re: #329 Dark_Falcon

More on the Right hate FDR than admire him, though he has gained some defenders there, most notably Conrad Black.

Really, what that article I quoted from represented was the same attitude for FDR that Ronald Reagan had had for the remaining New Deal programs: Acceptance. I myself would define this acceptance as follows:

As a conservative, I wish the Franklin Roosevelt administration had pursued a less top-down and more market friendly approach to many of the nation’s problems. But also I understand and accept why FDR in fact acted as he did. Perhaps others in American history could have done better, but they weren’t there at the time. And FDR did well enough to get America through the Great Depression intact, and then led the nation to victory in the largest war it has ever fought.

Owning to these factors, and the fact that some New deal programs have proven very durable, the public now sees them as an integral part of the political and economic landscape. It was no less a person than Dwight D. Eisenhower whom Ronald Reagan quoted when explaining why he would not move against Social Security: “If a high-placed person were to propose doing away with Social Security, you would never again hear from that person.”

I look at it like this. I think FDR saw that those were desperate times and that desperate times called for desperate measures. Many of his conservative detractors at that time I think had a blind faith that the markets would just fix themselves. They also didn’t accept the fact that this was the worst economic castaprophe the country had faced. We had faced panics before but nothing like the Great Depression.