Skip to content

The Story Behind Obama’s Remarks on FDR

The Story Behind Obama’s Remarks on FDR

April 10, 2011 SVadmin Comments 0 Comment

Reprinted from New Deal 2.0 (November 18, 2010)

by Thomas Ferguson

What really went on in the first few months after FDR was elected?

“We didn’t actually, I think, do what Franklin Delano Roosevelt did, which was basically wait for six months until the thing had gotten so bad that it became an easier sell politically because we thought that was irresponsible. We had to act quickly.” – President Obama

Sometimes a chance remark trains a searchlight on aspects of the historical record that would otherwise be shrouded in Stygian blackness for a generation. So I think it was yesterday when in the Huffington Post, Leo J. Hindery, Jr. quoted from a transcript of President Obama’s remarks to a group of liberal bloggers who were querying his handling of the financial crisis.

Many readers responded in shocked disbelief: The President can’t mean what he said. He must have misspoken — he can’t really be claiming that Roosevelt sat on his hands, deliberately letting the Depression get worse and worse.

Perhaps it was just a slip. But in 2010, even slips can be revealing — and this one comes from a definite part of the political spectrum. The President was repeating a canard that goes back to the circle of die hards around President Herbert Hoover as he exited the White House in a cloud of bitterness in 1933. In recent years, as a vast campaign against the memory of the New Deal has gathered steam, such claims have gone mainstream. For example, take the carefully hedged version recently put forward by Amity Shlaes in her study of the New Deal, “The Forgotten Man“: “But Roosevelt was not interested in cooperation. We will never know all his motives, but it was clear that a crisis now could only strengthen his mandate for action come inauguration in March.”

We are unlikely ever to know for sure. But as President Obama took office, the Council on Foreign Relations was cranking up a remarkably one-sided conference purporting to be a “Second Look at the Great Depression and the New Deal.” Ms. Shlaes was a prominent participant, as was the Council’s co-chair, one Robert Rubin, whose myriad protégés thronged the Obama Treasury and economic councils.

Whether our highly intellectual president picked up the idea by reading it or hearing somebody else say it, it was, and is, in the air. And you can be sure that his words will now be rattling around for years to come and likely cited as proof of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “irresponsibility.”

So it makes sense to look more closely at what really happened between Roosevelt and Hoover. This is not too easy to do, though one or two studies, notably Elliot Rosen’s “Hoover, Roosevelt, and the Brains Trust“, have written with insight on the subject.

I often joke that North America is the true “Dark Continent.” We probably know more about tribes in the Amazon jungle than we do about the real nature of power in the United States. Neither political science, nor history, nor economics do very well on this. If you want to understand what really happened between Hoover and Roosevelt between November 1932, when FDR won the election by a landslide, and March 1933, the old inauguration day before passage of the 20th Amendment to the Constitution, you need to comb through the papers of private bankers and the material in more easily available public sources such as the splendid Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, New York. I have been engaged in this over more decades than I now care to admit. The bottom line is this: Hoover and a substantial bloc of New York bankers wanted Roosevelt to commit to staying on the gold standard and US participation in the upcoming London Economic Conference. These commitments would have meant continued austerity and completely destroyed any chance of fundamental reform — which was why the banks and Hoover were so insistent. In effect, they were hoping to continue with Hoover’s policies, if not Hoover himself.

Roosevelt exchanged some messages with them, but finally refused the whole package. He and his advisers correctly concluded that the idea was to suck them into a foolish set of commitments. FDR was simply not willing to make the kind of arrangements with bankers that President Obama was. That’s the heart of the matter.

Thomas Ferguson is Senior Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. He is the author of many books and articles, including Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Articles, Economics, History, Politics

Post navigation

PREVIOUS
Neal’s Beautiful Photo of the Aurora Borealis
NEXT
Ryan Plan Leads to More Deficits, Bigger Debt

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

SIGNUP FOR SIERRA VOICES NEWSLETTER

Please wait...

Thank you for signing up!

PEACE IN UKRAINE

CLICK ON IMAGE FOR CODEPINK

WHERE HAVE ALL THE SOLDIERS GONE?

CLICK IMAGE BELOW TO WRITE ONLINE LETTER OPPOSING THE MINE

DONATE TO THE FOOD BANK OF NEVADA COUNTY

(CLICK IMAGE)

DONATE TO NEVADA COUNTY RELIEF FUND (click image below)

Jack Kornfield: A Steady Heart in Time of Corona Virus (Part I)

Erika Lewis, Shaye Cohn, Craig Flory – Got A Mind To Ramble

“Everlasting Arms”

Tara Brach: A Steady Heart in Time of Corona Virus (Part II)

Recent Posts

  • Politics After Trump: A Conversation with Chris Hedges
  • (Resend with good link) “Cowspiracy”
  • (Resend with good link) “Cowspiracy”
  • Four Myths About Putin
  • CHRIS HEDGES: ISRAEL’S WAR ON HOSPITALS

