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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You know it saddens me to point to you that your father was a progressive liberal but you are not your father, are you?
The inference that Hillary is another FDR is laughable. Hell she is not even Eleanor Roosevelt.
This comparison of Hillary Clinton to Franklin Roosevelt is misleading and extremely disingenous. Despite his shortcomings, FDR was a true progressive, establishing Social Security, establishing the Tennessee Valley Authority and many other government works projects, regulating business, etc., etc.. These are things that the Clintons are NOT known for. Hillary, essentially, has no record in the Senate (doing non-controversial things) and Bill's time in the White House was nothing but one capitulation to the right wing agenda after another. If you didn't know the Clintons were officially Democrats, and just looked at their records, you would mistake them for Republicans.
As many here have pointed out, there is an enormous difference between the irrational right wing haters of the Clintons and the progressives and other Democrats who are refusing to buy the same old triangulation, kiss the GOP ass and screw the base philosophy that the Clintons embraced oh so long ago.
This is a great post - we need this perspective.
My attitude is, if you prefer Obama's policies, or those of the Republicans, or anyone else, then vote for that person. But if you like Obama or Edwards, then you shouldn't *loathe* Hillary unless it has nothing to do with policy at all. In fact, when pressed, Hillary-haters resort to name calling and attacks on her laugh, clothing styles, and haircut. All because their hatred of Hillary is an emotional one, not a rational one.
I will say the Republican plants on this board reveal themselves when they begin attacking Bill in the same broad strokes...
Wow, I see a few other people do not believe the FDR myth.
Well, I was born in 1936 and got the 'conventional wisdom'in public school: The stock market failed in 1929 and FDR came along and saved the country, and then those nasty Japanese made a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.
But the devil is in the details. And real history is not neat and tidy but has warts'n'all. I used to believe the American myth. I got better. Really, I wish I had not lost that naive innocence, but facts are facts.
Maybe most would not believe me, but there in Sec. Smitson's diary is the statement of FDR: "We must provke the Japanese to attack us." Ten days before Pearl Harbor.
And I guess most people are unaware of Billy Mitchell, the real father of air power in the 20th century, from his 1934 book predicting the most likely scenario for the next war, in that the Japanese would attack Pearl Harbor.
Meanwhile, in the late 30s, economic embargoes and sanctions against the Japanese. All leading up to a way out of the Great Depression. After nine years since Black Thursday, and a recession in 1938, eh?
Real history is a matter of objective evidence and facts, not of religious faith.
Of course, someone can claim most of the New Deal schemes were knocked back by the Supreme Court -- but "that was partisan politics" and it explains why FDR wanted to pack the court.
Yeah. So has anything changed?
I simply disagree with this attitude emanating out of the Hillary campaign as evidenced by this article - if you challenge her on a position, it's an "attack"; if you don't like her politics, you're a "Hillary-hater" and you get thrown into the pile of ranting and raving right-wing lunatics. It's a rehash of this George W Bush attitude - you're either with us or you're against us. It's condescending to independent-minded voters who dislike her because of her politics. We can admire her for her accomplishments, but it doesn't mean we have to automatically support her. And if you continue to do things which irritate voters, they have every right to become madder and madder.
So we have no right to be upset by the continuing triangulation, the meritocratic attitude of the Hillary campaign, the utter BS of statements like "Americans know where I stand" when you're changing positions left and right with the polls? So we have no right to be sick of people who claim one thing ("Stop attacking me") and then do another (How many people have had to leave her campaign in the last 2 weeks for negative campaign attacks on other candidates?). Maybe the reason some of us are hopping mad is we've had to put up with 7+ years of Bush and we are not in the mood for this kind of BS! Oh, and I supposed I HAVE to listen to you because you're a Kennedy? I like your Hillary quote though - "People in power with privilege don't want to be challenged at all." Sounds like she's describing herself and her campaign to a T!
Come on Robert their is a difference.
I hope Mr. Kennedy knows the difference between right wingers who hate the Clintons and leftists who do not appreciate their triangulation and kowtowing to the monied interests. Big difference, actually.
This post is just the latest sign for progressives to wake up and reevaluate the Kennedy legacy.
Why exactly are these people on the pedestal they are on?
