Bill Clinton: The Legacy of F.D.R.: Getting It Right
My grandfather was a dirt farmer with only a sixth-grade education. During the Depression, he eked out a living selling blocks of ice. But in those days, even though he was poor, he knew someone special: from listening to the fireside chats on the radio, he knew Franklin Roosevelt. And he believed that Roosevelt knew what his life was like — and cared about it too.
I grew up listening to my grandfather's tales of what it was like to live through the Depression and the war and what Roosevelt meant to him. When I was President, in another time of change and uncertainty, I often looked at the portrait of F.D.R. in the Roosevelt Room and remembered my grandfather's stories.
Besides having a deep personal connection to ordinary citizens, Roosevelt got the big things right. When he came into office during the Depression, he saw that the ills of the country could not be addressed without more aggressive involvement by the government. He ran for President as a fiscal conservative, promising to balance the budget. But unlike his predecessor, he quickly realized that, with prices collapsing and unemployment exploding, only the Federal Government could step into the breach and restart the economy.
Roosevelt also knew that in a highly dynamic time like his — or the one we're in now — you have to do a lot more than one thing at a time. I was often criticized, just as President Obama is now, for trying to do too many things at once. Roosevelt understood that in a complex and perilous situation, you have to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time, and he was masterful in doing a variety of difficult things simultaneously.
He was able to do that because he surrounded himself with brilliant people who knew more about particular subjects than he did. He enjoyed the arguments they had with one another — and with him — as they searched for the right policies. Oliver Wendell Holmes famously said Roosevelt had a second-class intellect but a first-class temperament. That temperament allowed him to inspire those around him to give their best. He made public service fun again.
It didn't hurt, of course, that Roosevelt was also a political genius. He knew how to pass legislation in Congress. He knew how to talk to the American people, the way he talked to my grandfather. While he was busy rebuilding the economy, he saw that war was coming in Europe and that he needed to prepare our country, help the British, and support and encourage Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
F.D.R. had another quality important in a President: the self-confidence to abandon a policy that wasn't working. He believed in experimentation, but he didn't deny the evidence when an experiment proved unsuccessful. In any highly dynamic time, with new and complex challenges, the President needs an appetite for experimentation and the determination to keep what works and scrap what doesn't. ...
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I grew up listening to my grandfather's tales of what it was like to live through the Depression and the war and what Roosevelt meant to him. When I was President, in another time of change and uncertainty, I often looked at the portrait of F.D.R. in the Roosevelt Room and remembered my grandfather's stories.
Besides having a deep personal connection to ordinary citizens, Roosevelt got the big things right. When he came into office during the Depression, he saw that the ills of the country could not be addressed without more aggressive involvement by the government. He ran for President as a fiscal conservative, promising to balance the budget. But unlike his predecessor, he quickly realized that, with prices collapsing and unemployment exploding, only the Federal Government could step into the breach and restart the economy.
Roosevelt also knew that in a highly dynamic time like his — or the one we're in now — you have to do a lot more than one thing at a time. I was often criticized, just as President Obama is now, for trying to do too many things at once. Roosevelt understood that in a complex and perilous situation, you have to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time, and he was masterful in doing a variety of difficult things simultaneously.
He was able to do that because he surrounded himself with brilliant people who knew more about particular subjects than he did. He enjoyed the arguments they had with one another — and with him — as they searched for the right policies. Oliver Wendell Holmes famously said Roosevelt had a second-class intellect but a first-class temperament. That temperament allowed him to inspire those around him to give their best. He made public service fun again.
It didn't hurt, of course, that Roosevelt was also a political genius. He knew how to pass legislation in Congress. He knew how to talk to the American people, the way he talked to my grandfather. While he was busy rebuilding the economy, he saw that war was coming in Europe and that he needed to prepare our country, help the British, and support and encourage Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
F.D.R. had another quality important in a President: the self-confidence to abandon a policy that wasn't working. He believed in experimentation, but he didn't deny the evidence when an experiment proved unsuccessful. In any highly dynamic time, with new and complex challenges, the President needs an appetite for experimentation and the determination to keep what works and scrap what doesn't. ...