Thinking about the post immediately below, and about the historical context of today’s politics got me musing about FDR. What almost nobody remembers today is that a substantial minority of (mostly Republican) contemporary Americans hated Franklin Roosevelt in office.
Today people on the left with no sense of proportion compare Trump to Hitler. Roosevelt running for a third, and then fourth term must have looked to his detractors like a Latin American-style “president-for-life.” His dying in office made it literally true.
I am just old enough to remember FDR’s successor, Harry Truman, being excoriated as a bumptious, unpolished machine politician from a hick state. He truly did have some rough edges.
Historians tend to forget the personal foibles and see accomplishments. Given the perspective of decades of hindsight, both FDR and HST are almost universally praised today. I am tempted to hazard a guess the same will happen to Trump.
