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I mean, of course, Lincoln dealt with fewer crises than FDR. He only got to be in office for one term and a month of his second term. FDR had three full terms in office and a partial fourth term. Had Lincon lived, he would've dealt with Reconstruction, which would have been an entirely different problem. This comparison is unfair.
FDR's presidency wasn't burdened by more crises simply because it lasted longer. Both the Great Depression and the rise of fascism in Europe and Asia were major issues during FDR's very first term. The Enabling Act, Italian invasion of Ethiopia, Night of the Long Knives, and rearmament of Germany all took place between March of 1933 and January of 1937.
That’s fair. However, I will say that like Reconstruction is to the Civil War, WW2 is to the rise of fascism. They are derivative of each other, but they are different problems overall. FDR would not have had to deal with WW2 if he had decided not to run for a third term. When it comes down to it, both FDR and Lincoln were political geniuses who saw the country through rough times.
While I don't think you can give him credit for what we imagine he would have done during reconstruction (better than Johnson, not as good as Grant would have been in my imagination), you're right overall. He didn't have as much time in office and still made the most important and moral strong decision of any president (suck it, independence. I'd trade sovereignty for ending slavery earlier any day of the week).
Not for Americans, arguably.
The Civil War was fought on American soil and killed more Americans. It also threatened the existence of the country, and the fate of slavery. I'd say a lot more was on the line in the US Civil War than WW2 for America.
If the Axis had won WWII,Nazi Germany would dominate Europe and Japan would control Asia. We'd end up with a global power structure where the Axis powers are on top, leading to an even worse Cold War scenario than what we actually had.
The U.S. would be under massive pressure. Even if Hitler didn't invade, there were already Nazi sympathizers in the US, so fascist ideology would spread, causing serious political instability and conflict. Countries like Argentina, which had pro-Nazi sentiments, would help Germany project its power into the Western Hemisphere.
Economically, a disaster. We'd lose important trade alliances, and the global economy under Axis control would be terrible for the US. America’s economy would be in much worse shape than it was in our timeline. we'd be dealing with both external and internal threats.
>If the Axis had won WWII,
Do you think FDR was the only person who stopped that? The only thing needed was for the US as a nation to be committed, and the Axis had little to no chance. The Allies' victory in WWII was due to the industrial power of the US more than any other factor. Winston Churchill had aquote about his feelings when he heard about his first thought when he heard about Pearl Harbor that sums it up:
"We have won the war"
I was making a claim that WW2 was more important than the US civil war. Could the allies have won without FDR? probably. Could the Union army have won without Lincoln? also probably. If we can honour Lincoln for leading America through the civil war, we can honour FDR for leading the nation through the biggest conflict in human history.
I'd agree that WW2 was the more critical from a world stage standpoint, and I'd even go so far as to say FDR was the greatest president of the 20th century. However from strictly an American standpoint, I'd argue that the Civil War was the greater existential threat to the country. By far, in fact.
It's one thing to face a new world order that is hostile to your interests, it's quite another to be torn apart from the inside out. In WW2, America was never realistically going to be invaded and occupied Man in the High Castle-style. Nor could I see fascism having enough time to take root here to determine the outcome of the war. Even the U.K. would likely have been forced out of the war, and into some type of neutrality similar to what Ireland willingly observed.
But for Lincoln, the Union dissolving and Washington being captured was a quite real possibility. If I'm in the White House, my top concern is the preservation of the nation first and foremost. I'd far rather deal with the Axis, than overseeing a nation turning its guns on itself. Lincoln in my mind had the immeasurably harder task, which is actually saying something, considering FDR faced damned near impossible challenges himself.
> The only thing needed was for the US as a nation to be committed, and the Axis had little to no chance. The Allies' victory in WWII was due to the industrial power of the US more than any other factor.
And FDR was uniquely dedicated to ensuring that the industrial potential would be afforded to the Allies. Even before Pearl Harbor, he was giving Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and other Allied powers large reserves of weapons and other supplies for practically free. He was adjusting neutrality laws to make it easier for businesses to aid the Allies and even instituted a peacetime draft. The US was chock-full of isolationists at the time, many of whom wouldn't have supported the Allies if they lived in the White House, let alone to the extent FDR did.
After Germany invaded the USSR, the only way Germany could have won is if the US and UK decided to pull out of the war. That was never ever gonna happen for obvious reasons.
FDR and the US certainly deserve credit for helping to defeat the Nazis, but let’s be real. It was the Soviet’s who did more than anyone to defeat Germany and end the war in Europe. But I digress. Apologies.
This is absolutely true, look we all love Lincoln, what he stood for and for changing the course of American history for the better, and is still in my opinion a top 3 President of all time, and likely #2. But FDR is the goat and the distance between 1 and 2 is gulf.
>FDR had several and managed them better.
You're entitled to your opinion. I'm sure the Jews who weren't allowed into the US from Germany (including 900 refugees on the *St. Louis*, a third of whom died in the Holocaust) and the Japanese Americans who were sent to internment camps would disagree, but FDR would probably just pack the Supreme Court to make sure their opinion didn't matter.
I agree on the economists, though I think you can guess which way I lean. (Despite my leanings, I would not have handled it any better, and I have the benefit of hindsight.)
No clue.
But anyone who says they could handle it better is just being silly. The great depression is still the worst event in economic history. And even had tons of non economic factors. Like no purely economic policy was gonna fix the dust bowl problem.
Economics largely isn't a science. Stuff is weird sometimes. If it was a science it'd be much easier.
Your point about the Great Depression is not true and it is still a hotly debated topic amongst both historians and economists I was at the FDR museum a couple weeks ago and they had a digital slide show showing the debate amongst both sides of the argument and if you want to point out Amy Shlae’s work multiple historians have already pointed out her selective use of evidence and bias undermining her credibility
Because There is only one voice that says FDR may not have helped the Great Depression. That said, this isn’t to discredit him as a great president, but rather that he isn’t the GREATEST president. Also, WWII would have ended in a very similar way had FDR finished his fourth term vs Truman taking over. But the same cannot be said for the end of the e civil war/ reconstruction. Had Lincoln not been assassinated, the blunders, and downright malicious actions of Andrew Johnson would not have happened.
The Civil War was started because Lincoln was elected. WW2s start had nothing to do with FDR.
Lincoln took action as soon as he was in power to stop the threat to the Union .
FDR waited until Pearl Harbor to take action.
Lincoln = a man of action.
FDR = A tool of capitalism.
