QOTD

[randy_byers]

'The fact that people are feeling a lack of leadership in him at present and are worried is perfectly natural. These things go in cycles. ... He says to tell you that Congress is accomplishing a great deal in spite of the fact that there is very little publicity on what they have done. ... The relief bill and [social] security bill are bound to go slowly because they are a new type of legislation. If he tried to force them down the committee's throat and did not give them time to argue them out, he would have an even more difficult congress to work with. ...

'Please say to everyone who tells you the President is not giving leadership that he is seeing the men constantly, and that he is working with them, but this is a democracy after all, and if he once started insisting on having his own way immediately, we should shortly find ourselves with a dictatorship and I would hardly think the country would like that any better than they do the delay.

'The ups and downs in peoples’ feelings, particularly on the liberal side, are an old, old story. The liberals always get discouraged when they do not see the measures they are interested in go through immediately. Considering the time we have had to work in the past for almost every slight improvement, I should think they might get over with it, but they never do.'

-- Eleanor Roosevelt to Molly Dawson of the Democratic National Committee in 1935

(Via puakev on Daily Kos, although I hunted down more of the quote via Google.)

Comments

[wrdnrd]

Oh wow. That's good.

[spacecrab.livejournal.com]

I'm not buying it. Roosevelt's Congress passed a number of measures that helped us out of the depression and addressed the wellbeing of the general population of the country -- with not inconsiderable pressure applied from the Executive.

Obama's Executive is willing to compromise for far worse results from his Congress than FDR did.

See here, here, and here.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

The point is actually that whatever Roosevelt's accomplishments, the left was angry with him at the time. This quote is Eleanor Roosevelt defending FDR from his leftist critics in 1935.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

However, there's a logical fallacy in the implied equation. Just because the left can be annoyed with someone who's accomplishing something, doesn't mean that anyone the left is annoyed with is accomplishing anything.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

That's certainly true. Whether anything is actually being accomplished has to be judged on its own merits.

[mcjulie.livejournal.com]

Heh.

I think there's another significance to this -- it's knowing that things often look very different when you're right in the middle of them than they will look 70 years down the road.

The past will always have this advantage: we know how it turned out.

This is something I've confronted ever since the end of the cold war. I still think Reagan was wrong on how to handle the economy, I thought even then it was an economy that looked good at the time but was being undermined in its long-term fundamentals. I still think Reagan sent us backwards on environmental issues, especially oil independence. And I think his cynical pandering to cultural conservatives and the nascent "moral majority" was abhorrent.

But -- I used to commonly have nightmares about surviving nuclear war as a teenager. And yet history may have proven him right about how to handle the USSR.

May. It's possible he just got lucky.

I remember that liberals often thought Clinton was a disaster. But he seems like a better president now than he seemed at the time.

I'm not claiming the left needs to stop the pressure on Obama -- not one bit. You know the right won't let up, after all. And one reason I am a liberal is that we're not like the right, we don't just march in lockstep behind Fearless Leader.

But I frequently wish the criticism from the left had a different... tone? Approach? Something? I wish it didn't seem so negative and fatalistic. I wish it were... friendlier? Maybe?

I mean, I'm pretty sure that if I were president right now, I would be letting me down all the time. It doesn't mean I should stop trying to get me to do better. But just flogging myself over how much I suck isn't the answer either.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

But just flogging myself over how much I suck isn't the answer either.

There's a kernel of a political comedy self-flagellation routine in this. Ah, how I remember marching in San Francisco against the first Gulf War, listening to the tired old chants echoing in the streets, and chanting with Denys, "One, two, three, four, we have heard this all before. Five, six, seven, eight, leftists need to masturbate." I like criticism with a self-deprecating sense of humor, although I know it's easier said than done.

[terryminer.livejournal.com]

bunch o' backstabbers! can't trust them, they'll sell you out for a piece of the factional pie, and they always have-wish they could stick together like the right, but in the end, they're looking for their piece of the pie, and unlike the right, think they deserve it!
obama's done a great job. he's true to who he is, and like he said repeatedly during the campaign, he is not an idealogue, he is not in the pocket of the left. A republican house might be his salvation, as leadership will split the republicans just as it has the democrats.
i love how history repeats itself, don't you?

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I wonder if a Republican House wouldn't set up the 2012 elections perfectly for the Democrats. Hope the Ds can hang on to the Senate, however. I'm actually kind of curious how Obama would/will handle a Republican House. I think it might be entertaining.