Opus 2020-129: Franklin Delano Pelosi

As the lockdown continues and I am forced to do some serious reading I came to a book that has been on my shelf for 40 years.  I started it once but did not get far.  It is called The Roosevelt Myth and deals with the way in which FDR has been mythologized by history.  A similar thesis was put forth by Amity Shlaes in The Forgotten Man.  They have different approaches and lift out different examples but tell much the same tale. 

I keep coming across things that happened as Roosevelt came to power and I see that some things have not changed.  You may remember Nancy Pelosi telling congress they needed to pass the bill to find out what is in the bill.  We laughed and felt uncomfortable.  She could have quoted FDR as her precedent.  When elected Roosevelt had to face the bank crisis and immediately closed the banks.  Then they had to figure out how to open the banks with no money.  The answer they came up with is one we are very familiar with today:  Have the Federal Reserve print money.  We don’t think this is weird today.  Immoral and bad policy maybe, but not weird.  It was never heard of in those days.  So the team through something together and sent it to congress.

“The new Congress met at noon Thursday.  Roosevelt’s message was read and the bill introduced.  This was the bill that was represented by a newspaper, as there had yet been no time to make copies.  No one but the Congressional leaders had seen it and it was passed in an hour.  A few hours later the Senate passed it.”  page 30

Notice the phrase “represented by a newspaper”.  They did not even have a copy to bring to be voted on so they rolled up a newspaper and pretended it was the bill.  Too bad they didn’t have the phrase “Fake News” in those days.

Within a few hours both houses of the legislature passed a bill authorizing the printing of 20 billion dollars and they never even saw the bill.  Keep in mind these are depression era dollars we are talking about.

Franklin D. Roosevelt was truly one of the most influential presidents in our history.  The more I learn about him the more convinced I am that the influence was bad.

Flynn, John T.  The Roosevelt Myth.  Garden City, New York:  Garden City Books, 1948.

homo unius libri