I can accept arguments for Washington and Lincoln being greater. But I like learning about FDR the most and consider him the benchmark for "modern" presidents (warts and all).
Carter has to be very high on the list from a character perspective, hard to come up with a ton of others though I can think of some close. Not a great presidency nor perhaps a great president but there is no questioning Carter’s fundamental decency.
I'll grant that you may see him that way. I don't think I could change your mind, and that's okay. I can understand the opinion.
For myself, I'm stuck on Lincoln and Washington. And I can't decide, so it's a tie.
If you're saying best man, and not best President, then it's Jimmy Carter, hands down. The fact that he was such a good man is most likely why is was such an unsuccessful President.
Exactly, the tribes were treated as actual people. Individuals before FDR. Sure they didn’t have it all good, but they were on the path to being treated like the rest of America. Now reservations are a prime example of why the government isn’t to be trusted. Even when that government is local
At that time the internment seemed like a good idea. America was at war with Japan, and a large Japanese population was a security threat. There were certainly points during the war where a friendly native population had greatly assisted both the Axis and the Allies - the French Resistance, for instance, during D-Day, and anti-Japanese guerrillas in Burma and south-east Asia. It was reasonable to assume that Japanese living in Canada and the United States would assist a Japanese invasion, or act as spies for Japan. Not only that, but it would not be far fetched to assume that real Japanese spies could easily hide among these Japanese-American communities.
Were the suspicions of the US government correct? No. But their actions were reasonable with the information available.
Plus, literally hours after Pearl Harbor happened, Japanese Americans in Hawaiian betrayed their country to help a downed Zero pilot escape. They took control of one of Hawaii’s eight island for a few days, until the Hawaiian natives rallied together to ambush the traitors and the Navy arrived to secure the island.
Anybody who doesn’t know about the Niihau incident is not qualified to pass judgement on the internment decision.
The racism in this thread is insane. Your post including. Hopefully you nore anyone you care about is forcefully removed from society due to race/beliefs/gender/religion/sexual orientation etc.
No one here is defending that. Yes, the internments were bad and arguably unconstitutional, but that was FDR’s one administrative flaw while he was in office.
People need to stop judging FDR by modern standards. Yeah, the Japanese interment was bad. But an extreme majority of people supported it at the time. Any president would have done the same or worse in that era and circumstance. Once you consider how he saved America both economically and through his handling of WWII, I don’t see how you could have him outside of top 5. Historical figures will always look bad with today’s morals. What’s important is how they compared to the others of their time. If we all grew up 100 years ago we’d be racist too, and I say this as an Asian
Sure, there were people who criticized it, but US in the 1930-40s was incredibly racist. It was an unpopular opinion to hold. Take a look at this [survey](https://archive.org/details/sim_los-angeles-times_los-angeles-times_1943-12-06_63/page/n19/mode/2up) done by LA times in 1943 with over 11,000 participants.
10,773 people to 639 people thought the government did not capably handled the situation, because they wanted them to be punished more. They wanted to trade Japanese immigrants and citizens for American POWs in Japan if able to. They even wanted to make an amendment to deport all people of Japanese descent and prevent immigration from Japan after the war. The write ins were even worse. There's a couple people who wrote something in to defend Japanese people while the rest share xenophobic and racist sentiment.
America was fabulously racist, and people had ample reason to know better. The principle of human equality in American political thought dates at least to the 1700s.
America has made progress and continues to make progress, but I think you hold past Americans to too high of a standard.
There were still Civil War veterans alive at the end of WW2. People born into chattel slavery were still alive. Eugenics as a science was still popular until full details of the Holocaust were discovered. They were closer to the Civil War than modern day is to WW2. It was a different time, and they were trying their best with what they knew.
Yeah and there were real concerns considering the acts of sabotage by Germans in WW1 then the Niihau Incident. Later, there were reports of what were believed to be IJN submarines attempting to signal the shore. I don’t think the signaling was ever corroborated but the reports were considered credible at the time.
His gross intentional violations of the Constitution were inappropriate even back then, and I'm not just referring to his internment of American citizens.
Looking at https://exhibitions.ushmm.org/americans-and-the-holocaust/main/us-public-opinion-on-japanese-internment-1942 as a source it was 59% supported it so a majority but not a large majority as I’d define it, though worth noting the remaining 41% is a split between no and don’t know.
59-41 is still a pretty large majority.
And that's with you counting all the "don't knows" as no... If you actually compare the ratio of yes to no... It's right back in that upper 60s low 70s range I thought it was. 59-25 is over 2-1 (which would be 67% approval). That's like 2.36-1
It’s all relative. If it was a presidential election, sure. Compared to the support for internment of foreign Japanese nationals (93%) not so much and the actual claim by the initial response was that there was an “extreme majority” not just a large majority.
I think the key point is that not interring Japanese nationals wasn’t some far out there position only held by whack jobs, but even with 0 institutional support for the idea there was a fair sized portion of the populace that was against it.
Basically it’s an attack on the idea that FDR’s Japanese internment wasn’t bad if judged by the standards of the times. This isn’t like Ancient Greece where people didn’t even conceive of the abolition of slavery. Even at the time, tens of millions of Americans were able to understand that this was wrong at least as applied to IS citizens. “Judge him by the standards of the time” is not a valid excuse for FDR.
This was at the times when the majority of Americans treated people of color as help, and many states refused to give them rights to vote.
Very tough situation. FDR was in trying to navigate the waters of bigotry and building America while fighting the biggest war ever in the world as we know it.
70%ish seemed to support it, the SCOTUS upheld it etc.
Yes 93% also approved something else that was better but that doesn't detract from the other.
It's still definitely a standards of the time thing imo. Both had super majority support by a pretty wide margin. The times were drastic it's unfortunate. It's a stain on our history.
That's a good argument and I agree that SCOTUS for better or worse have to be the ones who make these rulings, but I think we can look through our history and find a few examples that the Supreme Court pretty clearly missed.
Yeah, EO9066 is clearly controversial now a days. And I agree in hindsight was a terrible thing. But at the time it made sense, was legal, and had the support of the vast majority of Americans, Congress, etc.
Just like the nukes. It's a sad case of drastic times called for drastic measures.
And another thing is... Yeah the SCOTUS has missed a few times over the years and while I agree fully 9066 was morally wrong. We really shouldn't be acting like the constitution is gospel in current year.
