The Next New Deal

[waiting for hope]

Run time: 01:13 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Et50Num1f54   Posted on YouTube: September 30, 2008 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: October 01, 2008 By DU Member: waiting for hope Views on DU: 542

 
Sounds Good to me!

[Captain Hilts]

1. And how!

[angstlessk]

2. looking at that picture got me thinking..... even as bad as things were back then

people were nowhere as cynical then as we are today...no one got even suspisious that FDR had 90+% of his photos sitting down.

[Captain Hilts]

3. Folks knew he has trouble getting around - that was the general rationalization...

for Eleanor's activities.

But no one had a clue the degree to which he was crippled. The presidential train rarely went faster than 35 mph because he didn't have the back muscles to support himself. He also was incapable of dressing himself.

My uncle was on the battleship IOWA when they took FDR to the Teheran Conference. My uncle was shocked by the extent of his disability. He took him the ship's newspaper every day.

FDR made two pubic appearences in his wheelchair. The report after the Yalta Conference to congress, and one to the amputee ward at Bethesda Naval Hospital.

Holding him up was difficult because not only was he tall, but he was top heavy. It came in handy his wife was so big. Here she is holding him up on the campaign train in '32. That's her boy toy looking on on the left.

[angstlessk]

5. thanks for the history and 'background' info...she was an amazing woman

and he was a smart man in chosing her to be his mate .. are you an FDR expert?

[Captain Hilts]

7. I've read a great many of the biographies. I prefer Kenneth Davis...

but the best place to read about him, or her, is books about others.

"Mostly Morgenthaus" by Henry Morgenthau III is a terrific book with good insights on life with the Roosevelts - both Henry and Elinor Morgenthau were close to the R's - and in FDR's cabinet. And you don't get into the wars between FDR's biographers and ER's biographers. Henry Morgenthau actually slept with FDR during the '28 campaign for governor and Elinor and Eleanor were very tight.

An under-used book is the memoir of Norman Littell. I was pleased to see some used copies for sale on Amazon. He was in FDR's justice department so that addresses a lot of war-time justice issues. He also was a confidant of the Roosevelt's daughter. Some of the stuff he relates from her completely negates some of the stuff in Doris Kearns Goodwin's book.

For a completely first hand account of life among ER and to a lesser extent, FDR, you can't beat "An Eager Spirit" by dorothy Dow. She was in the White House secretarial pool when the R's hit DC and was chosen to spend several weeks each summer at Eleanor's cottage helping out with the correspondence, or whatever else needed to be done. An interesting read!

Meacham's Franklin and Winston is a good read. The contrast between the two men brings out their best/worst traits.

The more you read about FDR, the more you admire him, but the less you like him. His secretary/girlfriend Missy LeHand said that he was "incapable of a true friendship with anyone." So true and she learned it the hard way. So did Eleanor and Churchill.

But FDR and Eleanor seem to get a bit bigger every year.

[Poseidan]

4. Remember the words of Virgil

"Fortune favors the bold."

[onlyadream]

6. Great idea...

seems so logical.