A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Did the 1947 United States Congress have candidates like Donald Trump in mind when it created the 22nd Amendment? No. The 80th U.S. Congress, which was under Republican control in 1947, only had one man in mind when it approved the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, and he was dead. That man was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the United States and the only one to run for the White House (and  win ) four times. When the 80th Congress went into session on January 3, 1947, it reflected the nation’s weariness with the Democratic Party’s control of the government, which had lasted from 1933 to 1946, a period that included the twin challenges of the Great Depression and the Second World War. FDR and his party had steered the American ship of state through both storms decisively if not always adroitly. but as often happens when one party lingers too long in power, the electorate in 1946 got restless and decided it wanted change in Congress. One of the...

Today’s winner of Silliest Question on Quora is…. Would you support a bill that would allow the President of the United States to serve for life? Short and sweet version: No. Short and not-so-sweet version: Hell, no. Longer, informative, and hopefully  educational  version; No, I would not support a bill that would allow  anyone , regardless of party affiliation, to serve as President of the United States for more than the two-term limit set down in the Twenty-Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In case you have never read that amendment, which ironically was proposed in 1947 and ratified in 1951 at a time when there was a Democratic President and a Republican-controlled Congress, states: 1. No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office...

The answer is simple. Adolf Hitler took a huge gamble….and lost. For the first two years of the Second World War, Hitler’s policy toward the U.S. was to hope that isolationism, anti-British sentiment in certain segments of the American public, and internal divisions would keep President Franklin D. Roosevelt too busy to enter the conflict before he had conquered the Soviet Union. He may have believed that FDR, who was clearly a supporter of Great Britain, would lose the 1940 Presidential election to a candidate who would be more accommodating to German hegemony in Europe. Hitler was none too thrilled when the Roosevelt Administration and a bipartisan Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act and sent the U.S. Navy to escort convoys as far as Iceland. But even when this led to an undeclared naval war in the Atlantic, the German dictator still held off from declaring war on America. Why? Partly because Hitler suspected that it would take the...

This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.- Franklin D. Roosevelt, first Inaugural address, March 4, 1933 On September 14, 2014, producer-director Ken Burns' The Roosevelts: An Intimate History premiered on PBS. Written by Burns' frequent collaborator Geoffrey C. Ward ( Baseball, The Civil War, The War, and Jazz ), thi...