Anonymous #1 7w

100% agree. It's damn near a robbery that Teddy's left in the dust in terms of best President rankings just because FDR happened to be President during WW2. FDR isn't even the best President with that last name.

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Anonymous OP 7w

Yeah Teddy bro, he’s by far my favorite I think genuinely he is what a president should strive to be. His way of governing truly hinged on the idea that the government shouldn’t benefit itself more than it benefits the people

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Anonymous #1 7w

For me, it's the fact that not only his controversies were so much lesser, but also his successes were much less happenstance. The National Park and greater public lands system was a massive undertaking, and after about a century it has paid off tremendously. We went from a nation with some of the worst history of human caused extinctions, to the literal model for conservation across the globe.

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Anonymous OP 7w

Whereas with FDR the best I can say about him is like "He tried and arguably failed at saving the economy from the depression" or "He finally went to war with the Axis powers after years of trying to capitulate to them"

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Anonymous OP 7w

What made him sympathetic to the Nazi's? Im curious to see where you take the red string

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Anonymous #2 7w

Making his State Department apologize for New York saying bad stuff about Hitler, being complicit in the early parts of the Holocaust, and allowing German goods to maneuver around sanctions.

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Anonymous OP 7w

Take into account the policy in the at the time leading up to Pearl Harbor. And maybe look up the reasons he had. Get a good in depth look at all the sides. In hindsight was he wrong for those things? Yes. Was he doing what he thought was best for the United States at the time? Yes.

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Also unfortunately true

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Anonymous #2 7w

Sure, I'm not saying it wasn't pragmatic, but he cannot claim the beacon of morality for being involved in the war, when he was also dealing with the enemy.

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Anonymous #2 7w

Was this FDR's greatest and only meaningful achievement as President? I'd argue so, as I believe that our war based economy shifting towards a major war helped alleviate the Depression much more than FDR's weak social programs ever could have.

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Anonymous OP 7w

I don't disagree that the war definitely helped to bring us out of the depression. Though there were things going on beforehand that helped to start moving the gears again such as the Emergency Banking Act of 1933. From some research I did in undergrad the work he did to help restore trust in the government from the American people with fireside chats is something I wish were still a thing. One question that comes to mind as there are some things he did (such as Japanese internment camps)pt1

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Anonymous #2 7w

Pt2. That I don't agree with. Is did the ends justify the means? Like did buying German goods while there were sanctions help the US with rebuilding the economy?

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Anonymous #2 7w

I think thats a fair point about the fireside chats and about the Emergency Banking Act, some real transparency from our government is desperately needed and FDR did offer some level of relief from the Depression through his own decisions. I just don't think that any of this is enough to morally offset his failures.

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This just made me realize the level of irony in bringing back conservation models for the environment while disliking the Native Americans who had been conserving those environments for thousands of years too

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valid critique

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