Roosevelt

To the Editors of The Crimson:

It is interesting to note that while a significant number of your editors in the January 27 issue dissent on the pressing social issue of "free choice" in housing, none has the energy to dissent your editorial on Ronald Reagan, cleverly disguised as a tribute to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Of course, Reagan never attended Harvard (or edited The Crimson), so how can we deify him?

Specifically, I question your description of Reagan and the Congress as men "who would sully the memory of brave men who fought other, noble wars..." I am curious as to your definition of "noble wars." I must assume you speak of the Second World War. Nobly as it was portrayed in our propaganda, one must question its causes. Win war proclaimed by the name Roosevelt who sat idly by watching Germany fall to depression and the Nazis, the same humanistic Congress that merely chided the invasion of Ethopia and China by aggressive powers? Was this the same passionate government, the one that threw up trade barriers, saying to the world, "Go to hell. We'll recover on our own!"? They participated in the noble battle against the terrible Nazi mass murderer--with Stalin as an ally who exterminated millions of Soviet citizens before the war. The same government fought over the spread of darkness, only to let the Iron Curtain fall over Europe. But at least Western Europe was free; we never really cared about Eastern Europe--it always seemed just like Russia anyway.

But Roosevelt was elected on a ticket of domestic economic reform and that is where he excelled. Goebbels may have advanced the Big Lie, but Roosevelt sang "Happy Days Are Here Again" in 1932 to nation that did not recover from the Depression until 1938. It may be worthwhile for students of economics to compare the final recovery of the U.S. economy at the outbreak of World War Ii with the German economic recovery at the U.S. economy at the outbreak of Nazism. It is fine to talk about Roosevelt's concern for the people, but it's the truth that he was unable to provide many Americans meaningful employment during his first two terms. His "New Deal" failed to restore the economy despite to disregard for the Constitution.

Franklin Roosevelt was probably a better president than Ronald Reagan is or will be. He may even be, as you claim, our "greatest modern leader." However, that gives no one the right to gloss over the facts of history. Economically, Roosevelt was a failure for eight years. Diplomatically, he allowed the nation to be put in a situation where it could not avoid war. "He made people believe everything would work out all right. And by and large, it did." I guess so, if you consider "all right" the atomic bomb and the Cold War, tangible results of Roosevelt's leadership. But The Crimson, if not Hiroshima and Solidarity, survived, so I suppose you are right. Charles D. Bunting '85