AN FDR IN CONTROL OF EVENTS INSTEAD OF BUFFETED BY THEM (via Pepys):

Finding a Presidential Model That Fits (David Shribman, 4/08/06, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

[T]he truth is that the president whom George W. Bush most resembles is not McKinley. It is Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

I can hear the gasps streaming through my computer terminal. From the left: How dare you compare the greatest president since Lincoln with the worst? From the right: How could you possibly confuse a man who is committed to individual responsibility with a man who recklessly wanted the government to do everything?

Tough. These two men may be the most alike of any two American presidents ever. [...]

FDR, a Democrat, took the liberalism of TR, a Republican, and applied it more broadly and more aggressively, eventually claiming the term as his own and transforming not only the presidency but also the entire American government and the society outside Washington. Mr. Bush took the conservatism of his father and grandfather -- a softer conservatism, it might be argued, than the Reagan brand, more rooted in restraint than in muscular Republicanism -- and plotted a new course for conservatism, one aligned with religious institutions. Neither ideology was quite the same after FDR and W finished with it. [...]

Then why do these two men still seem so different, even to a columnist who is struggling mightily to argue that they are, in character and deed, more alike than different?

Perhaps it is because, in adopting and adapting his views, Roosevelt came to believe in the wicked-smart advisers who were leading him, including the Keynesians, and though the innards of the Roosevelt ideology had a messy beginning, they had a coherent end. It all held together by the end of the first term, and it provided a record to run on and a philosophy to govern by.

Not so in the Bush administration.

Mr. Shribman has written more sensibly about President Bush than most any other commentator, but does miss a couple key points here. The most important is that whereas FDR didn't believe in much of anything and was content to merely follow his welfare statist Brains Trust, President Bush is perhaps the most devout believer in the Ownership Society and has consistently forced others towards his Third Way ideology. Of course, recognizing this requires giving credit to George Bush for being a genuine political philosopher so folks resist it. Accept it and you can easily see that the President has thought through the future role of government in a comprehensive way.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 10, 2006 9:14 AM