Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) The president who was voted in 1st -3rd place in poles. The only president to serve more than 2 terms (In fact he was elected for 4 terms, consecutively)!!! Would you agree he deserved it? Let’s review the facts. This time it is a Democrat. No I’m not doing it for balance but simply stating the facts. He was the 32nd president of the USA, his hero was a Republican Teddy Roosevelt who happened to be also his 5th cousin. FDR- Franklin Delano Roosevelt- 1882-1945 president from 1933-45 (until his death at 63yo from intracranial bleeding). As a reach kid he traveled a lot to Europe learned to play polo, sail, shoot. Went to public school in Germany at 9yo and learned German and French. He was sent to a boarding school in Massachusetts then to Harvard, like Teddy, majoring in History but was a mediocre student never standing out in school or in sports. He went to Columbia law but left it as soon as he passed the bar (he told his friends he disliked law). Despite political differences Teddy supported privately FDR’s political career helping him get seat in NY state senate.
He married his 5th cousin (Eleanor, the niece of Teddy Roosevelt) despite his mother’s staunch disapproval (Teddy gave her away at the wedding (as her dad was dead)). His wife hated Sex finding it a necessity and giving him 6 kids (5 making it to adulthood). Despite becoming paralyzed (1921) and trying to hide the fact convincing many he was improving (doctors thought it was Polio but it is now believed to have been Guillain Barre syndrome), the world new. He persevered and never gave up not in politics not in his love life. The affairs he had were many including his wife’s secretary, his own Secretary and perhaps even the Crown princess of Norway, Martha (or so his son and the gossip newspapers said). For a men in a wheelchair he surely got around.
When FDR won the NY governor’s spot in 1929 he became a potential candidate for the presidential race. He won the 1932 race for president and began an era where till 1979 mostly democrats won based on the “new deal coalition” he went against the prohibition promised government funded public works and help to farmers all to raise the country form the deep depression (25% of people unemployed, 48 states closed their banks) that befell at the end of the Hoover administration. FDR spoke to the people through a beloved series called the “fireside chats” (today it might be Twitter) presenting his proposals to the people who thirstily drank each word as their confidence and hope rose. To paraphrase the historian J. Burns: FDR pitted his administration staff against one another creating competition, disarray, heartbreak & anger but also set creative sparks, he bypassed the cabinet shuffled and manipulated.
His program was called: “relief, recovery & reform”. He created the social security act. His first 100 days in office saw many new legislations and became a benchmark to compare future presidents to. He said: The country needs and demand a bold experimentation if it fails admit it and try another. He outlawed child labor, established federal minimum wage & a 40hr work week. But his isolationist policy led him to regret not selling weapons to the Spanish republicans fighting the Franco forces during the civil war and allowed Italy to take over Ethiopia as well as stand by as Japan committed atrocities in China and sank a USA gun-ship moored in the Yangtze river. Then in 1939 he passed the act called Cash and carry. (Allowing countries to buy weapons as long as they payed immodestly for it and assumed carting responsibility of the weapons). He agreed to run for a third term and won partly on a promise he will not enter the war.
He gave a famous speech in 1941 of the 4 freedoms people all over the world should enjoy:”freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear.” In 1939 a letter sent to FDR by Einstein and Szilard (previously Einstein’s student) warned of Germany’s attempt to create the atomic bomb and suggested America does it first leading to the Manhattan project (so secretive even FDR’s VP didn’t know about it). But when he died during his 4th term a little over a month before Germany capitulated and before the Atom bomb was released by Truman the flags continued to be at half staff and Truman spoke that the victory was Truman’s. Many questions still hang over his presidency as the Jewish Holocaust and never having helped the Jews not allowing Jews to enter when they were fleeing. The internment camps for Japanese, Italians, and Germans, and more issues, but these have disappeared in light of the greater goods people believe he achieved.
If FDR taught us something then it is that we should have no excuses. Thus I suggest you have no excuses for not taking care of your skin. Moisturize it daily on damp skin and examine it for any new or changing spots, and if in doubt seek a board certified Dermatologist out.