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Edited on Fri Jan-08-10 11:07 PM by RoyGBiv
This is a little tidbit I posted in GD. Rather than link to the post and risk getting this locked, I thought I'd just post it here on its own. Much more could be said on this, but the basic idea needs to be recognized. I think we should all be on guard for the false association that suggests FDR was hugely popular and successful in his first term while Obama is turning out to be a failure. A truer statement at this point would be that their administrations are following along very similar paths.
I also think this should serve as a reminder to us. Even FDR had insane people running around sniping at his every move, but he turned out to be pretty awesome.
This was a response to someone suggesting Obama should dump HCR because it is so unpopular.
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When FDR was pushing his programs, his support was mixed. In the early years of his first term conditions improved for very few poor. While the so-called patrician class composed primarily of NE liberals continued strong support, he was opposed by conservative interests, and his support among the common individual was so fragile that one of his efforts, the National Recovery Administration (NRA), obtained the sobriquet Never Roosevelt Again.
As Matthew Baum and Samuel Kern observed in their article "Economic Class and Popular Support for Franklin Roosevelt in War and Peace," published in the Summer 2001 edition of Public Opinion Quarterly, "Until Pearl Harbor, partisan and ideological conflict never receded far from the nation's civic life, and whenever it flared up, Roosevelt found himself at the center of controversy. Each policy initiative to deal with the Depression was greeted with derision from demagogues on both the left and right. Every 2 years the national election became a referendum on the president's policies and performance."
We don't have the kind of polling data for Roosevelt's terms of office that we have for most subsequent administrations, which has allowed to be ingrained in the popular mind the idea that everyone loved Roosevelt except "fat cats" and "Wall Street." This is a myth. Those statistical analysts, historians, economists and political scientists who have attempted to undertake a systematic study of Roosevelt's popularity during his administrations, using evidence from his administrations as opposed to common perceptions detailed after his death, have found little evidence to support this. Indeed, Roosevelt was popular with certain financial interests, namely financiers and industrialists who were involved in non-labor intensive industries, that strike directly in the face of the common perceptions that have floated around him in years since. Among the economic lower classes, his popularity was mixed. The white South liked very little about him at the time. The Tennessee Valley Authority was derided as a Communist plot. The rural poor in those early days saw little change in their lives, distrusted government, and considered Washington as continuing to be disconnected from their daily concerns.
As time progressed into the latter part of his first term, positive results for many of these groups did begin to show and opinion moved toward supporting him, but his second election was the most uncertain of all of them going into election day, largely because his popularity had dropped so low immediately after and into the first couple of years of his administration. As Baum and Kern concluded, "Public support appears in all accounts to have been critical to Roosevelt's success" in those early days (Baum and Kern 2001; Brace and Hinckley 1993; Kernell 1978; MacKuen1983; Mueller 1970; Ostrom and Simon 1985; and many others), which calls into question the common myth that everyone loved him and that the current administration should back off proposals without broad public support. The right wing of the 30's pressed the same lie, just as they are today.
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