Hillary Haters and the Roosevelts
Even some Democrats who agree with Hillary Clinton on every issue and consider her an effective, inspiring leader, fret that the blind, irrational hatred, that burdened her husband during his presidency and that continues to dog his wife, might impair her electability. "She is too polarizing" they say, parroting the verdict of television's Sunday morning gas bags.
It's worth recalling the historical parallels with an earlier presidential couple. "No other word than hatred will do," observed a May 1936, Harper's Magazine feature "They Hate Roosevelt" by Marquis W. Childs. "The phenomenon to which I refer goes beyond objection to policies or programs. It is a consuming personal hatred of President Roosevelt and, to an almost equal degree, of Mrs. Roosevelt."
Childs deemed this "fanatical hatred" so intense and irrational that it could only be explained as the product of "abnormal psychology." Historian William Manchester described how Roosevelt haters "abandoned themselves in orgies of presidential vilification." William Bird, curator of political history at the Smithsonian Institution said that "by 1936, the 'Roosevelt haters' had developed into a well-defined cult among the nation's business elite," their lackeys in the press and on the editorial boards and among right wing Christian theocrats led by fascist radio host Father Charles Coughlin.
"In history, this hatred may well go down as the major irony of our time," wrote Childs. "The majority of those who rail against the [Roosevelts] have to a large extent had their incomes restored and their bank balances replenished since the low point of 1933," before FDR came to power. "That is what makes the phenomenon so incredible. It is difficult to find a rational cause for this hatred."
Describing the same baffling dynamics, a bewildered contemporary magazine editor created an inventory of the most vitriolic Roosevelt haters, including the CEOs of Phillips Petroleum, National Steel, DuPont, General Foods, Monsanto Chemical and General Motors, and then recorded the tremendous growth in their stocks which had all flourished since the implementation of Roosevelt's New Deal policies.
The intense hatred of the Roosevelts was a dominant feature in the American political landscape during the decade of the 1930s and prompted efforts to impeach him and even a plot to depose him by a military coup planned by high ranking officers of Wall Street's richest corporations, including Goodyear, Bethlehem Steel, JP Morgan, and DuPont. The "vast right wing conspiracy" had its own Richard Mellon Scaife. Robert Clark, one of Wall Street's richest bankers and stock brokers pledged half of his $60 million fortune to help finance the coup. His deputy, former Commander Gerald Macguire of the American Legion, a Wall Street bond broker, equated Roosevelt's reforms to Communism and explained the purpose of the coup to a co-conspirator, "We need a fascist government in this country to save the nation from the Communists who want to tear it down and wreck everything we have built in America." The 1933 coup attempt was only averted by the courage of General Smedley Butler, the popular World War I warrior who had been tapped by Wall Street to lead the plot and who instead exposed and denounced it.
"People in power with privilege don't want to be challenged at all," Hillary told me recently as we discussed the repetitive rhythms of history. "FDR's policies rescued capitalism, thereby saving the fortunes and restoring the incomes of so many of the same people who would curse his name over the dinner table. They somehow still felt threatened because they don't like to be questioned."
"And there is something of the same going on today. If you challenge the pharmaceutical companies, the health insurance companies, if you think investment fund managers should be taxed at the same rate as nurses and firefighters, you run into this vitriolic response."
Irrational hatred was the powerful drug that intoxicated the Gingrich Congress to impeach President Bill Clinton at the time when he enjoyed 65% popularity with the American people and had steered the nation through eight years of peace and unprecedented prosperity.
Hillary's supporters should be heartened by the fact that intense hatred is often accompanied by equally strong support. Roosevelt won four landslide victories against his opponents and crafted the architecture for the most humane, successful, generous features of modern American government.
They can also take comfort in Hillary's proven ability to transform intense hatred into loyal support. I recently toured upstate New York's traditionally Republican counties which she has transformed through leadership and political acumen, into rock solid Hillary Clinton strongholds.
With a playful wink she told me, "One of my favorite pins in my political pin collection is "I Don't Like Eleanor Either." It reminds her that it's not just the president who is targeted by the haters. But "about anybody who cares about and stands up and fights for the changes that our country needs to have."
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Excellent column, RFK Jr should be running.
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Some people find it hard to support another Clinton because the record of the first Clinton. In my case, because Bill effectively sold out the country because he did not want to stop the gang stalkers who were poisoning people and so cut a dirty deal to leave them alone.