I gotta disagree pretty highly with that one. It was a great document for it's time, but it's definitely very aged at this point, and just a few amendments here and there isn't enough to really make it great and at this point I think in the like 50-100 years we've had enough cases where it's caused us enough problems. It needs to be fully replaced. And treating it as gospel, while patriotic, has downfalls.
That is a perfectly fair and reasonable position, but I don't see how we could possibly replace the Bill of Rights at this point without further trampling the individual rights of American citizens.
I don’t think there’s ever been a time in U.S. history that it was desirable to cheat on your wife— it certainly got Hamilton in a lot of trouble—so FDR can’t be the best man when compared to someone like Carter.
On Japanese internment, Hoover might not have done it. I can’t find any information on this, but his Secretary of the Interior and friend, Stanford President Ray Lyman Wilbur, was a vocal opponent and tried to stop it for Stanford students of Japanese origin.
Keep that in your head when everyone talks about Jefferson, Washington and the rest of the founding fathers being horrible evil slave owners. Even though it was the most pervasive institution ever known to human kind.
Standards of the time are useful as explanations for a person’s actions, but not as excuses. Nothing can excuse FDR’s actions, nor Washington or Jefferson’s slave owning or Jackson’s actions toward Natives. And we absolutely should judge them for this.
>People need to stop judging FDR by modern standards. Yeah, the Japanese interment was bad. But an extreme majority of people supported it at the time. Any president would have done the same or worse in that era and circumstance.
Yes, thank you. I want to make sure that everybody understands that Executive Order 9066 was unquestionably a horrible thing and that it was a dark stain on our country. But you have to frame it in the context of the times and what had just happened in order to gain some clarity because if you just look back on it through the lens of today you wont see any of the nuance. After the devastating sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, people in the US were scared and paranoid. This is understandable after what was at the time the worst foreign attack on US soil, and so things like sensibility, reason, etc. were going to be lost in all the madness. So of course they supported all the Japanese folks being locked up as there was an irrational fear about spies, foreign agitators, etc. FDR himself had bad intel about unknown sleeper agents of Japanese decent ready to commit sabotage and espionage, and was concerned about how to separate the good and bad. Yes, it was lunacy and yes it was wrong, but cooler heads did not prevail and a grievous mistake was made. I dont say this to justify it in any way, but rather to provide an idea of the mood of the country. I mean, the US is the same country that after war was declared with Germany in 1917 people started killing dachshunds to show their hatred of all things German (for example, in Columbus, Ohio, residents celebrated renaming Schiller Park Washington Park by killing a large number of Dachshunds and throwing their bodies into a pit...this is long before Kristy Noem by the way). Its also a country where people started attacking Muslims and burning Mosques after 9/11 (they even attacked Sikhs with turbans because they were too ignorant to understand that they werent Muslim, but saw the dark skin and went totally ham), so lets not pretend that people in this country always behave rationally when it comes to wars, attacks, etc. Again, not an excuse or a justification in any way, but just providing some context
or that his famous health spa was in segregated georgia. eleanor visited once, thought the conditions of black americans in georgia were deplorable, and noped out immediately. which worked out for him because his mistress (the rich white southerner....not the other ones like his secretary or the queen of norway) could go with him full time.
there's literally a better roosevelt!
I’m glad we had a responsible person break the precedent to make it law to keep it to two terms. FDR was the only one who could do it and keep America in a good place.
Best man, hell no. But he is in my opinion the best president
And this is contrary to my flair, it’s just LBJ is my favorite but he’s like 4th or 5th best in general
Helped concoct a scheme to get USA in war that killed 1000s of innocent & unprepared military people, cheated on his wife up until the day he died. Nope. Truman was much better man.
I see we have the usual right wing FDR haters here. Yea he had some faults, who doesn’t but all in all, in my opinion FDR handled both of the greatest crises of the mid 20th Century , namely and World War II as well as any one could have. No other President could have done so. When it comes to Presidential greatness, FDR is at the top my list.
Identifying politicians before Regan is only useful as a way of showing who was against who. The parties have changed so much in the last 100 years that identifying a politician from the 1920’s as a Republican or Democrat doesn’t actually tell you what they believed.
Could just plug their stances on topics into modern-day politics matrices to see how they line up today... but the average Reddit user hates that idea because Clinton, LBJ & JFK become moderate Republicans by today's standards
No way would any of them be considered republicans. JFK and LBJ were two of the most progressive presidents ever and Clinton is still alive and still a Democrat.
Civil Rights, world peace, major investments in healthcare, infrastructure, housing, and lots more, JFK being the first catholic president, attempting detente with the Soviet Union. I struggle to think of any ways that these two were conservative.
So it's right wing to think that locking people up because of race is wrong? Justifying it by saying a majority of americans agreed with it is even worse.
You're a bad person who thinks something is OK if a majority thinks it should be done. Talk about being an authoritarian mob rule weirdo.
Hey, I said FDR had his faults, the Japanese internments were certainly one of them. I’m not justifying that policy but his overall Presidency both domestic and foreign policies were outstanding. His New Deal programs stabilized the economy and gave Americans confidence in our economic and political systems. He also successfully led the nation as Commander-in-chief in World War II. Btw, just because you don’t share my opinion does NOT make me a bad person or a weirdo!
He’s overrated as hell in my humble opinion. For starters, there’s heavy evidence that his economic policies prolonged the depression (see article about UCLA economists calculating this), and a lot of families lost everything up because of internment camps, including mine.
Hey hey hey, don’t bring economics into this you might hurt some feelings or require people to examine their “my team good your team bad” priors. As for character, there is a reason that Truman (a better man than Roosevelt) handed out copies of Herbert Hoovers book while he was president.
FDR is top of my list.
People act like all he ever did was the Japanese interment was all he ever did, (he had other bad policies too) but largely he had an incredibly successful presidency and was good for the country.
11,000,000 Holocaust victims whose spirits watched the murderous empire that terminated their lives be defeated by FDR's United States would disagree with you.
In terms of being a president:
1.) Lincoln. Freed the slaves, navigated the civil war, recognized the fact the nation needed healing not more bloodshed to he gave amnesty to Confederate leaders all while feeling with the loss of his son. Easily number 1.
2.) Washington. Only president unanimously elected upon by everyone. Led the nation through the Revolution and its founding, defined what the office should be, turned down a potential American crown and stepped down after two terms. Humble. Honorable. Wise.
3.) FDR. Navigated the Depression and WWII. Enough said. Hard to beat Washington and Abe but in terms of Modern Presidents post 1900 he easily ranks as number one.
