Here is a pretty good rule of thumb for Democratic Presidents: if it didn't work for Franklin D. Roosevelt who won four terms and a World War it probably won't work for you either.
There used to be this feeling under Eisenhower and Kennedy and Roosevelt and Truman that government was a solution. Trust in the presidency fell precipitously under Johnson - real lows. And it's never come back. It's a trend that if you're liberal is really discouraging.
Following my junior year in high school I went on a camping trip through Russia in a group led by Horst Momber a young language teacher from Roosevelt.
Most of Roosevelt's innovations have been the law of the land for 70 years now and yet we are still a free society free enough that is to allow tens of thousands of protesters to gather on the National Mall and to broadcast their slogans and speeches to the world via C-SPAN.
My sense of religion is Einstein's sense of relativity. I don't believe in God. I believe that energy never dies. So the possibility exists that you might be breathing in some other form of Moses or Buddha or Muhammad or Bobby Kennedy or Roosevelt or Martin Luther King or Jesus.
Roosevelt was the one who had the vision to change our policy from isolationism to world leadership. That was a terrific revolution. Our country's never been the same since.
Roosevelt's humor was broad his manner friendly. Of wit there was little of philosophy none. What did he possess? Intuition inspiration love of adventure.
I don't want to go negative on Franklin Delano Roosevelt but he didn't pass an economic deal in the first 100 days. We have passed the largest Recovery Act in the history of the country.
My parents came from Russia and suddenly they wound up in Boston Massachusetts Brookline Massachusetts and they felt the sun rose and set on Franklin Delano Roosevelt's backside because he meant so much to them. This was freedom. This was something totally different from the Russia they had left.
A line from one of my 1997 columns - 'Do one thing every day that scares you' - is now widely attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt though I have yet to see any evidence that she ever said it and I don't believe she did. She said some things about fear but not that thing.