Mr. Johnson is a Conservative populist who ran on a platform of pulling Britain out of the European Union and had, until now, modeled himself on Roosevelt’s wartime ally, Winston Churchill....From The Guardian, "Absolutely fanciful': Boris Johnson's new deal not Rooseveltian, say critics/The PM wants to be put on the same pedestal as Franklin D Roosevelt as he unveils £5bn capital projects":
One of [Johnson's] closest advisers, Michael Gove, recently [said]... “Roosevelt recognized that, faced with a crisis that had shaken faith in government, it was not simply a change of personnel and rhetoric that was required, but a change in structure, ambition, and organization”....
“F.D.R. was someone who had an extraordinary intuitive feel for where the public was and what the mood of the country was,” said Robert Dallek, an American presidential historian who published a biography of Roosevelt in 2017. “Does someone like Boris Johnson have that?”
“The notion that he’s going to turn himself into FDR seems absolutely fanciful,” said professor Anand Menon, of the UK in a Changing Europe thinktank. “FDR surrounded himself with experts, and drew on what they had to say, in a way that Boris Johnson so far has not.”By the way, I'd avoid the figure of speech, "put on a pedestal." Things on pedestals are not doing well at the moment. They seem to be asking for a toppling.
But here in America, we don't put Franklin Roosevelt on a pedestal. Look, his statue is firmly planted on the ground, and he is seated in a wheelchair...
... not lording it over us at all.
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FDR prolonged and deepened the Great Depression.
BJ would be an idiot to follow those policies.
Yes- when all else fails, call for "infrastructure"!
F.D.R. was someone who had an extraordinary intuitive feel for where the public was and what the mood of the country was
FDR certainly knew where the nations wealthy public were- they were hiding overseas escaping his economy-crushing tax rates. That's why he penned personal letters to them begging them to come back...
Boris getting ready to put the Muslims in camps.
It’s what FDR would have done.
Huh. I thought Britain did all that stuff already, way more than us in the US? Was I wrong?
This shouldn't be a surprise. UK politics are an entire standard Deviation to the Left of USA politics. Boris, in the USA, would be a liberal Democrat, in favor of National Health insurance, high taxes, etc. He's practically a BLM supporter. The only difference is he supported Brexit and isn't a flaming radical.
FDR surrounded himself with experts
For centuries, rulers surrounded themselves with medical experts who prescribed blood letting and any number of pointless or counterproductive therapies. Being surrounded by experts is only good if they know what they are doing--and want the same thing you want.
Despite a lot of public glorification of the guy, over the years there's been a number of very persuasive arguments made that FDR's policies may have actually worsened and extended the Great Depression. So he's not exactly what I would define as any kind of role model for someone who at least theoretically would be considered a conservative. But let's be honest here, fiscal conservatism is long dead as far as public policy is concerned. Now it's all about seeing how much money you can spend and print and how fast once you achieve power.
The UK is lost. It is sad as I used to go every year but no more.
I hope my friends are OK. They live in the southeast, away from London. The same sort of dispersal from big cities that is going on here.
FDR had a rather easy ride. People forget that back then, people voted the party line ticket, and he had crushing majorities in the house and Senate for most of his 12 years. For example, in 1937, the R's only had 18 Senate seats! They couldn't even mount a filibuster till January 1943 when they finally got up to 38 seats. The numbers in House were just as good for FDR - had 333 House Democrats in 1937.
Plus, he was getting us out of the Depression and then there was Pearl Harbor and there was nothing to do but support the President in the middle of WW 2. One wonders how well he would've done if he'd been elected in 1948 instead of 1932.
Someone needs a copy of Free to Choose...
...also: history something something doomed to repeat something..
"FDR surrounded himself with experts"
Which was one reason why he failed. Hayek had some wise things to say about "expertise."
Anyway, how long before invoking FDR will be considered racist?
A sign of the mental and political stasis of our times.
Roosevelt became president...88 years ago!
Public works are a time-honored (and essential) part of governance.
Claim it for yourself, not someone old enough to be your great-grandfather
A year ago, I wouldn't have said this. The only President of the US who had internment camps for a particular racial segment of the country. The press hasn't changed. They covered up his disabilities. Most Americans didn't know he couldn't walk.
The system.
Time cancel FDR and teardown his statues. He is the only President who sent US citizens to concentration camps. And they were minorities too!
Obviously, Boris' understanding of FDR is based on hagiography, not historical accuracy. If by accomplishments, he means expanding the government then, yes, he did that. He also pitted groups against one another and sought to limit the freedoms of individual Americans. His statue may not lord over us but his actions as president continue to keep us subservient to the federal government.
Americans are not the only people who don't realize what is good and bad in their history??!!
