via Rangoon78) sez: "The bills were passed by a 54-44 vote along party lines with Republican support in the Senate ..."
***
How can this be? Senate passage requires 60 votes, no?
"Rangoon78"
Your statement,
"Democrats had no power to stop it"
is both correct and incorrect.
You are incorrect about the democrat's intentions.
IF the democrats had not supported the gutting of regulations and had opposed the corrupt legislation, they could have EASILY resisted an override of a veto.
44 Senate votes of "NAY" would have stopped the override of a veto.
The Senate alone could not have achieved the necessary 2/3rds of votes (for an override of a veto) if the democrats had not supported the legislation.
So, the truth is that
the democrats supported the gutting of regulations.
This was the priority of the democrat's leader, Mr. Clinton.
You are correct to say that the democrats had no power to stop it - in the sense that the democrats are, just like their republican allies -
not in control of themselves.
They are all controlled by Wall Street.
Wow, talk about comical! Thanks for the laughs Rangoon! Presumably you receive some modest compensation, shilling for the execrable Clinton? Anyway, i await more of your humor writing!
You're such a lovely audience! Shilling? It's a living.
Get a brain transplant, would you? You're trying to give Clinton cover, as if the whole financial house of cards was itself inevitable. Did you forget that Clinton (who Michael Moore termed, "the best republican president the US has ever had") opened "free trade" with NAFTA, thereby helping to impoverish hordes of Mexican farmers? Did you forget his "ending welfare," or the deregulation of media, a sickening choice that's made it far easier for big corps to own the public's air waves in order to efficiently manufacture consent?
You remind me of the baboons who STILL try to say Obama had it bad, what alas, could the poor chap do BUT appoint the boards of scoundrels that made all these disastrous policies possible?
Clinton knew what he was doing. For God's sake, the sonofabitch was supposed to help the Haitian people after that awful quake, hurricanes, Cholera, etc. And he just smiles for photo-ops and sends the poor tiny trailers without AC. This form of "charity" comes complete with so much Formaldyhide (in their construction materials) as to make the suffering yet sicker.
Clinton & Obama are known by the company they keep... and their advisors all come from The Chicago School... experts in Disaster Capitalism, the plausible deniability methods that make the vast majority miserable to profit a few friends in high places.
Sorry. You tossed your line where there are no fish left to bite.
Siouxrose
You correctly point to Clinton's smiling for photo-ops in Haiti, and he knows what he is doing. I just wanted to point out that one of those recent photo-ops has him smiling and shaking hands with Baby Doc Duvalier, whose Ton Ton Macoute terrorized the island for years. See photo here: http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28939
Further, it seems that the U.S. version of disaster relief these days is to use the big-foot military approach, which gobbled up the lion's share of us $$ aid to pay for questionable security concerns, not true relief for the victims of the disaster.
Still shilling before the brain transplant. (I don't feel a lot of love in this room… ; (
Quoting Huffpo:
"Still, Clinton remains widely popular _ especially among the mostly poor supporters of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide who are old enough to remember Clinton's help in restoring Aristide to power in 1994 after a coup."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/06/bill-clinton-haiti-envoy_n_226616.html
Clinton's trade policies ruined Haiti's agriculture and forced many rural Haitians into the urban areas where the earthquake did much of its worst.
You talk to enough people - I'll bet you can find some who speak well of the man... but just because someone used the words "widely popular" on Huffpo don't make it necessarily so. Whatever. I still detest the man, and the picture of him with Baby Doc reinforces it.
I really have no defense to offer. Just to quote one of your loving friends:
"I feel your painful existence Siouxrose.
As many here at common dreams has duly noted regarding your painful existence, it is as it is.
Today is a new day for you and I. Perhaps today will be a better one for you? If not, we always have tomorrow if we are so blessed.
The day the world is a brighter place for you, you will realize that many of us were simply and patiently waiting for the dawning of that day for you. To welcome you back home sister. :) Be well."
You're a sick cookie, pal. To speak about THE abundance of painful and unjust matters underway is hardly the same thing as having a painful existence. Excuse me if I am not a warrior, have thus not shut down my sentience and actually FEEL empathy for all the crap that's going on under the banner of "business as usual." I've seen this same nonsense tossed at Phil Rockstroh, so I'll take the castigation as a compliment... even from the imbeciles in the peanut brain gallery.
Anyone who's having a "jolly good time" as The Amerikan Rome burns is essentially a sociopath. To be able to shut down the awareness of the wars, the poverty, the chemical deluge so irresponsibly cast over every living system to result in so many getting sick (like precious children suffering from Leukemia)... is a LOT to take in. And I do. Because I care. You sound like Rush Limbaugh in his casual dismissal of very real torture, passed off as "fraternity pranks."