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It is not irrational hatred to not support someone because they lack principle and gravitas.
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I like them, wish them the best and would support them in any wonkish nonleadership position.
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Her street savvy matters to me. RFK is correct
about the parallels, jibes with what I know to be so. She has a clue about tactics of the haters; saw them at work, up close and personal, not only relative to health coverage, but against her husband over time. When I see Mathews mewling for more muscles and mounting a campaign against her, it turns my stomach, so I turn him off. AH has it right about that guy. She finds a way to work with those whose agendas are not hers and I commend her for that because results matter.
Am reading Tom Hartman's "Screwed" and the FDR bits that RFK mentions are spot on. Murdoch is ugly in every respect as other posters mentioned, but I'd take his money and get even. May Hillary win because competence counts.
RFK Jr makes one simple, monumental mistake.
FDR was despised by conservatives, not by liberals.
Hillary is despised by most conservatives, and a huge number of progressives, such as myself.
Roosevelt restored capitalism and Hillary wants a redistribution of wealth as does Osama and Edwards. Hillary speaks as though she is reading right out of the Karl Marx playbook. To say there are any similarities is assinine. The 1930's Democrats are far different than that of today. Actually, the last true Democrat was JFK.
Give us a break Bob. Billary = Franklin + Eleanor? Wow - ludicrous does not begin to define that falacious assertion. The leagacy of the Roosevelts lives on. Unfortunately the legacy of Billary - NAFTA, the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the End of Citizen Welfare and ushering in of Corporate Welfare etc. - never seems to leave the stage. This piece wins the 2007 "horsefeathers" award hands down. Vote Billary back to the $$$ salons and country clubs they so desperately want to belong to. You can be their buddy Bob but we don't have to anymore.
Absolutely right! I am from that era and remember the fervid hatred of Eleanor Roosevelt. These people hate strong women. They love the Elizabeth Dole pattern. It distresses me to see women caught up in this blind hatred. Every day I see Chris Matthews and Tucker Carlson, among others, spending their entire programs with the same irrational abuse of Sen. Clinton. If Sen. Obama wins in Iowa or N.H. we will hear "Is America really ready for a Black as President?" rather than the same question about a women. Chris Matthews has the best criteria for whio to vote for. "If you were stranded with a flat , who would help you change it?" His answer seems to be Bush.
THANK YOU RFK for telling it like it is. Senator Clinton will be a great President.
It's not hatred that drives anti-Clinton democrats, it's the fact that we can't trust her. She has shown repeatedly that she will pander to the Right--and call it bipartisanship--whenever it's to her advantage. I'm very sorry to hear RF Kennedy, Jr. speak on Clinton's behalf because she is a Republican, corporatist, imperialist planted in the wrong political party. And we want her and the entire subversive DLC membership out. Apparently, Kennedy is not as democratic as we had supposed. Because capitalism is the dead-set enemy of democracy, and every capitalist knows it.
Until we get someone who understands that socialism works for the general good and is not, repeat not, communism, we will keep getting candidates who do not in any way represent us or address our issues. Like Kerry. Like Clinton.
I'm old enough to remember a few Republican uncles and more than a few like-minded friends call FDR "that damn Jew in the White House." Or simply. "That man" and Ellenor, that ungly red...well i won't go on. They never mentioned the presidnet or first lady by name, only be epethet...Oh, and this went on right into the WWII years when not all of the greatest generation stood tall behind the cammander in chief, war or no war..."He got us into it on purpose..to help the Jews.." they would say...
He was far more refined and classy than those people, i daresay, but Robert,my boy, you do know that your grandfather ran with that FDR-hating crowd. Still no one sacrafied more than the Kennedys in that war and beyond...
Hillary-hating smells the same. Only instead of anti-Semetism or racism...it stinks of mysogynistic fear and loathing...
i mean, get real. The Clintons' are even all that liberal. In England they'd be Tories. Same in the rest of Europe, Canada, Australia, naw maybe even South Armerca. What else are they so riled up about, with these two good-ole Republicrats. Back in Roosevelt's time they would have been Republicans...Hell,evne back during Ike's two terms they would have been in the GOP right along with Jacob Javits, Thomas Kuchel, Nelson Rockefeller...