So Boris is planning on WW3?
It's a £5bn infrastructure spending program.
At that amount, it accelerates the existing average annual infrastructure spending by how many years?
Does BLM know the location of that FDR statue?
I love it that the one president in the last 150 years who actually put Americans in camps and took away their rights and their property still hasn't been "cancelled".
Do Asians not count?
Or do we like his policies too much?
Or do the cancelers just not know that particular history?
I don’t see why Lincoln in a chair should be toppled but not FDR in a wheelchair. I’m sure one of the resident lefty trolls can explain it.
Forgetting that the Rooseveltian programs delayed recovery from the great depression.
conrad black has a soft spot for fdr, I guess he thinks he's like duplessis,
FDR got one thing right in his life: Adolf Hitler. Pretty much everything else he got wrong: The Great Depression. Josef Stalin. Japan's reaction to an oil embargo.
It is only a matter of time before Johnson and his government is forced to relocate out of London.
You think I'm joking, don't you?
Is it harder to tear down a statue on a wheel chair or standing?
That's no doubt a postmodern statue with the wheelchair intended to play to the disabled crowd. You never, ever saw Roosevelt in a wheelchair during his lifetime.
Ah, "experts."
The "expert" phenomenon is just another edition of the "important people are important" scam. What happens is someone who is competent, or perhaps just lucky, does someone that the society values. For instance, maybe it is an inventor that comes up with a doohickey that improves the life of society. Society venerates the inventor for making their life better and rewards the inventor. This is the cue for every ambitious person, no matter level of competence or morality, to make themselves into inventors of some sort or another. Some of them actually do some good, but most of them are there for status, money, fame, sex, and whatever other benefits come with the role. Given that most of these people are not that good at their jobs, they then spend time praising the importance of their positions and demanding respect and rewards while crushing anyone who could threaten them, namely the competent inventors who actually should be in their positions. Eventually, the "experts" make everything worse for their own benefit.
This is a pattern that is seen through history in such diverse areas as politics, the military, religion, science, academia, and whatever else. People whose goal is self-aggrandizement will find their way to positions of importance because actually useful people are too busy trying to be useful, and once entrenched they are very hard to root out. As soon as there is a crisis the "experts" tend to reveal how useless they are.
Please save us from "experts!"
I love it that the one president in the last 150 years who actually put Americans in camps and took away their rights and their property still hasn't been "cancelled".
Do Asians not count?
Not to Democrats.
Boris Johnson, please call Amity Shlaes ASAP.
We should ruin the country for a decade...because we can?
Thesis needs work.
It becomes increasingly clear that the COVID-19 infection did something to Boris's brain. Something not good.
You shut down the entire country, still kill the vulnerable, but public works is the solution , lol
FDR never said or did anything that caused him to lose the support of Southern segregationists. He also had the solid support of Northern blacks. There's no denying the man knew how to practice politics....J.Edgar Hoover and Taft never get any credit for opposing the camps. They didn't have FDR's feel for politics.....The Jews were utterly enamored of FDR, but why? He made anti-Semitic remarks in private, and, unlike Nixon, his anti-Semitism had a body count. He could have lifted his little finger and accepted those poor souls on the St. Louis without any real damage to himself......It took over one hundred years for the reputations of Jefferson, Jackson, and Wilson to fall. FDR is probably safe for another generation, but they will come for him eventually.
Yancey Ward said...
It is only a matter of time before Johnson and his government is forced to relocate out of London.
My friends live in Chichester, about 70 miles south of London. They can be in London by train in 2 hours. The town is beautiful and the neighbors are normal English, not the London kaleidoscope. He said, "If you see a brown face it's an NHS doctor." When we were there, it was the weekend of the Goodwood Revival, and all day classic Porsches and Ferraris drove by. Tickets were 200 pounds per day. At a dinner party, the fellow next to me was a Lloyd's "Name." His wife was the sister of our host. This is where British money is, not London. London is over run with foreigners of dubious origin.
Based on his behavior FDR would hate that statue of himself.He went out of his way to hide his disability from the public.Abetted by a corrupt media he largely succeeded.
FDR is lionized & mythologized because to tell the truth about him is to denounce his regime.
See the hagiography of murderer Ted Kennedy for similar treatment of Democrats by Democrats.
Joe Biden, who has dementia, is a current example of Democrats telling the Big Lie about their candidates and their party.
That sad, lonely FDR statue needs a couple of things to bring it up to monument standards:
1) a plinth (our eyes should be lifted up)
2) some company (a nice, inclusive touch would be to have an Indigenous American on one side of him and a person of African origin on the other, but a kneeling Nisei in chains will do)
RNB said...
