Et tu, Doris Kearns Goodwin?

[No Elephants]

I love Doris Kearns Goodwin. And I love how she lets Stephen Colbert use her name in his stories about his odd sexual behaviors that he never realized before were inappropriate (which stories end with "Once again, my apologies to Doris Kearns Goodwin.")


But she just said to Charlie Rose, discussing second Presidential terms of past Presidents, that FDR packed the Court in his second term.

No, FDR never packed the court. He threatened to do so, but he never actually did. Among other things, the threat alone sufficed to get the Court to find more federal power under the Commerce Clause than it ever had before. Before the threat, the Court had been striking down almost every measure that FDR and Congress had passed in an effort to get the nation out of the Depression. Well, every threat whose constitutionality had been challenged, anyway. And the Court's decisions were giving everyone incentive to challenge.

Doris Kearns Goodwin is a historian. So, I must assume she knows better?

:wtf:

[Enthusiast]

1. Why would Doris Kearns Goodwin

mislead us like that? Is she part of a sinister plot? Nothing would surprise me in this world today.

[No Elephants]

2. I'm hoping she misspoke and didn't think it worth it to backtrack and correct herself.

She speaks very fast.

She seems so sincere, I hate to think of her as deceptive.

Then again, I've been fooled before.

[formercia]

3. It sounds more like Reich-Wanker Propaganda

..like something Limpbough might say.

[No Elephants]

4. Yeah. And people have a vague recollection of hearing something about Roosevelt and court packing,

so it sounds plausible.

Pretty sound he packed it to the gills.

Twice.

Funny thing is, there were other increases--actual increases--that no one ever even mentions.

But something that never happened is burned on our minds.