FDR: A New Perspective

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) has had a wonderful reputation in the United States as one of the great Presidents.  He was the only one in history to serve more than two terms.  Indeed, FDR was a gifted leader, speaker, and a most charismatic and charming man.  He was an able war leader and deserves some praise and accolades.  I have a different view of FDR that I want to present here.  Below I will list some of the many flaws and damaging things that he did as president that cannot be ignored or swept away under the rug.

FDR was a liberal's liberal.  He was the first liberal president of the United States who, in many ways, transformed America - for the worse. An example:

• Economically, he was a follower of John Maynard Keynes, the British economist who was an advocate of big government spending.  FDR spent like a drunken sailor, through his failed New Deal.  He truly believed that big government spending was the fix for economic problems.  We now know that this was wrong.  Let's take the 1930s depression as an example.  Did all the government programs of FDR fix the economy?  In 1932, when he took office, the unemployment rate was 23.5%.  In 1939, after eight years of massive government spending the unemployment rate was still at 17%.  Do you call this an economic success?  The economy was revived after WWII when taxes were slashed by a Republican Congress, which among other things, reduced the highest income tax rate from the astronomical amount of 94% for earners of $200,000 and above, and other incentives for economic growth were passed by Congress, reversing FDR's failed New Deal policies.  Click here for a short essay on this.  Economically, FDR was a failure.

• How about Social Security?  Was that not a stroke of genius?  Well, no, it was not.  Let me ask you a question.  Can you live on what you make on Social Security?  Probably, 95% cannot and would be in deep poverty if they only had Social Security.  Let me give you a personal example.  I prepared for retirement by making private investments in an IRA and a 457 Plan from work.  Together, I invested less than $30,000.  These two investments now give me double the monthly income I get from Social Security.  Oh, you say, most people don't know how to invest.  It's not rocket science; all you need it the willingness to put money in investments that will produce on a regular basis throughout your working life.  I had zero training; I learned it myself.  Very easy.  If I had invested all I paid into Social Security in my 45+ years of working I'd have a multi-million dollar investment now.  Social Security has very limited benefits.

Now for the second part:  FDR's damaging legacy:

•   Government spending.  Because of the huge government spending legacy that he started we now have out of control government spending.  As of this writing the national debt is over 18 Trillion dollars.  In 1945, at the end of World War II, and after spending $296 Billion on the war, our national debt was $259 Billion.  Today, it's 18 Trillion dollars.  Click here for the history of our national debt.

• The internment of Japanese American and to a lesser extent Italian and German Americans.  What FDR did to loyal, good, if not the best, American citizens of Japanese ancestry is beyond forgiveness.  If you were a Japanese-American in 1942, you're life would be changed forever.  You would end up in a concentration camp, accused of crimes you never committed.  You never got your day in court, or your due process under the Constitution, you were arrested by FDR's government and imprisoned like a common criminal.  Many people lost all their property and never got it back.  Italian and German legal immigrants not born in America were labeled enemies of the state just for their ethnicity.  Many Italian and German Americans were rounded up and imprisoned for no reason at all.  Many lost their business and livelihood.  The Italian-American Mayor of San Francisco, Angelo Rossi was publicly humiliated by innuendo as a Mussolini follower, with zero evidence.  All untrue.  So was FDR a great man?  Depends on whom you ask.  To some he was, to others, and I'm one of these, I believe FDR did more harm than good.  Granted he was a gifted leader, but even tyrants such as Mussolini and Hitler were gifted leaders.  What was the fruit of their labor?  You will know them by their fruits.

The Fonz Factor: Mussolini and the Rape of a Nation

"Happy Days" was a very popular TV show in the 1970s and 80s in which one of the main characters, Fonzi, was so charismatic and charming that everyone followed him blindly.  Young girls thought he was the greatest gift to women.  In Fonzi's world, he, and only he, could make a coke machine give you a bottle free by just tapping on it, his magic touch.  Such were the miracles that Fonzi could perform.  In actuality, Fonzi was just a neighborhood hoodlum who could get all his friends to follow him off the cliff just by the power of his personality.

In  Fascist Voices: An Intimate History of Mussolini's Italy, by Christopher Duggan, the fascist era of dictator Benito Mussolini,  comes alive.   The Fascists that emerged after WWI Italy were basically groups of organized thugs, squadrismo, who meted out justice to anyone who did not agree with them, including murder, beatings and the ruining of a person's business.  The Fascists of the early period ruled their own territory by intimidation and murder.  Each city had a Fascist boss, referred to as a ras, a word borrowed from Ethiopian tribal leaders.  Each city's ras was judge, jury and executioner.  The Italian police force was basically neutralized.  The Fascists had managed to hijack the entire country, much as the terror group ISIS has done in Syria and Iraq today.

Mussolini wrestled the leadership of Fascist Italy by the sheer force of his personality, cult image and guile; he was the "Fonzi" of his day.  He ruled the same way as the city ras did, eliminating opposition by murder as needed and intimidation.  Mussolini saw himself as the ultimate in manliness; a gift to women.  When he spoke he took on a stance that emanated strength, manliness and arrogance.  Women, in turn, saw him the same way and were attracted to him.  Mussolini envisioned a new Roman Empire.  He always wore his military uniform and projected a masterful command of his audience.  Click here for some pictures. Many Italians looked on him as having godly powers.

By 1926, many Italians had fallen for Mussolini too, regarding him as a savior with unusual powers that would bring Italy honor and prestige.  A schizophrenic adulation of the man followed. Mussolini, could see that he could have his way with the entire country.   He saw himself as the new Roman Emperor, a new Caesar,  who would restore Rome to its former glory.  Toward this goal, he embarked on many disastrous military adventures, Ethiopia, in those days the Italians called it Abyssinia, the Spanish Civil War, and finally the coup de grâce, World War II.

By the time he invaded Ethiopia in 1935, he had managed to cripple the Italian economy which was in ruin by his actions as well as the world wide depression.  During his rein the Italian armed forces were fighting wars in Libya, Ethiopia and Spain.  These disastrous adventures were then followed by World War II where his forces suffered disastrous defeats, such as in North Africa, Greece, the Balkans and Russia.  These defeats were not at all the fault of the armed forces, for they were not only stretched to the breaking point but did not have the equipment, the training nor the capabilities to wage the wars that they were forced to wage. Very little planning was done for these military adventures.  In many cases, the military leaders were not told of their coming wars until they were declared.  This proved to be a calamity of monumental proportions.

Dictators such as Mussolini and Hitler share a common character:  Both were extremely delusional.  Both suffered from some form of mental dysfunction.  Both thought they were invincible.  Both were detached from reality.  Both fought wars they could not possibly win.  In the process they condemned an entire nation to death and destruction unparalleled in human history.  All because a madman had taken control of their nation.  The world still has such dictators who are responsible for the annihilation of their people:  Syria, North Korea, Iraq of Saddam Hussein, and many African countries such as Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Somalia, just to name a few.

Suggested readings:
Fascist Voice, An Intimate History of Mussolini's Italy by Christopher Duggan, 2013, Oxford University Press.
Duce, by Richard Collier, 1971, Viking Press.
Mussolini by Denis Mack Smith, 1982, Alfred A. Knopf.
The Ciano Diaries, Edited by Hugh Gibson, 1945, 1946, Doubleday & Co.