Comment by dmix
7 days ago
The most dangerous part of the current admin is the fealty he demands from congress and how exploits his popularity to be a kingmaker in local elections.
This is something FDR did heavily in the 1930s to expand his own power and bully congress into passing the New Deal. https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/purge-1938 He also used legally questionable executive orders like crazy.
Can always count on HN to mindlessly equivocate.
There's a long legacy in America which has led to the expansion of the executive branch. It didn't start with Trump. Almost every power he's abusing was recklessly laid down in prior administrations/congress. FDR caused lots of controversy with how he acted and there was a pull back from executive power, including administrative laws currently slowing Trump down.
There's lots of other examples, such as the various emergency powers, including a large string of them for terrorism during Bush and expanded during Obama.
I've been posting about this issue on HN long before Trump was in power and plenty of journalists were documenting it.
lol you say FDR was bullying Congress, as if the New Deal coalition wasn't the most successful political movement that this country ever had (won nearly every Presidential election (only losing to the man that defeated Nazis in Europe), had control of the House from like 1932 to 1992, nearly controlled the Senate for just as long too).
Attacking FDR, someone who stood up against business interests to defend labor, kinda exposes the game here.
Congressional Republicans let him do it.
Congressional Republicans confirmed every single one of his cabinet members.
So perhaps he demands it, but does not give congress a pass. At all. They chose to let him.
Honestly FDR doesn't get enough credit for probably saving capitalism.
He borrowed just enough of the stuff socialists were promising, and bolted it onto the government to mollify the working class who'd been absolutely ravaged by oligarchs for the preceding decades. You only have to look at the rest of the world to see how things might've turned out without FDR's very reasonable interventions.
The New Deal was a good thing when the US was in the Great Depression and there was a communist revolution in Russia.