FDR got one thing right in his life: Adolf Hitler. Pretty much everything else he got wrong: The Great Depression. Josef Stalin. Japan's reaction to an oil embargo."
Correct. He screwed the country with the depression and with that empowered the Japanese militarists and the Germans to go Nazi. He stupidly embargoed oil exports to Japan while basing the Pacific Fleet in Hawaii. He set up unthinkingly Pearl Harbor for the attack. He was a Navy man who couldn't imagine what carriers were for.
The British did a Pearl Harbor to the Italians in 1940 and the Marines war game such an attack in the late 1930's. He sold out to Stalin Eastern Europe. An honest assessment of FDR would rate him as one of the worst presidents of the 20th century. Not as bad as Wilson and on economic terms about the same as Hoover. As for Boris Johnson, I didn't think he was such a fool. Japan basically covered in concrete just about everything they could have with infrastructure spending in the 90's and with very little growth to show for and a tremendous amount of debt. There is a difference between spending on needed infrastructure and replacing windows just for the sake of creating jobs for window makers and installers.
William said...
FDR never said or did anything that caused him to lose the support of Southern segregationists. He also had the solid support of Northern blacks. There's no denying the man knew how to practice politics....J.Edgar Hoover and Taft never get any credit for opposing the camps. They didn't have FDR's feel for politics.....The Jews were utterly enamored of FDR, but why? He made anti-Semitic remarks in private, and, unlike Nixon, his anti-Semitism had a body count. He could have lifted his little finger and accepted those poor souls on the St. Louis without any real damage to himself......It took over one hundred years for the reputations of Jefferson, Jackson, and Wilson to fall. FDR is probably safe for another generation, but they will come for him eventually."
All true and he had the NYT on his side with respects to the holocaust.
I finally figured out what that statue reminds me of.
I doubt FDR means much to Brits.
Public, private, and hybrid smoothing (e.g. welfare) functions complement the market which is democratic and dynamic.
So, Wilson is cancelled. Roosevelt, T, the classical progressive, is hanging on by a thread. Roosevelt, F, is their fallback guy, maybe. The trend is a progressive march through history, institutions, people, and honored memories.
FDR prolonged and deepened the Great Depression.
He stuffed the channels and delayed market reset, realignment, and recovery. Still, public and private smoothing functions are valuable tools in the short-term.
eadering said...
I doubt FDR means much to Brits.
You mean other than saving their asses? Maybe that's why they had that statue of him.
Probably been replaced by a Muslim now.
n.n said...
FDR prolonged and deepened the Great Depression.
He stuffed the channels and delayed market reset, realignment, and recovery. Still, public and private smoothing functions are valuable tools in the short-term."
He prolonged the depression by eight years. Had he not adopted Hoover's policies and then went further left the depression would been over with in two years. And had the depression been short circuited the Nazi's may have not been able to gain power. Let's not forget that the Federal Reserve bears the brunt for causing the depression.
So did Boris ever actually complete Brexit? Or was that just another empty promise from an ambitious politician?
In defense of FDR, he did manage WWII successfully. Part of his his success was due to appointing such Republicans as Stimson, Marshall, Eisenhower, MacArthur, etc to the hands on positions, but there's no denying that he did manage the war successfully and, on the occasions that he intervened, his interventions were the wise course.....I think the Brits liked Eisenhower better than FDR and even better than Montgomery.
"Not sure," I think it was FDR who said, "Statism is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get."
I mean Brits alive in 2020 who might be asked about FDR and the Great Depression.
I don't want to wade into FDR hagiography nor demonization -- I feel both. But if you are ever in southwest Georgia, see the Little White House. It is amazing. Up the mountain from the warm springs of Warm Springs, with the most extraordinary Polio Museum, which drew FDR to the place. The iron lungs are unforgettable -- the photos of children smiling and waving from inside them devastating. It is still a gathering place for Polio survivors from all over the world.
Just to see how tiny the Little White House is, where FDR directed a world war, and the even tinier guest "house" of two rooms, ten by tenish each, where the single guard slept downstairs and the astonished British Ambassador slept upstairs, and the hundreds of carved canes Americans made and sent as gifts for FDR to thank him for help during the Depression -- even if he didn't entirely merit thanks -- is to realize what life was like in American and especially in the South less than 100 years ago. Also for quite some time after that. It also shows that everyone knew FDR couldn't walk; such handicaps weren't demonized but entirely common; staged images of FDR were a choice made based on dignity, not trickery, that included people, not excluded them -- and the media just makes up garbage about everything.
It's the best historic exhibit I've ever seen. For more haunting, go to the appropriately empty bone fields of Andersonville, a bit north past Vienna, yes, the sausage. Avoid Plains. You might get stuck meeting that creep Jimmy Carter, who will not shut up.
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