FDR And Ideology
Thinking back to the many discussions in my grandmother’s kitchen among the group that lived through WWI, the Depression, and World War II, I remember that they knew that FDR was not tied to any particular policy.
Some of the relatives had been associated with programs among the “alphabet soup” pouring out of Washington that didn’t work, and they noted with approval that FDR wasn’t a man to stay with something that was failing. The programs weren’t simply pushed out the door, they were watched for their effectiveness. If a program didn’t do what they expected, it was shut down and something else was tried.
In a way, the strength of FDR was that he didn’t have a grand strategy that everything was part of, and nothing was ignored because of the side that proposed it. There was a goal, getting out of the Depression, and if you had an idea that might help, it was tried. If it worked, it was kept. If it didn’t work, it was gone.
January 11, 2009 12 Comments
