Big Brother is watching ... I mean, FDR Four Freedoms Park
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Longtime reader Robert Strauss wrote in on May 31:
There are the beginnings of a new trope out there. Call it a pivot, if you will:
"Eleanor Clift Defends Hillary, Compares to FDR": “If she’s elected, she would probably be the richest president ever, But is this a liability? I look back at FDR, I mean, he was very wealthy. He did a lot of great things for the little people.”
Another example: "Matt Bai: Hillary Clinton isn’t like the rest of us? Good!"
From a photo caption: "President Franklin D. Roosevelt may have come from a privileged family, but during the Depression he created New Deal programs, such as social security, that formed the cornerstone of the U.S. social safety net."
Strauss writes:
The trope is that as Hillary's connection to the middle class becomes less and less viable, with each revelation of tons more foreign cash funneled to the Clinton Foundation, a new tack is underway: namely, that although Hillary may live like royalty, that won't stop her from doing good for the little guy. And, how perfect if that theme dovetails with Hillary as the new FDR!
The very next day, a press release from the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign announced she would be "officially" launching her 2016 run with a "major speech" from Four Freedoms Park on Roosevelt Island in New York City. The trope lives.
“Throughout her career, Hillary Clinton has been inspired by FDR’s belief that America is stronger when we summon the work and talents of all Americans and has long admired Eleanor Roosevelt as a role model,” a campaign spokesperson said in a statement.
That's not all, of course. In 2012, Bill Clinton spoke at the dedication ceremony for Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park. He noted that it was Eleanor Roosevelt who insisted that FDR's "Four Freedoms" -- freedom of speech, freedom of "worship," (which, of course, we already had), and "freedom from want" (harbinger of Big Government Program Socialism), and "freedom from fear" (Prozac Nation?) -- be included in the 1948 Human Rights Declaration.
Bill Clinton continued:
“I know that because, as all of you famously learned when I served as president, my wife, now the secretary of State, was known to commune with Eleanor on a regular basis,” he said. “And so she called me last night on her way home from Peru to remind me to say that. That Eleanor had talked to her and reminded her that I should say that.”
As CNN reported, in his 1996 book The Choice, Bob Woodward wrote that Hillary Clinton "held imaginary conversations with Eleanor Roosevelt and Mahatma Gandhi as a therapeutic release." Hillary Ciinton later wrote about her "imaginary conversations" with Eleanor Roosevelt in a newspaper column, also in 1996. According to her husband's 2012 comments, she and Eleanor were, well, still in touch in 2012. No word yet on whether Eleanor is advising Hillary on the upcoming address.
What is the old (Marx) saying? American Betrayal repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.