Harvey J. Kaye: Re-Re-elect FDR! Make 2012 the New 1936!

Harvey J. Kaye is the Ben and Joyce Rosenberg Professor of Democracy and Justice Studies and Director of the Center for History and Social Change at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.

It's time we elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt to a fifth term as president. Specifically, we need to re-re-elect the Roosevelt of 1936.

Accepting his party's nomination that June for a second term, Franklin Roosevelt delivered the most radical speech ever given by an American president. Comparing the corporate elite of the 1930s to the royalists of 1776, he told the 100,000 people gathered at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia and the millions of Americans listening on the radio, "These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power." Which, he confessed, was exactly what he and the party he led intended to do....

Looking backward to the 1930s, we can rightly carp and complain. Standing in 1936 looking forward, we can rightly marvel and envy. Despite fierce conservative and corporate opposition, Roosevelt and his fellow Americans were well on the way to remaking America. They were subjecting big business and the banks to public account, empowering the federal government to address the needs of working people, establishing a social security system, organizing labor unions, improving the nation's public infrastructure and environment, refashioning popular culture, and imbuing themselves with fresh democratic convictions, hopes, and aspirations for the struggles to come.

But now, in 2012, we can only look forward -- either with hope and determination or with fear. Let's go with hope and determination, and start by metaphorically re-re-electing FDR of 1936....