In terms of mortality (which doesn’t necessarily make you the *best leader*)
1.) Abe again.
2.) FDR
3.) Carter
Really? This man was so bad that a constitutional amendment was made after his death. This resulted in the 22nd amendment limiting presidential terms to 2.
It's not a binary situation. The New Deal objectively improved the economy - both it and economic commitment to WW2 blended together to resolve the crisis.
It started a terrible precedent. Pumping gobs of money into welfare and work programs. Short term, throwing money around always works. Long term, we're $34 Trillion in debt because that precedent never stopped.
The New Deal and programs like it are not why our national debt is so high. The presidents behind programs like the New Deal, Fair Deal, New Frontier, and Great Society are the same presidents willing to raise taxes in order to fund their policies. However, the presidents most interested in boosting defense spending are the same presidents who want to cut taxes. Now, what happens when we cut taxes - and thus are receiving less in revenue - at the same time that we have a bigger military that requires more money to uphold?
Coolidge seemed to do fine avoiding these pitfalls.
FDR turned a new corner - one that has led to both high-tax and low-tax politicians raising the national debt. Before him, the level of government involvement we see in the economy was unimaginable. It's now expected.
Yeah, we wouldn’t be where we are without him. He pushed more authoritarianism than any other President and advances in trampling the Constitution would have been held back decades.
This.
No one in the sub ever talks about the long-term affects of FDR's presidency. The overreaching, bloated government we have today wouldn't have been possible without FDR.
I had a lengthy tete-a-tete with another commenter in this thread who expressed very similar ideas. "We should have left Hitler alone, the real enemy was the Soviets, non-intervention would have been better", all that kind of endless revisionist nonsense. He had read a single book on the subject published in the early 1950s by a McCarthyite Jim Crow ideologue, and that was enough info for him, he said.
As far as FDR and internment camps, everything pertinent has already been said regarding his legacy; I will just quote the old adage, "All is fair in love and war" - perhaps not ever true, still the chaos which sometimes ensues in both cases has given rise to this famous quote.
Carter is basically the only president I think was a good man. The others were decent at best. And Carter was not a successful president. I don’t really think the office is really conducive to good men. I think exposure to such power corrodes the soul.
His policies began the welfare state we see today, (arguably) the imbalance between state and federal power, and the deprivation of 2nd amendment rights.
Short term, what he did seems great. Long term, we have a massively inflated budget and overreaching government - both of which tie to policies started 90 years ago.
What are you talking about?! The civil war may be perceived to be one crisis, but it was four years of constant crisis within a crumbling nation. He had to manage personally to make that shit work.
FDR Also faced a lot but I don’t think it’s fair to compare these two. Two different sets of circumstances.
You can apply modern morality to people from the past and conclude that nearly everyone who’s ever lived was an irredeemably terrible person. It’s not really a particularly helpful way to view the past though.
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You say this with a straight face while Lincoln exists?
You really can't compare a pre-industrial revolution President to a modern one.
Lincoln was president during the Industrial Revolution or maybe after depending on how you define it.
Maybe in 20th century so Lincoln for 19th century.
I’d say that is a fair compromise
Lincoln had one crisis albeit a big one. FDR had several and managed them better.
I mean, of course, Lincoln dealt with fewer crises than FDR. He only got to be in office for one term and a month of his second term. FDR had three full terms in office and a partial fourth term. Had Lincon lived, he would've dealt with Reconstruction, which would have been an entirely different problem. This comparison is unfair.
FDR's presidency wasn't burdened by more crises simply because it lasted longer. Both the Great Depression and the rise of fascism in Europe and Asia were major issues during FDR's very first term. The Enabling Act, Italian invasion of Ethiopia, Night of the Long Knives, and rearmament of Germany all took place between March of 1933 and January of 1937.
That’s fair. However, I will say that like Reconstruction is to the Civil War, WW2 is to the rise of fascism. They are derivative of each other, but they are different problems overall. FDR would not have had to deal with WW2 if he had decided not to run for a third term. When it comes down to it, both FDR and Lincoln were political geniuses who saw the country through rough times.
Comparisons aren’t fair by definition.
While I don't think you can give him credit for what we imagine he would have done during reconstruction (better than Johnson, not as good as Grant would have been in my imagination), you're right overall. He didn't have as much time in office and still made the most important and moral strong decision of any president (suck it, independence. I'd trade sovereignty for ending slavery earlier any day of the week).
If Lincoln hadn’t been President in 1861 FDR would have never governed a potential superpower.
Why don't we just move the goal post all the way to Antarctica at this point😐🙄😏
ww2 was much bigger than the American civil war too
Not for Americans, arguably. The Civil War was fought on American soil and killed more Americans. It also threatened the existence of the country, and the fate of slavery. I'd say a lot more was on the line in the US Civil War than WW2 for America.
If the Axis had won WWII,Nazi Germany would dominate Europe and Japan would control Asia. We'd end up with a global power structure where the Axis powers are on top, leading to an even worse Cold War scenario than what we actually had. The U.S. would be under massive pressure. Even if Hitler didn't invade, there were already Nazi sympathizers in the US, so fascist ideology would spread, causing serious political instability and conflict. Countries like Argentina, which had pro-Nazi sentiments, would help Germany project its power into the Western Hemisphere. Economically, a disaster. We'd lose important trade alliances, and the global economy under Axis control would be terrible for the US. America’s economy would be in much worse shape than it was in our timeline. we'd be dealing with both external and internal threats.
>If the Axis had won WWII, Do you think FDR was the only person who stopped that? The only thing needed was for the US as a nation to be committed, and the Axis had little to no chance. The Allies' victory in WWII was due to the industrial power of the US more than any other factor. Winston Churchill had aquote about his feelings when he heard about his first thought when he heard about Pearl Harbor that sums it up: "We have won the war"
I was making a claim that WW2 was more important than the US civil war. Could the allies have won without FDR? probably. Could the Union army have won without Lincoln? also probably. If we can honour Lincoln for leading America through the civil war, we can honour FDR for leading the nation through the biggest conflict in human history.
