Our Slickest President

August 1, 2000

In polls of historians, Franklin Roosevelt is often ranked with Lincoln as one of the two greatest American presidents. My own conclusion is that these were the two most disastrous American presidents, which may be just another way of saying the same thing. For better or worse, they put their stamp on this country and permanently changed the relations between the federal government, on the one hand, and the states and the individual on the other.

America is a notoriously amnesiac country. Polls of young people keep finding that shockingly high percentages of them don’t know when the Civil War or World War II occurred, much less what they were about. Those who have some knowledge of these events often get it from superficial sources like movies rather than from books. And even those who do read books usually swallow an oversimplified liberal interpretation of the events.

The veneration of Roosevelt, once the bête noire of Republicans, now crosses party lines. Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich have praised him and quoted him approvingly; both major parties joined in financing a monument to him in Washington. But of all recent tributes to him, the most interesting, to my mind, is that of the historian Robert Stinnett, whose book Day of Deceit concludes that Roosevelt had advance knowledge of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor — and praises him for letting it happen!

In his own time Roosevelt was accused of being a deceitful man; now his defenders say in his honor what his enemies used to say as an indictment. His champions used to deny the charge that he lied and schemed to get this country into war; now they not only admit it, but count it to his credit that he did so. Once it was only die-hard conservatives who suspected Roosevelt of duplicity about Pearl Harbor; now that duplicity adds to his luster. He lied to the American people for their own good.

At least Lincoln, rightly or wrongly, is respected for honesty. What does it say about us that we salute Roosevelt for dishonesty?

In September 1939, when World War II began, Roosevelt delivered one of his famous “fireside chats,” a brief radio address, in which he deplored “the invasion of Poland by Germany.” He assured his audience, the American people, that “your government has no information which it withholds or which it has any thought of withholding from you.” He announced that “at this moment there is being prepared a proclamation of American neutrality.... And I trust that in the days to come our neutrality can be made a true neutrality.” He disparaged those who “thoughtlessly or falsely talk of America sending its armies to European fields” — that is, those who suspected that Roosevelt’s true aim was to get the United States into the war. Which is exactly what he was doing at that moment, by arranging secret and illegal aid to Britain.

Those who find it laudable for Roosevelt to have hoodwinked the American people into a war they didn’t want are really admitting that they don’t believe in democracy. If democracy means anything, it means keeping the people informed about and involved in the most fateful decisions in their corporate life. Roosevelt deliberately misinformed and excluded them, making those decisions all by himself. But he always paid lip service to democracy, so he is remembered as a great democrat.

In fact, however, his methods were those of tyranny. He was a very successful example of a phenomenon most people seem to regard as a contradiction in terms: the popular tyrant. Tyrants are not always hated: millions of Russians wept when Stalin died.

“I hope the United States will keep out of this war,” Roosevelt concluded. “I believe that it will. And I give you assurance and reassurance that every effort of your government will be directed toward that end.”

Every word a brazen lie. Have we learned anything from that experience? It appears not.

Joseph Sobran

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