Re: Who was the Worst Democrat Candidate?
history
But a great book (doesn't go into the accusations of FDR over Pearl Harbor) is the Roosevelt Myth, which details much of that list and more and outlines FDR's treasons quite well. It too has a long list of documentation, and is probably one of the best sources for an unbiased look at FDR's presidency.
Well, since you could not provide a source other than your say-so, I'll take your first assertion and look at that as representative.
"Forced closure of banks so people could not access their savings."
When FDR took office in 1933, the nation was in its 4th year of the worst depression of all time, with no end in sight.
From BEA.gov:
year - Real economic growth
1930 -8.61%
1931 -6.42%
1932 -13.00%
The US economy decreased by a staggering 25% in just three years. By contrast, in the so-called Clinton recession in 2000, the economic in inflation adjusted terms
increased .7%
Unemployment was at 25% (versus 4.5% in 2001) and the stock markets had declined 80% (versus about 25% in 2000-01).
There had been plenty of bank closures before then during the do-nothing Hoover Administration. 10,000 of the nations 25,000 banks had closed permanently, by 1933.
Bank Failures Cause the Great Depression.
These were real bank closures, where people could not access their money permanently. There were runs on banks and panic in the banking system.
Inhereting this terrifying situation, Roosevelted acted. As to the banking system:
Roosevelt took office amid a terrifying bank crisis that had forced many states to suspend banking activities. He acted quickly to restore public confidence. On Inaugural Day, March 4, 1933, he declared that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” The next day he halted trading in gold and declared a national “bank holiday.” On March 9 he submitted to Congress an Emergency Banking Bill authorizing government to strengthen, reorganize, and reopen solvent banks. The House passed the bill by acclamation, sight unseen, after only 38 minutes of debate. That night the Senate passed it unamended, 73 votes to 7. On March 12 Roosevelt announced that, on the following day, sound banks would begin to reopen. On March 13, deposits exceeded withdrawals in the first reopened banks. “Capitalism was saved in eight days,” Raymond Moley, a member of the president's famous “brain trust,” later observed.
In fact, the legal basis for the bank holiday was doubtful. The term itself was a misnomer, intended to give a festive air to what was actually a desperate last resort. Most of the reopened banks were not audited to establish their solvency; instead the public was asked to trust the president. Nevertheless, the bank holiday exemplified brilliant leadership at work. It restored confidence where all had been lost and saved the financial system. Roosevelt followed it up with legislation that did actually put the banking structure on a solid footing. The Glass–Steagall Act of 1933 separated commercial from investment banking and created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to guarantee small deposits.
United States :: The first New Deal --* Britannica Online Encyclopedia
So yeah, I guess you could say he "closed" the banks -- though to claim it was so that "people could not access their savings" is misleading if not outright dishonest. They were closed for the purpose of reorganizing and restructuring so that the closures didn't continue to be permanent -- so that there would be banks there that people could access.
Among other agencies created by FDR -- the FDIC (insuring depositors) and the SEC (regulating the stock market) and the SS administration, providing basic incomes for millions otherwise unemployable. His acts also created huge government projects, which put millions of Americans back to work.
US History/Contents/Great Depression and New Deal - Wikibooks, collection of open-content textbooks.
In WWII, Roosevelt wisely kept the US out of the European war, having the wisdom to know that committing Americans to a war they did not want would have been devisive and damaging to the nation's unity and purpose, just like the Vietnam war and Iraq war have been. After Japan attacked the US, FDR kept Americans out of major engagement with the Germans until 1944, when the Germans were largely whipped by the Russians. As a consequence, at the end of WWII, when the rest of Europe's economies were in shambles, the US emerged relatively unscathed, the undisputed power, with only the SU able to challenge it on the military front.
Roosevelt faced crises that were unheard of in American history. He inherited an America that was in staggering economic condition, faced the greatest war in the history of the world, and upon his death America was emerging as the world's undisputed economic and military powerhouse.
You may disagree with some of his policies, fair enough. In hindsight it is easy to do. But to call him the worst Democratic president of all time is an injustice.