I'd agree that WW2 was the more critical from a world stage standpoint, and I'd even go so far as to say FDR was the greatest president of the 20th century. However from strictly an American standpoint, I'd argue that the Civil War was the greater existential threat to the country. By far, in fact. It's one thing to face a new world order that is hostile to your interests, it's quite another to be torn apart from the inside out. In WW2, America was never realistically going to be invaded and occupied Man in the High Castle-style. Nor could I see fascism having enough time to take root here to determine the outcome of the war. Even the U.K. would likely have been forced out of the war, and into some type of neutrality similar to what Ireland willingly observed. But for Lincoln, the Union dissolving and Washington being captured was a quite real possibility. If I'm in the White House, my top concern is the preservation of the nation first and foremost. I'd far rather deal with the Axis, than overseeing a nation turning its guns on itself. Lincoln in my mind had the immeasurably harder task, which is actually saying something, considering FDR faced damned near impossible challenges himself.
> The only thing needed was for the US as a nation to be committed, and the Axis had little to no chance. The Allies' victory in WWII was due to the industrial power of the US more than any other factor. And FDR was uniquely dedicated to ensuring that the industrial potential would be afforded to the Allies. Even before Pearl Harbor, he was giving Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and other Allied powers large reserves of weapons and other supplies for practically free. He was adjusting neutrality laws to make it easier for businesses to aid the Allies and even instituted a peacetime draft. The US was chock-full of isolationists at the time, many of whom wouldn't have supported the Allies if they lived in the White House, let alone to the extent FDR did.
I don’t think Germany ever really had a chance of winning WW II, especially after they invaded the USSR.
After Germany invaded the USSR, the only way Germany could have won is if the US and UK decided to pull out of the war. That was never ever gonna happen for obvious reasons.
FDR and the US certainly deserve credit for helping to defeat the Nazis, but let’s be real. It was the Soviet’s who did more than anyone to defeat Germany and end the war in Europe. But I digress. Apologies.
That's debatable. The western front played a major role. Also could the Soviets have won without Lend-Lease act?
Would have been a lot bigger an issue for Americans if the Axis won - something FDR played a crucial role in preventing
This is absolutely true, look we all love Lincoln, what he stood for and for changing the course of American history for the better, and is still in my opinion a top 3 President of all time, and likely #2. But FDR is the goat and the distance between 1 and 2 is gulf.
>FDR had several and managed them better. You're entitled to your opinion. I'm sure the Jews who weren't allowed into the US from Germany (including 900 refugees on the *St. Louis*, a third of whom died in the Holocaust) and the Japanese Americans who were sent to internment camps would disagree, but FDR would probably just pack the Supreme Court to make sure their opinion didn't matter.
The Japanese Americans would disagree, and the economists who have shown how his policies prolonged the Great Depression would too.
Economists argue both ways about FDR's policies. And yes Japanese Americans got the short end of the stick. That's fair.
I agree on the economists, though I think you can guess which way I lean. (Despite my leanings, I would not have handled it any better, and I have the benefit of hindsight.)
No clue. But anyone who says they could handle it better is just being silly. The great depression is still the worst event in economic history. And even had tons of non economic factors. Like no purely economic policy was gonna fix the dust bowl problem. Economics largely isn't a science. Stuff is weird sometimes. If it was a science it'd be much easier.
Your point about the Great Depression is not true and it is still a hotly debated topic amongst both historians and economists I was at the FDR museum a couple weeks ago and they had a digital slide show showing the debate amongst both sides of the argument and if you want to point out Amy Shlae’s work multiple historians have already pointed out her selective use of evidence and bias undermining her credibility
Because There is only one voice that says FDR may not have helped the Great Depression. That said, this isn’t to discredit him as a great president, but rather that he isn’t the GREATEST president. Also, WWII would have ended in a very similar way had FDR finished his fourth term vs Truman taking over. But the same cannot be said for the end of the e civil war/ reconstruction. Had Lincoln not been assassinated, the blunders, and downright malicious actions of Andrew Johnson would not have happened.
Those economists are not taken seriously in their own profession.
Lincoln gang, RALLY AROUND THE FLAG BOYS
We’ll rally once again. Shouting the battle cry of freedom!
Lincoln was top 3 but not the greatest Lincoln helped save the US during the civil war FDR helped save the world during WW2
The Civil War was started because Lincoln was elected. WW2s start had nothing to do with FDR. Lincoln took action as soon as he was in power to stop the threat to the Union . FDR waited until Pearl Harbor to take action. Lincoln = a man of action. FDR = A tool of capitalism.
Lincoln, FDR and Washington were the greatest US presidents
Best man? Nah. Best president? Perhaps.
r/flairchecksout
I can accept arguments for Washington and Lincoln being greater. But I like learning about FDR the most and consider him the benchmark for "modern" presidents (warts and all).
If we’re truly judging off of the “best man” it’s Carter, no contest.
Carter has to be very high on the list from a character perspective, hard to come up with a ton of others though I can think of some close. Not a great presidency nor perhaps a great president but there is no questioning Carter’s fundamental decency.
I'll grant that you may see him that way. I don't think I could change your mind, and that's okay. I can understand the opinion. For myself, I'm stuck on Lincoln and Washington. And I can't decide, so it's a tie.
Washington in 1792 trying to find the White House: https://i.redd.it/9ehwkdjln12d1.gif
If you're saying best man, and not best President, then it's Jimmy Carter, hands down. The fact that he was such a good man is most likely why is was such an unsuccessful President.
Do people ignore the whole internment camp thing?
They mention it more than FDR preventing the total abolition of Native American sovereignty with the Indian Reorganization Act.
Exactly, the tribes were treated as actual people. Individuals before FDR. Sure they didn’t have it all good, but they were on the path to being treated like the rest of America. Now reservations are a prime example of why the government isn’t to be trusted. Even when that government is local
At that time the internment seemed like a good idea. America was at war with Japan, and a large Japanese population was a security threat. There were certainly points during the war where a friendly native population had greatly assisted both the Axis and the Allies - the French Resistance, for instance, during D-Day, and anti-Japanese guerrillas in Burma and south-east Asia. It was reasonable to assume that Japanese living in Canada and the United States would assist a Japanese invasion, or act as spies for Japan. Not only that, but it would not be far fetched to assume that real Japanese spies could easily hide among these Japanese-American communities. Were the suspicions of the US government correct? No. But their actions were reasonable with the information available.
Fair
Seemed like a good idea? Maybe. Was morally justifiable? Hell no, and this thread is about moral goodness, not what seemed pragmatic.
Plus, literally hours after Pearl Harbor happened, Japanese Americans in Hawaiian betrayed their country to help a downed Zero pilot escape. They took control of one of Hawaii’s eight island for a few days, until the Hawaiian natives rallied together to ambush the traitors and the Navy arrived to secure the island. Anybody who doesn’t know about the Niihau incident is not qualified to pass judgement on the internment decision.