It is easier to be a humam shit like you, someone who mocks those who genuinely do give a damn. And as for your nonsense about a "consensus" on my painful life, you obviously know nothing about my life, or anyone else's. Quite a few people acknowledge the TRUTH in my posts; and that's what I am committed to, like most Teacher Souls... spreading the Truth in a time where deception is as thick as a web woven around this nation, a nation gone hell-bent on casting Hell and damnation in too many damned places.
You sound like that numb skull Leea, who also thinks she's in a moral, spiritual, or philosophical position to lecture me on what's good for me. You dunces probably haven't even gone to college, no less published anything that anyone actually paid you to write, or bothered to read.
This was her drivel, almost verbatim:
"The day the world is a brighter place for you, you will realize that many of us were simply and patiently waiting for the dawning of that day for you. To welcome you back home sister. :) Be well."
What is that? Some kind of Fundamentalist Christian homecoming morphed into a Twelve Step Program? Do you have any idea how patronizing you sound?
So just to show you what a good sport I am, I'll personally chip in for that brain transplant you so DESPERATELY need.
Two Americas & Dante, thank you for the acknowledgement further up this thread.
The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.
I forgive you.
Forgiveness is how you end Karma, some people just take longer than others but anyone can do it, weak or strong.
"Forgiveness is how you end Karma,"
Wow, i shall have to think about that one, a lot ......
Well, you could just try it on something small, you have to forgive yourself.too, some people forget that. Somethings can take a long time, say you ordered the invasion of Tibet or something like that...might take a while. :)
cbs,
You are, I think, a rather large soul - a very old soul, I suspect ...
You also I suspect. Nice to see you again.
"Republicans cotnrolled congress in 1998. Republicans repealed the act by a veto proof majority. Democrats had no power to stop it."
The democrats went along in droves like lemmings over the cliff. Clinton pushed it hard and the democrats loved Slick Willy. The "republicans controlled congress" is just today's spin on a complete sell out of the American people. The vote was not 55-44, but rather 90 to 8. The earlier vote was just the typical posturing politicians do so they can spin their vote back home. The following 8 senators voted against it:
Richard Shelby, R-Alabama
Barbara Boxer, D-California
Tom Harkin, D-Iowa
Barbara Mikulski, D-Maryland
Paul Wellstone, D-Minnesota
Richard Bryan, (unsure of party)-Nevada
Byron Dorgan, D-North Dakota
Russell Feingold, D-Wisconsin
Many of the senators who voted for it still have their big fat butts in their same senate seats. John McCain didn't vote.
The above Clinton opponent: Bob Kerrey!
Speaking of remembering, you should see what most politicians' sites look like. Take Chuck Schumar as a classic. He has archives going back to 2004 and no further. There's no access to his bs speeches in favor of invading Iraq, nothing about his involvement with Enron, and no access to his 1999 press release lauding Gramm-Leach-Bliley and the decimation of Glass-Steagall. Luckily, someone backed up GLBA for us to see:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyjiewIu36Y
If only we'd had an Obama back then, eh Robert!
Scheer historical account-
As a candidate running against Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama quite accurately excoriated the economic policies of the Clinton years when the Democratic president united with congressional Republicans, led by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Phil Gramm, to obliterate sensible regulations of the New Deal. The result, as candidate Obama noted in March 2008, has been chaos:
"Unfortunately, instead of establishing a 21st century regulatory framework, we simply dismantled the old one -- aided by a legal but corrupt bargain in which campaign money all too often shaped policy and watered down oversight. In doing so, we encouraged a winner-take-all, anything-goes environment that helped foster devastating dislocations in our economy."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-scheer/return-of-the-great-trian_b_796890.html
While campaigning, Barack had a tendency to say a lot of things. And make a lot of promises. I think it might be best to look at what he has actually done, how he voted as a Senator, and who he has surrounded himself with, and who he has appointed to positions of power within his administration and various government agencies. Actions speak a lot louder than fancy speeches.
"Don't look at the genocide, at slavery, at the land-grabbing and the destruction of the environment. Look at our beautiful 'ideals!'" It is the "American way."
The foundation for most political thinking in the US is this strange separation and contradiction between what is done and what is said.
How many CD readers would be so comfortable sharing a laugh with W. Bush? Seriously, though, how many remember 43 saying that he sometimes thought that Clinton was his "adopted brother"?
Now, with little fanfare, GHWB and JEB visited the Oval office and shared some face time with the current resident, Barack Obama, at the same time that Mitt Romney is skewering the man. Can not the American People see through the theatre and charade that is the current political process?
The real question is "Can the American people do anything about this problem?"