Where's the beef.. They sould be so lucky as to get thos pliable, pragmatic Clinton's again and watch the stock market rise....like in the 90s...Gawd, they so deserve Kuchinich or a Kucinich-Paul ticket...Or a Ron-Paul-Rue-Paul ticket...up theirs,
Which is why I'll probably why i'll vote for Hil...as a man, mind you...not because i so much agree with her...but just because those people hate her so much she must be the best one for the country...
How many more puff pieces on Hillary are going to waste our bandwidth? They would be unwelcome even if they didn't have so much trouble contorting the facts.
To equate the Clintons with FDR and Eleanor is absurd. Although FDR was trying to save capitalism with needed reforms in a crisis, he did anger the corporate elite by putting in restraints that they didn't care for.
As a leading light of the DLC, Clinton never would have considered challenging the corporations. The haters of the Clintons are primarily those poor souls mislead by the neocons, religious retard leaders and Newt and company.
If the five largest arms manufacturers, the drug companies and health insurance industry are Hillary's largest contributors, how does one equate that with the plight of the Roosevelts?
FDR didn't try to get us into war because of campaign contributions but, when I look at a list of donors to her campaign, I do question Hillary's motives for wanting to wait until the end of her first term to begin bringing the troops back from Iraq .
I lived under FDR's administrations and under Clinton's. That gives me enough insight to realize that the blogger either has no idea what he is talking about or is intentionally distorting reality.
If it comes to that, I will hold my nose and vote for her but her ambition, not the interests of the country, detracts from the possibility of a more qualified candidate succeeding.
There is more than one candidate far more qualified and with better positions on the issues than the two front-runners. Yet we get the daily droppings of the 'Friends of Hillary' twisting the facts beyond all recognition and stretching all believability to cloak her with the mantles of worthy former occupiers of the Oval Office.
Am I a Clinton hater? No, but I do see both the successes and failures of Bill's tenure through other than rose-colored glasses. I see Hillary's quest for personal aggrandizement as likely to provide this country with less than its best at a time our best efforts are sorely needed.
Bobby,
Fascinating piece, and analogy to FDR. Only problem is that Hillary and Bill Clinton are not interchangeable, any more than they're one and the same person. I suspect, too, that they have deep differences when it comes to issues of war, as well as wealth distribution.
More importantly, when can't profess to be reforming the greedy health care system, and pharmaceutical industry, on the one hand, and reaching into their pockets with the other.
With her pledge to make health insurance more "affordable" to all Americans, last night, Mrs. Clinton demonstrates that she still doesn't get it--- for too many Americans, paying anything for medical coverage is paying too much.
You're way more expert at history than I, no doubt, but from what I know about Franklin Delano Roosevelt his primary concern was how to put people back to work, and take care of those who are economically disenfranchised. From the few speeches of his I've read, this was a passion of FDR's. If this is Hillary's passion, too, then we need to hear it. So far, when she talks about poverty, and economic reform, it sounds more like campaign rhetoric than abiding concern.
Hillary isn't Eleanor Roosevelt. Eleanor considered the plight of Americans first and foremost. Hillary considers enriching herself and what will best play with getting her elected first and foremost. Bill Clinton undid most of what was left of FDR's legacy after Reagan deregulated all he could. More pro business and conservative legislation was passed on Bill's watch than during Nixon's term in the White House. Maybe there is something to the "unbridled hatered" some Progressives have towards the duplicitous Hillary and her Republican-lite spouse.
I've been voting in all the major elections, and most minor ones, since 1968 and one thing I've learned in that time is that the candidate who's the target of the most irrational hatred is more often than not the most intelligent choice. Especially if the haters include religious wingnuts.
"Too polarizing", "the verdict of Sunday morning gasbags"...and of a wide swath of people who absolutely LOATHE her, even more than they did her husband! While acknowledging this vitriolic hatred throughout the article, why claim the Sunday pundits are "gasbags" for pointing it out?
While I personally am ambivalent to Senator Clinton's candidacy and think she would do at least a competent job in the office, I truly doubt she would be an agent of the oh-so-necessary substantive change we need in America (the consuming need for a third party view can be seen in any recent senate vote). Regardless, I fear you underestimate the motivation and mobilization of those who would truly vote "ABH": Anyone But Hillary, and another Republican presidential tenure, with all the right-wing, pro-Armageddon foreign policy blunders that would entail is reason enough to nominate another competent candidate- ANY other of the front running Democrats.
Totally right. The Clinton's are actually like the Roosevelt's in many ways. All are pragmatic progressives. I am so pleased you support Hillary. You are a real hero to me.
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