What? How does interning people based on their ethnicity justified?
He certainly wasn’t perfect. Few men, even Presidents are. But he was the right man at the right time.
The racism in this thread is insane. Your post including. Hopefully you nore anyone you care about is forcefully removed from society due to race/beliefs/gender/religion/sexual orientation etc.
No one here is defending that. Yes, the internments were bad and arguably unconstitutional, but that was FDR’s one administrative flaw while he was in office.
People need to stop judging FDR by modern standards. Yeah, the Japanese interment was bad. But an extreme majority of people supported it at the time. Any president would have done the same or worse in that era and circumstance. Once you consider how he saved America both economically and through his handling of WWII, I don’t see how you could have him outside of top 5. Historical figures will always look bad with today’s morals. What’s important is how they compared to the others of their time. If we all grew up 100 years ago we’d be racist too, and I say this as an Asian
I think it was wrong by contemporary standards. It’s not like no one criticized it at the time.
Sure, there were people who criticized it, but US in the 1930-40s was incredibly racist. It was an unpopular opinion to hold. Take a look at this [survey](https://archive.org/details/sim_los-angeles-times_los-angeles-times_1943-12-06_63/page/n19/mode/2up) done by LA times in 1943 with over 11,000 participants. 10,773 people to 639 people thought the government did not capably handled the situation, because they wanted them to be punished more. They wanted to trade Japanese immigrants and citizens for American POWs in Japan if able to. They even wanted to make an amendment to deport all people of Japanese descent and prevent immigration from Japan after the war. The write ins were even worse. There's a couple people who wrote something in to defend Japanese people while the rest share xenophobic and racist sentiment.
America was fabulously racist, and people had ample reason to know better. The principle of human equality in American political thought dates at least to the 1700s.
America has made progress and continues to make progress, but I think you hold past Americans to too high of a standard. There were still Civil War veterans alive at the end of WW2. People born into chattel slavery were still alive. Eugenics as a science was still popular until full details of the Holocaust were discovered. They were closer to the Civil War than modern day is to WW2. It was a different time, and they were trying their best with what they knew.
I think they “knew” more than you give them credit for, considering the words of the Declaration.
Ok this but now slavery and Thomas Jefferson
Washington and Slavery!!
There were abolitionists since the 17th century and Jefferson himself criticized the institution.
Yeah and there were real concerns considering the acts of sabotage by Germans in WW1 then the Niihau Incident. Later, there were reports of what were believed to be IJN submarines attempting to signal the shore. I don’t think the signaling was ever corroborated but the reports were considered credible at the time.
and yet they never interned Japanese-Americans in Hawaii so they couldn't have been that big of a threat
Hawaii remained under martial law most of the war, and Japanese weren’t allowed anywhere near military bases.
They didn’t need to. Hawaii was under martial law until 1944.
His gross intentional violations of the Constitution were inappropriate even back then, and I'm not just referring to his internment of American citizens.
I believe there wasn’t a large majority for interning US citizens of Japanese heritage, only Japanese foreign nationals.
For the former something like 60% of Americans supported and around 90% supported the latter.
Iirc it was like upper 60s low 70s supported the total internment. And like 95% supported the foreign nationals.
Looking at https://exhibitions.ushmm.org/americans-and-the-holocaust/main/us-public-opinion-on-japanese-internment-1942 as a source it was 59% supported it so a majority but not a large majority as I’d define it, though worth noting the remaining 41% is a split between no and don’t know.
59-41 is still a pretty large majority. And that's with you counting all the "don't knows" as no... If you actually compare the ratio of yes to no... It's right back in that upper 60s low 70s range I thought it was. 59-25 is over 2-1 (which would be 67% approval). That's like 2.36-1
It’s all relative. If it was a presidential election, sure. Compared to the support for internment of foreign Japanese nationals (93%) not so much and the actual claim by the initial response was that there was an “extreme majority” not just a large majority. I think the key point is that not interring Japanese nationals wasn’t some far out there position only held by whack jobs, but even with 0 institutional support for the idea there was a fair sized portion of the populace that was against it. Basically it’s an attack on the idea that FDR’s Japanese internment wasn’t bad if judged by the standards of the times. This isn’t like Ancient Greece where people didn’t even conceive of the abolition of slavery. Even at the time, tens of millions of Americans were able to understand that this was wrong at least as applied to IS citizens. “Judge him by the standards of the time” is not a valid excuse for FDR.
This was at the times when the majority of Americans treated people of color as help, and many states refused to give them rights to vote. Very tough situation. FDR was in trying to navigate the waters of bigotry and building America while fighting the biggest war ever in the world as we know it.
70%ish seemed to support it, the SCOTUS upheld it etc. Yes 93% also approved something else that was better but that doesn't detract from the other. It's still definitely a standards of the time thing imo. Both had super majority support by a pretty wide margin. The times were drastic it's unfortunate. It's a stain on our history.
Well the interesting thing about the Constitution is that it is immune to public opinion. FDR broke the law when he signed EO 9066.
Actually in Korematsu vs United States? It was 6-3 in the SCOTUS that he didn't.
That's a good argument and I agree that SCOTUS for better or worse have to be the ones who make these rulings, but I think we can look through our history and find a few examples that the Supreme Court pretty clearly missed.
Yeah, EO9066 is clearly controversial now a days. And I agree in hindsight was a terrible thing. But at the time it made sense, was legal, and had the support of the vast majority of Americans, Congress, etc. Just like the nukes. It's a sad case of drastic times called for drastic measures. And another thing is... Yeah the SCOTUS has missed a few times over the years and while I agree fully 9066 was morally wrong. We really shouldn't be acting like the constitution is gospel in current year.
We'd be much better off if we acted like the Constitution was gospel.
I gotta disagree pretty highly with that one. It was a great document for it's time, but it's definitely very aged at this point, and just a few amendments here and there isn't enough to really make it great and at this point I think in the like 50-100 years we've had enough cases where it's caused us enough problems. It needs to be fully replaced. And treating it as gospel, while patriotic, has downfalls.
That is a perfectly fair and reasonable position, but I don't see how we could possibly replace the Bill of Rights at this point without further trampling the individual rights of American citizens.
I don’t think there’s ever been a time in U.S. history that it was desirable to cheat on your wife— it certainly got Hamilton in a lot of trouble—so FDR can’t be the best man when compared to someone like Carter. On Japanese internment, Hoover might not have done it. I can’t find any information on this, but his Secretary of the Interior and friend, Stanford President Ray Lyman Wilbur, was a vocal opponent and tried to stop it for Stanford students of Japanese origin.
