Frank(lin)ly Speaking

I have these two colleagues; one who thinks that FDR was the greatest President ever, another who thinks that he was the worst. Needless to say here, folks, my opinion resides somewhere in the middle............................................................................................First the good. 1) Mr Roosevelt was a great and inspirational leader who helped manage the country through two of its most challenging episodes; the Great Depression and WW2. 2) Certain of his early decisions in fact DID stop the "bleeding". His Reciprocal Trade Agreement helped negotiate tariffs downward. He made some rock solid appointments to the Federal Reserve (individuals not necessarily hellbent on lowering interest rates). His national bank holiday halted the panic and eliminated thousands of unnecessary withdrawals. The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 insured deposits up to $2,500 and gave millions of individuals piece of mind. And the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934 increased safety requirements for stock-trading companies and steadied the market. 3) His wife, Eleanor, was an extraordinary first-lady whose tireless work for those less fortunate was, and continues to be, the gold-standard..................................................................................................Now the bad. 1) Mr. Roosevelt often had a hard time telling the truth. He lied to the press. He lied to Congress. He lied to his staff. And he lied to the American people (telling the public that his court-packing scheme had to do with "efficiency" - this, when basically everybody knew that it had to do with ideology). 2) He also had a dictatorial impulse. His court-packing scheme, the internment of Japanese-Americans, his utilization of the IRS as a weapon against critics/adversaries - these were all very troubling. 3) While some of his policies were effective, others in fact may have retarded economic recovery. His reliance on excise taxes (an extremely regressive form of taxation) clearly took a lot of money (and, hence, demand) out of the economy. The NRA (which was eventually voted down by the Supreme Court, 9-0), which allowed for collusion and price-fixing by American industries, ended up hurting a lot of businesses (many of them small ones). The Agricultural Adjustment Act (which paid a lot of farmers NOT to produce) eventually turned the U.S. into a food-IMPORTING nation. And the WPA, a cynosure of the New Deal, was itself fraught with waste, inefficiency, and political manipulation (people being denied jobs due to their political views)..................................................................................................Overall, folks, I'd probably give Mr. Roosevelt the same grade that I gave Mr. Reagan, a B- (overrated, but not necessarily as wretched as his critics paint him out to be)....................................................................................................P.S. For those of you who think that my criticism of Mr. Roosevelt was perhaps too harsh, let me point out to you that none other than John Maynard Keynes HIMSELF (in a New York Times piece) stated that the NRA would probably "impede the recovery". I'd also like to point out the fact that the National Recovery Review Board said that the codes probably "spurred the exit of small enterprises and led to the always growing autocracy of the greater corporations."