by Mike Gray  

Mark Thornton thinks he knows why President Roosevelt enjoyed popularity throughout the Depression years despite his lousy New Deal programs—and it’s probably not what you might think:  

All presidents worry about their popularity. They try to bolster it through impassioned rhetoric, free stuff for influential voting blocs, new programs that cost billions, dramatic photo ops, and of course wars to unite the country behind their valiant leadership. In most all cases, they choose means of gaining popularity that come at the expense of liberty.  

But what if a president took a different direction and sought popularity by expanding rather than reducing liberty? There is a model here they could follow but it is not one you have thought of.  

It is Franklin D. Roosevelt. In his first 30 days, he did more to bring liberty to Americans than any president since Thomas Jefferson repealed the Alien and Sedition Acts.  

. . . . Never mind that he was president of the United States during the majority of the Great Depression and then he dragged us into World War II when thousands of American soldiers were killed. Real per capita personal consumption didn’t improve in the United States until after World War II.  

All was forgiven, in the same way that voters forgave Reagan’s spending and failure to keep his promises following his dramatic tax cuts.  

. . . . crime plummeted . . . . Corruption by politicians and law-enforcement officials dropped considerably, but did not disappear . . . . [but] the most telling statistic was the murder rate, which dropped from almost 10 per 100,000 population down to 5 per 100,000 population . . . .  

Find out why Thornton thinks “all was forgiven” and historians need to revise their textbooks on his Mises Daily article here.