Reply #2: Thanks, Enthusiast.

[No Elephants]

Since I apparently write most of the time for an audience of one, I am glad you liked the post.

I am cognizant of the Manhattan Project and internment. And, obviously, of the infidelities.

I have mentioned those things in many posts. I don't find it necessary to mention all of them every time I mention FDR, though.

I did not, for example, find mentioning all of them in a post about the toll the Presidency took on his body. (There's even a rumor that he had gone blind in one eye.)

However, I am going to give FDR the benefit of the doubt and say that those things, too, took a toll on him. Not the toll they took on the Japanese or on Japanese Americans, certainly, but a toll. Those decisions could not have been easy for anyone.

Then again, cry me a river about the toll they took on him because those things were his decisions, even if he thought that he had to do them in order to keep Americans as safe as he could.

However, the criticism about FDR from Democrats (no less!) these days have more to do with Obama than with FDR. (Doesn't almost everything?)

Not too far into Obama's first term, pundits were saying things like "We needed FDR, but we got Hoover." And, for some Democrats today, even praising one Democrat--any Democrat past or present--is seen as implied criticism of Obama and therefore anathema. Moreover, we did not even need FDR.

FDR was a remarkable, courageous, visionary American President. He created things that had not existed previously in America and had the courage to go for them--at least until he caved to the defiit hawks. We already saw the things that did work and didn't work and why. So, we did need anyone as original and fearless as FDR, though it would have been nice.

Anyway, I am a great fan of FDR, Truman and Johnson, as far as their domestic fiscal policies and their having the courage of their convictions and their tenacity about getting things done in the face of opposition. Always have been. If that happens to reflect badly on those with different intentions and priorities, sue me.