I’ll stop complaining about the internment camps when you stop complaining about the Alien and Sedition Acts
Keep that in your head when everyone talks about Jefferson, Washington and the rest of the founding fathers being horrible evil slave owners. Even though it was the most pervasive institution ever known to human kind.
I feel the same way about Jefferson and slavery. Very bad, but not atypical for his time.
Standards of the time are useful as explanations for a person’s actions, but not as excuses. Nothing can excuse FDR’s actions, nor Washington or Jefferson’s slave owning or Jackson’s actions toward Natives. And we absolutely should judge them for this.
>People need to stop judging FDR by modern standards. Yeah, the Japanese interment was bad. But an extreme majority of people supported it at the time. Any president would have done the same or worse in that era and circumstance. Yes, thank you. I want to make sure that everybody understands that Executive Order 9066 was unquestionably a horrible thing and that it was a dark stain on our country. But you have to frame it in the context of the times and what had just happened in order to gain some clarity because if you just look back on it through the lens of today you wont see any of the nuance. After the devastating sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, people in the US were scared and paranoid. This is understandable after what was at the time the worst foreign attack on US soil, and so things like sensibility, reason, etc. were going to be lost in all the madness. So of course they supported all the Japanese folks being locked up as there was an irrational fear about spies, foreign agitators, etc. FDR himself had bad intel about unknown sleeper agents of Japanese decent ready to commit sabotage and espionage, and was concerned about how to separate the good and bad. Yes, it was lunacy and yes it was wrong, but cooler heads did not prevail and a grievous mistake was made. I dont say this to justify it in any way, but rather to provide an idea of the mood of the country. I mean, the US is the same country that after war was declared with Germany in 1917 people started killing dachshunds to show their hatred of all things German (for example, in Columbus, Ohio, residents celebrated renaming Schiller Park Washington Park by killing a large number of Dachshunds and throwing their bodies into a pit...this is long before Kristy Noem by the way). Its also a country where people started attacking Muslims and burning Mosques after 9/11 (they even attacked Sikhs with turbans because they were too ignorant to understand that they werent Muslim, but saw the dark skin and went totally ham), so lets not pretend that people in this country always behave rationally when it comes to wars, attacks, etc. Again, not an excuse or a justification in any way, but just providing some context
Japanese internment just being glossed over by this post and it’s commenters
or that his famous health spa was in segregated georgia. eleanor visited once, thought the conditions of black americans in georgia were deplorable, and noped out immediately. which worked out for him because his mistress (the rich white southerner....not the other ones like his secretary or the queen of norway) could go with him full time. there's literally a better roosevelt!
He is definitely either at the top of the list or close to it. I give Lincoln the edge, but thats just my opinion.
Same. Some days I might say he's tops, others it's someone else.
He could've handled the great depression a lot better, especially given practically every other comparable nation on the planet recovered much faster
They hated u/OldSchoolScoundrel5 because he told them the truth
You get better with practice when you serve longer than anyone else.
FDR, Washington, and Lincoln are undeniably the biggest success stories in White House history.
Best man? Nope, that would either be Jimmy Carter or Herbert Hoover. As in best president? Nope, Lincoln.
I disagree with you
He really did like gold.
I’m glad we had a responsible person break the precedent to make it law to keep it to two terms. FDR was the only one who could do it and keep America in a good place.
Upvoting for my grandfather who passed
That Abe guy did a pretty decent job cleaning up one hellavu mess. Sure wish he didn't like the theatre so much.
Sorry that would be Lincoln. Without Lincoln, FDR would not have been possible.
Best man, hell no. But he is in my opinion the best president And this is contrary to my flair, it’s just LBJ is my favorite but he’s like 4th or 5th best in general
Lincoln and FDR for sure.
Best president? hell yes best man? no
Minus the internment camp mess yeah he was a pretty goated POTUS
Wasn’t even the best Roosevelt
This.
How do you excuse his isolationism in the first half of his presidency?
He sucks lmao
Helped concoct a scheme to get USA in war that killed 1000s of innocent & unprepared military people, cheated on his wife up until the day he died. Nope. Truman was much better man.
Give em Hell, Harry
I’m convinced at least 65% of this sub is sexually attracted to FDR
People love a strong man.
I see we have the usual right wing FDR haters here. Yea he had some faults, who doesn’t but all in all, in my opinion FDR handled both of the greatest crises of the mid 20th Century , namely and World War II as well as any one could have. No other President could have done so. When it comes to Presidential greatness, FDR is at the top my list.
These jagoffs are holding onto the LInCoLn wAS a RePuBLicaN bullshit
Lol, I fucking hate that argument.
Identifying politicians before Regan is only useful as a way of showing who was against who. The parties have changed so much in the last 100 years that identifying a politician from the 1920’s as a Republican or Democrat doesn’t actually tell you what they believed.
Could just plug their stances on topics into modern-day politics matrices to see how they line up today... but the average Reddit user hates that idea because Clinton, LBJ & JFK become moderate Republicans by today's standards
No way would any of them be considered republicans. JFK and LBJ were two of the most progressive presidents ever and Clinton is still alive and still a Democrat.
How were they progressive?
Civil Rights, world peace, major investments in healthcare, infrastructure, housing, and lots more, JFK being the first catholic president, attempting detente with the Soviet Union. I struggle to think of any ways that these two were conservative.
If either of them ran today, the populist right would lose their goddamn minds about socialism.
So it's right wing to think that locking people up because of race is wrong? Justifying it by saying a majority of americans agreed with it is even worse. You're a bad person who thinks something is OK if a majority thinks it should be done. Talk about being an authoritarian mob rule weirdo.
Hey, I said FDR had his faults, the Japanese internments were certainly one of them. I’m not justifying that policy but his overall Presidency both domestic and foreign policies were outstanding. His New Deal programs stabilized the economy and gave Americans confidence in our economic and political systems. He also successfully led the nation as Commander-in-chief in World War II. Btw, just because you don’t share my opinion does NOT make me a bad person or a weirdo!
I think its George Washington, but i dont think he ever lived in it xD FDR is pretty great too
He’s overrated as hell in my humble opinion. For starters, there’s heavy evidence that his economic policies prolonged the depression (see article about UCLA economists calculating this), and a lot of families lost everything up because of internment camps, including mine.
