Roosevelt: The Great Divider

Kelly Blair / NY Times

Jean Edward Smith, The New York Times | Full Story | PRESIDENT OBAMA’S apparent readiness to backtrack on the public insurance option in his health care package is not just a concession to his political opponents—this fixation on securing bipartisan support for health care reform suggests that the Democratic Party has forgotten how to govern and the White House has forgotten how to lead.

This was not true of Franklin Roosevelt and the Democratic Congresses that enacted the New Deal. With the exception of the Emergency Banking Act of 1933 (which gave the president authority to close the nation’s banks and which passed the House of Representatives unanimously), the principal legislative innovations of the 1930s were enacted over the vigorous opposition of a deeply entrenched minority. Majority rule, as Roosevelt saw it, did not require his opponents’ permission. >>

Related: Ike’s Other Warning | NYT 09.09.02

Published 09.09.02 00:00:00 -0500 GMT | Posted by Andrew Garib on 09.09.04 | |

Also On This Topic:

Give ’Em Hell, Barry The Roosevelt Institution’s Strange Path to Grown-up Punditry AGAINST DESPAIR: How our misreading of history harms progressivism today.

Also From This Post:

The making of a homegrown terrorist The Truth, And What The Other Guy Says Putting ‘fun’ in dysfunctional since 1967

Be the first to comment on “Roosevelt: The Great Divider”