"This is the moment for a Rooseveltian approach to the U.K. The country has gone through a profound shock. But in those moments, you have the opportunity to change, and to do things better."

Said Boris Johnson, quoted in "A Surprising Role Model Emerges for Boris Johnson: F.D.R./The British prime minister, trying to regroup in the coronavirus pandemic, wants to bury Thatcherism and embark on a program of ambitious public works" (NYT).

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....

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?”

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":

“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.

Another occasion for the "Obama is like Nixon" tag.

Politico reports:

“I don't think it will be offensive at all when [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is] convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him,” Obama told NBC’s Chuck Todd.

When Todd asked Obama if he was interfering in the trial process by declaring that Mohammed will be executed, Obama, a former constitutional law professor, insisted that he wasn’t trying to dictate the result.

“What I said was, people will not be offended if that's the outcome. I'm not pre-judging, I'm not going to be in that courtroom, that's the job of prosecutors, the judge and the jury,” Obama said. “What I'm absolutely clear about is that I have complete confidence in the American people and our legal traditions and the prosecutors, the tough prosecutors from New York who specialize in terrorism."

Journey back to 1970:

Nixon Calls Manson Guilty, Later Withdraws Remark; Refers to Coast Murder Trial in Talk in Denver, Then Says in Washington He Didn't Mean to Prejudge Case

...

President Nixon asserted today that Charles Manson, a hippie cultist now on trial in California, "was guilty, directly or indirectly, of eight murders without reason."

But, faced with criticism that he had prejudged the outcome of the Manson trial, Mr. Nixon issued a statement ... saying that "the last thing I would do is prejudice the legal rights of any person, in any circumstances."

***

Googling, I saw that this isn't the first time someone has compared something Obama did to the old Nixon/Manson screwup. Back in July, the comparison was made after Obama said the "police acted stupidly" in arresting Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

From that July article:

Robert Dallek, a presidential historian, said in an interview that Nixon’s comments, while seemingly a gaffe, reinforced his stance in the prevailing cultural wars and seemed calculated. “He was playing to the whole idea that conservatives stand for law and order and Democrats were permissive and indulgent toward criminals,” Mr. Dallek said.

So, what do you think?

When Obama said KSM will be convicted and executed, what was he doing?
	Making a gaffe.
	Trying to send the message that he's tough on terrorism.
pollcode.com free polls

More on the new Hillary books.

The NYT has reviews of the two new Hillary books: Carl Bernstein's "A Woman in Charge" and Jeff Gersh and Don Van Natta Jr.'s "Her Way." Michiko Kakutani reviews only the Bernstein book (because the authors of the other book are or were employed by the Times), and outside reviewer Robert Dallek reviews both books. Let's look at the Dallek review first. Here's what he says about the Gersh/Van Natta:

The book’s greatest flaw is its flogging of all the Clinton scandals, not simply because they are so familiar and ultimately came to so little, but also because they give us insufficient clues to what sort of president Mrs. Clinton might be....

Should Hillary Clinton’s personal limitations — her inclination to shade the truth in the service of her ambition, what former Senator Bill Bradley called her “arrogance,” “disdain,” and “hypocrisy” — disqualify her for the presidency?

It is surely preferable to have our most upright citizens sitting in the White House, but history repeatedly shows that presidents with character flaws have not necessarily been less competent leaders, especially in times of crisis, than those with a stronger moral compass....

Oh, fine then. Character... big deal!

About the Bernstein book, Dallek says:

Mr. Bernstein is... hyperbolic about Mrs. Clinton’s influence and importance. President Bill Clinton survived “in office due principally to the actions of his wife, just as their tangled relationship,” he writes, “was central to his being impeached in the first place.”

Mr. Bernstein adds: “The impeachment of the president was a direct reflection of the choices she had made, the compromises she had accepted, however reluctantly, and the enmity engendered by their grand designs, successes and failures.”

Kakutani writes:

Mr. Bernstein’s overall take on Mrs. Clinton [is] that her “experiential openness” gave her a “capacity for personal growth and change”....

[T]his volume does not really appraise Mrs. Clinton’s record as a senator from New York and sheds no new light on her stance on the Iraq war or her current campaign for the White House....

“With the notable exception of her husband’s libidinous carelessness,” Mr. Bernstein asserts, “the most egregious errors, strategic and tactical” of [Bill Clinton's] presidency, particularly in its stumbling first year, are “traceable to Hillary,” including, in large measure, the inept staffing of the White House, the disastrous serial search for an attorney general, the Travel Office brouhaha, Whitewater and the alienation of key senators and members of Congress.

Kakutani notes that the book is really long and that Bernstein spent 8 years writing it and seems rather defensive about spending so much time on it. Are readers going to put up with this? Aside from the health care fiasco, the Clinton Era events that involve Hillary really don't need to be remembered in detail. The Gersh/Van Natta book looks like a better read, perhaps.