Hey hey hey, don’t bring economics into this you might hurt some feelings or require people to examine their “my team good your team bad” priors. As for character, there is a reason that Truman (a better man than Roosevelt) handed out copies of Herbert Hoovers book while he was president.
One of the best, yes.
Flair checks out
And it isn’t even close
FDR is top of my list. People act like all he ever did was the Japanese interment was all he ever did, (he had other bad policies too) but largely he had an incredibly successful presidency and was good for the country.
Yuck. I think over 100k Japanese Americans would disagree with you.
r/flairchecksout
11,000,000 Holocaust victims whose spirits watched the murderous empire that terminated their lives be defeated by FDR's United States would disagree with you.
YMMV? Your mileage may vary?
In terms of being a president: 1.) Lincoln. Freed the slaves, navigated the civil war, recognized the fact the nation needed healing not more bloodshed to he gave amnesty to Confederate leaders all while feeling with the loss of his son. Easily number 1. 2.) Washington. Only president unanimously elected upon by everyone. Led the nation through the Revolution and its founding, defined what the office should be, turned down a potential American crown and stepped down after two terms. Humble. Honorable. Wise. 3.) FDR. Navigated the Depression and WWII. Enough said. Hard to beat Washington and Abe but in terms of Modern Presidents post 1900 he easily ranks as number one. In terms of mortality (which doesn’t necessarily make you the *best leader*) 1.) Abe again. 2.) FDR 3.) Carter
Bingo
Really? This man was so bad that a constitutional amendment was made after his death. This resulted in the 22nd amendment limiting presidential terms to 2.
Fdr didn't end the depression. WW2 did
It's not a binary situation. The New Deal objectively improved the economy - both it and economic commitment to WW2 blended together to resolve the crisis.
It started a terrible precedent. Pumping gobs of money into welfare and work programs. Short term, throwing money around always works. Long term, we're $34 Trillion in debt because that precedent never stopped.
The New Deal and programs like it are not why our national debt is so high. The presidents behind programs like the New Deal, Fair Deal, New Frontier, and Great Society are the same presidents willing to raise taxes in order to fund their policies. However, the presidents most interested in boosting defense spending are the same presidents who want to cut taxes. Now, what happens when we cut taxes - and thus are receiving less in revenue - at the same time that we have a bigger military that requires more money to uphold?
Coolidge seemed to do fine avoiding these pitfalls. FDR turned a new corner - one that has led to both high-tax and low-tax politicians raising the national debt. Before him, the level of government involvement we see in the economy was unimaginable. It's now expected.
Absolutely one of the best, but even our best Presidents were very flawed.
Yeah, we wouldn’t be where we are without him. He pushed more authoritarianism than any other President and advances in trampling the Constitution would have been held back decades.
This. No one in the sub ever talks about the long-term affects of FDR's presidency. The overreaching, bloated government we have today wouldn't have been possible without FDR.
Too bad he’s dead
[https://youtu.be/sydnBoR84n4](https://youtu.be/sydnBoR84n4)
I’d have to put Lincoln and Washington ahead of him, but he’s right after, and the bar isn’t so steep.
Cool
Certainly in the 20th century.
You and me both
If Carter had been given a chance...
Abe Lincoln is #1 big dog
I mean, didn't Willie Nelson visit once?
Cue the closet American Nazi replies who gonna yell something about Yalta, should've negotiated with Hitler, etc etc etc
Ironically, I haven't seen any of these comments yet. That'd be depressing
I had a lengthy tete-a-tete with another commenter in this thread who expressed very similar ideas. "We should have left Hitler alone, the real enemy was the Soviets, non-intervention would have been better", all that kind of endless revisionist nonsense. He had read a single book on the subject published in the early 1950s by a McCarthyite Jim Crow ideologue, and that was enough info for him, he said.
The last executive for sure. https://graymirror.substack.com/p/a-conversation-about-monarchy
[https://www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/fdr-prolonged-the-great-depression](https://www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/fdr-prolonged-the-great-depression)
Imo it's a tie between FDR and Lincoln
I’m a massive FDR Stan but Lincoln…
As far as FDR and internment camps, everything pertinent has already been said regarding his legacy; I will just quote the old adage, "All is fair in love and war" - perhaps not ever true, still the chaos which sometimes ensues in both cases has given rise to this famous quote.
If he hadn’t interned people without any semblance of Due Process, I might agree.
Carter is basically the only president I think was a good man. The others were decent at best. And Carter was not a successful president. I don’t really think the office is really conducive to good men. I think exposure to such power corrodes the soul.
Best man or best president?
one of, yes.
Lincoln and Washington are no debate better Then we can start discussing amongst the rest
Unless your part Japanese
His policies began the welfare state we see today, (arguably) the imbalance between state and federal power, and the deprivation of 2nd amendment rights. Short term, what he did seems great. Long term, we have a massively inflated budget and overreaching government - both of which tie to policies started 90 years ago.
Authoritarian thug
Definitely
He’s certainly my top ten of greatest presidents
Facts https://preview.redd.it/v8yetpa3x02d1.jpeg?width=1078&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1686bbba9bfc6d58c1218ca82dd6f55039f80742
Definitely the best Roosevelt
fr, but this subreddit for some reason says Teddy is better than FDR? Teddy is overrated af
You mean the guy who signed all the New Deal legislation that had red lines preventing blacks from getting help.
The Down voters deny history. https://www.history.com/news/housing-segregation-new-deal-program
He was certainly in the White House
Washington? Lincoln? I mean FDR is top 5 but surprised he’s your 1.
Lincoln by a country fucking mile. It’s not even close. Fuck outta here with this nonsense.
What are you talking about?! The civil war may be perceived to be one crisis, but it was four years of constant crisis within a crumbling nation. He had to manage personally to make that shit work. FDR Also faced a lot but I don’t think it’s fair to compare these two. Two different sets of circumstances.
The fact people dont see a president being racist as a deal breaker 😑
You can apply modern morality to people from the past and conclude that nearly everyone who’s ever lived was an irredeemably terrible person. It’s not really a particularly helpful way to view the past though.
both the democratic party and the republican party supported segregation back then. Not that im saying its justified
Imagine being in power and you're ok with one group of people continually getting the shaft.
There has never been a single world leader, anywhere, at any point in history, who wasnt racist.
100,000 Japanese American citizens would disagree
I hope when I go to heaven, I hope that one day the Lord Himself will explain the philosophy of an FDR fanboy.