If anyone is thinking of the ballot box, that answer is an unqualified "no."
q
Bill and George learned how to pass as ordinary folks who understood the middle class all the while doing the work of their true patrons--the 1 %. Romney doesn't pass but Obama is only a slightly more convincing charade. No matter-- whoever is in office will do His Will--or should I say Their Will. And we the public will be told to swallow it as a divine necessity.
No mention of Obama wanting to name Summers as head of the World Bank -
That would actually be the perfect place for a sociopath of Summers caliber.......Instead of only being able to plunder the USA as head of the world bank the entire world wold be his apple.
And for the record Both Parties wanted all those banking deregulations to occur so they could fleece the public.
But that wasn't enough for true Sociopaths - even with the new laws they still went Well Beyond criminal activity - so evennthough they legailized many fraudulent activities Other crimes were committed -
But Obama wants what was given to Clinton $250,000 1/2 hour speeches..... In fact that lizard Clinton took home more than a million in one speech from a middle eastern oil producer - Dubai I think - or maybe it was Bahrain where we are arming them to the hilt in order to put down their Arab Spring.
democrats like Obama, Clinton, summers and all the other sociopathic kleptocrats are THREATS to Humanity just as the rabid republicans are.
Both sides are guilty -
But More Pain is needed in America to wake up the uninformed masses......
My question is after the next crash will we vote for FDR or Hitler?
An FDR wouldn't make it through the self-appointed media filter of our candidate choices these days - never mind his politics, just the wheelchair alone would probably disqualify him.
Sure he would. He did not run on what we think of in retrospect as the New Deal platform.
Some commentary on the 1932 campaign:
Roosevelt was a scion of privilege, born into a family of old wealth and heavy political influence. (His fifth cousin Teddy Roosevelt had been the most popular American politician of the early twentieth century.) Franklin Roosevelt was affable and gregarious—to borrow a phrase popularized in a more recent presidential campaign, "the kind of guy you'd like to have a beer with." But he had never distinguished himself as a particularly deep or innovative thinker, and it was often difficult to discern whether any bedrock principles underlay his evident political ambition.
In the campaign of 1932, FDR was—to borrow another term from our current politics—a giant "flip-flopper." One day, candidate Roosevelt proudly defended Wilsonian internationalism; another day, he demonized the League of Nations to win the support of isolationist kingpin William Randolph Hearst. One day, he criticized Herbert Hoover for centralizing power in Washington; another day, he demanded bold new "social planning" by government. One day, he called for increased federal spending to kick-start the stalled economy; another day, he blasted Hoover's deficit spending and promised retrenchments to balance the budget. Roosevelt's frequent attacks on Hoover for excessive government spending look bizarre in retrospect; indeed, one of FDR's advisers later wrote that "given later developments, the campaign speeches often read like a giant misprint, in which Roosevelt and Hoover speak each other's lines."
Even FDR's famous New Deal began not as a detailed policy platform but merely as a throwaway applause line in a speech. "I pledge you, I pledge myself," Roosevelt told the delegates at the 1932 Democratic Convention in Chicago, "to a new deal for the American people." It was not FDR but newspaper headline writers who attached great significance—and a capital "N" and "D"—to the phrase. The specific policies that comprised the New Deal would only emerge later.
Candidate Roosevelt's vacillating campaign left many political observers deeply unimpressed. Elmer Davis, a prominent journalist, figured that FDR was "the man who would probably make the weakest President of the dozen aspirants" for the Democratic nomination. Walter Lippman—even more prominent than Davis, one of the great newsmen in American history—privately called FDR "a kind of amiable boy scout," and wrote a column that described Roosevelt as "a highly impressionistic person, without a firm grasp of public affairs and without very strong convictions... Franklin D. Roosevelt," Lippman wrote, "is no crusader. He is no tribune of the people. He is no enemy of entrenched privilege. He is a pleasant man who, without any important qualifications for the office, would very much like to be president."
http://www.shmoop.com/fdr-new-deal/ideology.html
Actually prior to being president FDr served as governor of NY where he instituted many of the new deal policies in a statewide basis -
And he had 2 of the most famous progressives in the entire country working for him - Harry Hopkins and Francis Perkins.......
The new deal terminology may have been a throwaway line but the policies weren't -
Read - 'Harry Hopkins' by Henry Hitch Adams
Did you even notice that I wasn't talking about his policies, or campaign rhetoric, but rather about the fact that he was disabled? And that the media is fairly loath to annoint anyone who doesn't fit their idea of what a president should "look like."
No, I missed that. You said "never mind his politics, just the wheelchair alone would probably disqualify him." I wouldn't have interpreted that as being "about the fact that he was disabled" and not about "his policies, or campaign rhetoric." I interpreted it as being about both, and as saying that even if his politics did not disqualify him, his handicap would have.