They look pretty, the talk pretty, and they have nice smiles, but they are status quo politics all the way, and have been nothing but impotent the last forty years as they wrestle with personal demons under the public spotlight as the country goes down the tubes.
These people do not have solutions beyond maintaining their righteous indignation from the top looking down, and it's time for something new, and this desperate exploitation of FDR's name is just a reminder of who's coattails they rode in on, and who's legacy they have not added to in the slightest.
I'm sick of the politics of aristocracy. I want a peoples' politics. It's high time.
We are living through the nightmare of the Bush years: NeoCon war mongering, expansion of executive power undermining democracy and the constitution, control of policy making by large corporations, and the collaboration of leading Democrats, such as Hillary, Jay Rockefeller, Jane Harman and others in these disasters. Now Hillary presents herself as an agent of change and a champion of the middle class. Given her record in the Senate, I don't understand how she can be taken seriously, but she is, even by someone as admirable as Robert Kennedy.
The Roosevelts were despised because of their principles.
I will never vote for Hillary Clinton because of her LACK of principles.
HRC is no FDR!
We already have Nancy Pelosi in power, voted in mind you, to turn the war around or to end it and to impeach Cheney and the chimp, yet she has turned out to be a traitor to our wishes. HRC's blind loyalty to corporate america is ample warning of more of the same type of behavior. Edwards gets my vote, Kucinich for Vice-Pres.
Whether or not and to what extent Hillary may be comparable to FDR, notwithstanding: It was nice to be reminded that paranoid, under-handed, politics is not a new thing. Though business and the Federal Government have, arguably, never been closer than today; the fascist, in the corporatist sense, sentiment we see today is not new to the United States.
Like the protean labor movement of the 30's, today's labor movement, slowly crushed by globalism, is weak, but on the rise. The Finance world is insufficiently regulated, and our economy is, by some estimates, at the point of total collapse.
We might even be looking at re-ocurring seasonal droughts in the midwest!
Whoever the next president may be, they will likely face many of the same challenges we saw in the 1930's.
I am a fan of RFK Jr., especially his pieces in Rolling Stone. That said...
When the title includes the word "haters," the purpose of the word's placement is to, at once, be both dismissive and polarizing.
Dismissive, in that it diminishes what ever real, factual reasons or questions that may exists for not supporting Hillary. By casting anyone who holds those reasons as mere shrill and irrational haters," their entire motivation is called into question and their view, nullified.
Polarizing, because it sets up an "us against them" siege mentality among her followers, rewarding their rabid and unquestioning support while effectively marginalizing any "haters" who would dare to ask for clarification, and thus shutting down the dialogue that might prove to revealing.
The strange thing about this blog is that rather than sharing any of Eleanor Roosevelt's qualities, Hillary seems to have more in common with the Uber-Wealthy Elites who "...someho
To me, this sort of word play is perfectly transparent, and we've been seeing a variation on it for seven years now. It's subtle, but very effective, and all the more chilling coming from Hillary's camp via someone whose family stood for open engagement with and working to the betterment of all people.
Robert is a too fine a writer and wordsmith to not understand the power of language. I hope, however, that this might be a case of how certain phrases enter into common use and gain a life of their own as easy code or for their clever alliterative quality, rather than a conscious attempt at manipulation.
Mr. Kennedy,
I am disappointed, I listen to you and Mike Pappantonio every week taking on the influence and malfeasance of big business. But you happen to support a candidate bought and paid for by the insurance industry (6 million dollars plus in donations to HRC).
Health care is a critical issue in this country and health insurance IS NOT HEALTHCARE! The insurance companies have no interest in making their product affordable nor do they have any interest in actually covering our illnesses if it means the CEO's have to take even a dime of a pay-cut.
If Hillary's health plan was Single-Payer like Kucinich's and if she'd give back every single penny of insurance lobbyist money she's take? I'd consider voting for her.
I do not 'hate' HRC, I do not like her policies or her corporate financiers. The American people are not so naive as to believe that when an industry gives a candidate 6 million towards their campaign, they don't expect something in return. Nor are we so naive to believe that anyone willing to take 6 million dollars from an industry that it won't influence his or her decisions. In Cleveland that's what we call Bullshit.
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