Recent Comments

  • Missouri v. Biden: Prelimary Injunction Important Victory for First Amendment (so far) on Matt Taibbi, An Example of Journalistic Integrity
  • “FDR Met With Stalin. JFK Met With Khrushchev. Nixon met with Brezhnev. Reagan met with Gorbachev. Can’t Biden Meet With Putin?” on THE Most Important Article I’ve Ever Posted to Sierra Voices
  • The Gathering Storm on Professor Jeffrey Sachs: “What you’re being told about this conflict and others is simply not true.”
  • If You Laughed at the Doomsday Clock Update, You Should Find This Hilarious on The Grim Poetry of Science
  • In Praise of Warriors, and Criticism of War on Celebrated to Death: Memorial Day Is Killing Us

Archives

  • November 2023
  • October 2023
  • September 2023
  • August 2023
  • July 2023
  • June 2023
  • May 2023
  • April 2023
  • March 2023
  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • November 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • December 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • January 2014
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009

Categories

  • Abortion
  • Activism
  • Afghan Trap
  • Afghanistan
  • Aging
  • AI
  • Alzheimer's
  • American Empire
  • animal agriculture
  • Anti-Depressant
  • Anti-Semitism
  • Anti-War
  • Armageddon
  • Arms Sales
  • Articles
  • Atlas Obscura
  • Authoritarianism
  • Beavers
  • Betrayal by Democratic Party
  • Black Lives
  • Black Lives Matter
  • Blog
  • Book Bans
  • Buddhism
  • Budget
  • Buskers
  • California
  • Capitalism
  • Carbon Offsets
  • Cartoon
  • Censorship
  • China
  • Chris Hedges
  • Climate Change
  • Cold War II
  • Compassion
  • Constitution
  • Corona Virus
  • Corruption
  • Cosmology
  • Costs of War
  • Coup
  • Covert Regime Change
  • COVID-19
  • Crimea
  • Dams
  • De-Dollarization
  • Democracy
  • Democrats
  • Democrats Betrayal of the Working Class
  • Depression
  • Disenfranchisement
  • Douglas Macgregor
  • Drones
  • Drought
  • Economics
  • Ecosystem Engineers
  • Education
  • Election Fraud
  • Electoral College
  • Empire
  • Environment
  • Eros
  • Extinction
  • Extraterrestrial Civilizations
  • Farming
  • Fascism
  • Fascist Populists
  • Feminism
  • Filibuster
  • Fire!
  • First Amendment
  • Flood Control
  • Floods
  • Food Insecurity
  • Foreign Policy
  • Forest Ecology
  • Forest Management
  • Fracking
  • Free Speech
  • Freedom of the Press
  • Gardening
  • Gaza
  • Gender
  • Genocide
  • Global Warming
  • GOP
  • Great Movies
  • Grist
  • Groundwater
  • Halloween
  • Health Care
  • High Country News
  • History
  • Humor
  • Hunger
  • Idaho-Maryland Mine
  • Ignorance
  • Immigration
  • Indigenous Peoples' Day
  • Insects
  • Insurrection
  • Iran
  • Islamic Law
  • Israel
  • JFK
  • Joy
  • Julian Assange
  • Labor
  • Lobbying
  • Local
  • Lunar Influence
  • Maria Popova
  • Marijuana
  • Masks
  • Media
  • Medical Care
  • Men
  • Men's Issues
  • Mental Health
  • Middle Class
  • Military Industrial Complex
  • Mining
  • MMT
  • Moby Dick
  • Modern Monetary Theory
  • Moral Obligations
  • Music
  • Native Americans
  • NATO
  • Neocons
  • Neoliberalism
  • New Cold War
  • Nuclear Fusion
  • Nuclear War
  • Nuclear Winter
  • Nutrition
  • Oligarchy
  • Oysters
  • Palestine
  • Pandemic
  • Parenting
  • Peace
  • Peter Russell
  • Pharmaceuticals
  • Pharmacies
  • Physics
  • Poetry
  • Police
  • Politics
  • Populism
  • Press
  • Propaganda
  • Putin
  • Race
  • Regime Change
  • Religion
  • Republican Derangement
  • Republicans
  • Reviews
  • Revolution
  • Right-wing terrorism
  • Rights of Nature
  • Rise Gold
  • Rivers
  • Roe v. Wade
  • Romance
  • Russia
  • Russiagate
  • Science
  • Scott Ritter
  • Slavery
  • Sleep
  • Smoke Inhalation
  • Social Security
  • Spineless
  • Student Debt
  • Summer
  • Supreme Court
  • Technology
  • The Hartmann Report
  • The Marginalian
  • Trump Virus
  • Tuba Skinny
  • Twitter Files
  • Tyranny
  • Ukraine
  • Uncategorized
  • Unipolar vs. Multipolar
  • Vaccine Refusal
  • Vaccine Safety
  • Voting
  • War
  • War Crimes
  • War on Government
  • Water
  • Watersheds
  • Wells
  • Whistleblowers
  • Wildfires
  • Winter
  • Women's Issues
  • Work
  • Working Class
  • Yemen
  • Yugoslavia

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org
© 2023   All Rights Reserved.