Is the comparison of Obama to FDR accurate? -- Fred Barnes of The Weekly Standard says "no way"

Not Your Father’s FDR

A comparison that does Obama no favors.

BY Fred Barnes

May 10, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 32

In the famous first 100 days of Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency in 1933, legislation creating the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and the National Recovery Administration sailed through Congress. So did sweeping initiatives dealing with unemployment, agricultural relief, railroad reorganization, relief for homeowners, banking reform, taxes, a government economy act, and public construction. The bills passed with lopsided bipartisan majorities. There was barely a peep of opposition, partisan, ideological, or otherwise—much less any calls for repeal or incipient movements to roll back any of the New Deal measures. One more thing: FDR was loved (though not by the well-to-do).

Barack Obama is often likened to FDR, chiefly because he’s a Democratic president, smooth-spoken, liberal, and confronted by the worst economic downturn since the Depression. But Obama’s first 100 days, indeed the entire first 15 months of his presidency, have been quite different from Roosevelt’s. An economic stimulus package, housing recovery aid, landmark health care reform, and a government takeover of the college loan program—substantial legislation, for sure—have been approved by an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress. His achievements, however, have been smaller than FDR’s: partisan, liberal, and passed despite furious opposition. The health care bill has sparked a repeal crusade. Public approval of his performance as president has dropped below 50 percent.

Why has Obama fallen so short of FDR? It’s a fair question and a relevant comparison. After all, the similarity between the two has been touted by his sympathizers in the media, though not so much recently. And the president himself has alluded to it. He hasn’t claimed to match FDR, only that he’d put his 100 days “up against any prior administration since FDR.” No small boast.

Roosevelt had political advantages that Obama does not. The economy really was crippled in 1933. The jobless rate was 25 percent when FDR was inaugurated. “You’re not talking about 9.7 percent,” the current rate, says Stephen Hess of Brookings. “It was really a lot worse [in 1933].” Congress was a rubber stamp. “FDR had a clearer path than Obama does,” notes Hillsdale College professor Burt Folsom, author of New Deal, Raw Deal (2008).

But there’s another reason—an important one—why Congress and the public were so receptive to everything FDR proposed and more contrary in Obama’s case. The Progressive movement’s recipe of government activism still echoed, and the Communist and Fascist models of government control of the economy were fashionable among intellectuals. When FDR unveiled a radical change in farm policy with the Agricultural Adjustment Act, there was virtually no public resistance. The same was true with the explosion of federal spending. His Washington-run programs “had not had a chance to be tried—and fail,” Folsom says. . . . . . . . read the full article at The Weekly Standard.