Williams College historians James MacGregor Burns and Susan Dunn laid out FDR’s political strategy in an interesting article in yesterday’s L.A. Times. Just think, if our current Chief Executive was as successful a leader as FDR, and there were no Presidential term limits, George Bush would be President until 2016.
Do you wish to win for yourself the undesirable title of the 4-P’s Candidate: Pusillanimously-Pussyfooting-Pious-Platitudinous Roosevelt?” wrote a Harvard friend to Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932, imploring him to forthrightly address the crucial issues of the day. But Roosevelt had chosen a different — and safer — game plan. From the very beginning of his quest for the presidency in 1931, he purposefully sought to be elusive, vague and to appear to be all things to all people.
Seventy-five years later, a chorus of political commentators — and fellow Democratic presidential candidates — are lashing out at Hillary Rodham Clinton, accusing her of the very same tactic of evasion. She straddles, practices “systematic caution” and plays “dodge ball,” they charge. Her critics demand that she be more candid and genuine.
That is a sensible and astute formula — for losing elections.
Roosevelt, the only American president to win four terms in office, campaigned as a supreme waffler in 1932 — and by doing so he beat incumbent Herbert Hoover and set the stage for the transformation of American society and government.
Click here for the whole article.
…in this article is that FDR was helped in no small measure by Hoover’s little mismanagement of the economy.
by Goodwin on Lincoln’s presidency notes that Abe didn’t run for the election of 1860. He had this rivals in the inauguration do the campaigning. The public wound up thinking whatever they wished to think.
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I doubt it would work today in the time of instant communications, but when I look a the dunderheads that debate incessantly today, I yearn not to know too much about them. They seem about as deep as Brittany and Paris.
and this is now.
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Media coverage is now instantaneous and not in the paper several days from now. It’s a different ball game.
In fact, she’s great at it.
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Her problem is that she’s going to take the same philosophy into her presidency. She’s going to be all things to all people, and accomplish very little in terms of badly needed progressive reform. At least, that’s how I think sitting by my crystal ball. It’s actually showing me visions of the past and saying, “All of this has happened before and all of this will happen again.” Okay, that’s from Battlestar Galactica, but that’s still my vision.
If you read Arthur Schlesinger’s wonderful trilogy on the “Coming of the New Deal” he recounts how FDR positioned himself above party politics and often was hard to peg down ideologically. His Democratic coalition was made up of Southern Conservatives, urban old-school machine pols and liberals and Bull Moose Teddy Roosevelt-style Progressives (many of whom were formerly reformist Republicans from the Upper Midwest). Many of his top aides were fervent fiscal conservatives who saw budget rectitude as the most important goal to pursue to get the economy righted. At the same time, many New Dealers attracted to his administration had Socilist sympathies who wanted a centrally-controlled economy. Some were free traders, some protectionists.
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What defined FDR most was his belief that Govt had to do respond aggressively to address the depression after Hoover’s failures. But, FDR ultimately was very pragmatic, willing to try different things, take risks and not get pinned down. Ultimately, the greatest leaders are often those who recognise what the time requires – not those who vainly try to impose a failed ideology or partisan one.
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If their is a criticism of Clinton its that she may be misreading the times – and that she is ultimately seen as a highly partisan figure, despite her often vague answers.
It’s prevalent among the willing. The strategy works because the audience hears their own positions in the vague statements made by the candidate. When Hillary straddles, those on one side of an issue hear their message, likewise for those on the other. It seems a viable strategy in the primaries but the general election is a different game. In the primaries, everyone’s really on the same team.
I’m sure FDR did waffle around somewhat. But my history teacher in high school told me the way historians write is to cite examples that buttress the thesis and ignore examples that don’t. I think these authors in the LA Times did just that.
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It could be that FDR’s strategy was a minor factor in his win. It could be that Herbert Hoover & the Depression had ruined the reputation of the Republican party and any Democrat would have won.
but in talking about the Clintons, both of them tried to ride all sides of an issues, but when Bill does it he manages to convince and bring in both his left and his right: when Hillary does it she manages to alienate both the left and the right. It’s not something she’s good at: there are times when I like her, but they never happen when she acts like that. It worked for Bill, and maybe it worked for FDR, but it won’t work for Hillary.
…she wants to win it for the Democrats, and apparently, she is the one Democratic candidate who gets that. Good for her.
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As much as I like several of the Democratic presidential candidates, I fear that they and their supporters are doing what liberal Democrats do best: they will bloody up the front runner enough so that while she will get the nomination, she will lose the general election.
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It saddens me that Obama, Edwards, and some of the others have launched into attack mode on Hillary…what happened to the “politics of hope”?
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So often, we Democrats are our own worst enemies.
The man who sought to pack more justices on the Supreme Court to support his views? The one who started jobs programs for millions of people and said “A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward” and called the only American principle the idea that “taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay”? This is more pablum from the desperate right who’s trying to claim the most successful American leaders of the twentieth century (FDR, King, JFK, Truman) as “really” theirs, mainly because the only thing they have to point to is the limited disaster that was Ronald Reagan.
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Hillary’s success is coming along for a reason similar to FDR — the fact that world events have shown the rival ideology to be utterly ineffectual and exploitative. As the surest, steadiest voice for the leading alternate, she naturally benefits.
…much of what you wrote regarding FDR occurred after he was first elected president. Hillary hasn’t been elected president–yet. The dynamic is different for an incumbent than for a non-incumbent candidate.
FDR got in there in 1932 because conservatism had proven unable to deal with the contemporary state of the world, just as it is unable to deal with it today.
1)Hoover had no chance in hell of getting re-elected, a chicken would have beaten Herbet Hoover.
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2)FDR ran to Hoovers right-opposing Hoovers New Deal light programs and saying that he would balance the budget to solve the Depression a campaign promise he retracted immediately in office
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3)FDR openly utilized Southern racists and campaigned partly as someone who wouldnt shake the barrel, he didnt care about the black vote until his re-election campaigns