Word: roosevelts
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...been kind of funny. Lincoln was a veritable wellspring of quips and anecdotes; Taft at least looked jolly; Reagan was a laugh-a-minute, from Star Wars missile defense systems to his side-splitting trickle-down economics. Democrats, by contrast, have been a soberer lot. Wilson? Roosevelt? Gore? As the “Green is the New Crimson” address reinforced, a Gore administration wouldn’t have been funny at all. It would just have been deeply concerned about serious issues all the time...
...This election, given the circumstances and transformational mood, has been compared to Franklin Roosevelt's ouster of Herbert Hoover, another transition that occurred amid economic carnage. Happily for all concerned, this time both the incoming and outgoing President appear inclined to play nicer than their predecessors...
...didn't help in 1932 that the two men neither liked nor trusted each other: Hoover called Roosevelt a "chameleon on plaid," while F.D.R. preferred the image of Hoover as a "fat, timid capon." In the final days of the campaign, Hoover denounced Roosevelt's "nonsense ... tirades ... glittering generalizations ... ignorance" and "defamation" on his way to losing to him in 42 of 48 states. Since Inauguration Day was not until March 4, 1933, and with the global financial system in tatters, there was urgent need for action - but Hoover's efforts to reach out to Roosevelt in the name...
...Their first visit after the election was not promising: Roosevelt came for what he thought was a personal call at the White House on Nov. 22, 1932 - only to find Hoover's Treasury Secretary on hand to help the outgoing President deliver a lecture on the importance of the gold standard, the stability of the banking system and the problem of Europe's war debt. When it was over, Hoover judged Roosevelt to be "amiable, pleasant ... very badly informed and of comparably little vision." (See pictures of election drama...
...world would not wait, and as the Inauguration approached, Hoover tried to force Roosevelt's hand: he wrote to enlist his help in calming investors; and he told a colleague that Roosevelt was a "madman" for not listening to him or lifting a finger to forestall a banking crisis, which began in mid-February. It guaranteed that Roosevelt took the oath of office amid such an atmosphere of crisis that Hoover had become the most hated man in America. There were rumors, as he left Washington, that he had been arrested trying to escape aboard Andrew Mellon's yacht with...