The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope by Jonathan Alter reminds us that a comparison of President Obama is better made to President Franklin D. Roosevelt than to President Abraham Lincoln. Both FDR and Obama, in their first 100 days, had to raise America out of a slough of horrible economic conditions. FDR was successful. President Obama must now demonstrate that he too has the courage and leadership ability necessary to steer the country out of its terrible malaise. At present, he is merely reacting to the economic crisis but not yet taking charge of it and formulating a solution -- as real leaders do.

He needs a rendezvous with reality in all areas of national leadership. For example, he needs to learn that while most Muslims are not terrorists most terrorists are Muslims, that those who in the beginning missed the development of the economic crisis cannot now be relied on to cure what they were unable to see in the first place and to restore shattered public confidence.
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FDR saw his efforts to steering America through the Great Depression as leading a “war for the survival of Democracy.” He saw his first task as lifting “Americans out of their mental depression” which he did with his “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” attitude. He wisely put curing the nation’s mental depression as the number one priority, before working on curing the economic depression. President Obama is now faced with a similar choice. Unfortunately he is only depressing Americans by telling them how bad he thinks things are and insisting that it will take years not months to solve the nation’s economic problems. In all likelihood we will get what he says.

President Jimmy Carter made the same mistake. He proclaimed that America was no longer governable, and he was right. Carter could not successfully govern America. Fortunately his replacement, President Reagan, didn’t know that America couldn’t be successfully governed and immediately set about putting the nation back together and the government back in order. Will President Obama lead the nation along the paths of Carter, or of Reagan? Only time will tell, but his first 100 days may give us some hint as to whether or not he can successfully lead our nation.

Witnessing the spirit of the American people at work and watching their productivity and seeing their technology driven processes and accomplishments of the past half century can only cause is to be hopeful about America’s long-term future. Unleashed and freed to flourish, America’s demonstrated ingenuity will create solutions where there are no solutions and hope where there is now despair.

FDR believed it and meant it when he said to America’s fearful citizens, “This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive, and will prosper.” For the American people to join President Obama in his efforts to cure America’s ills, it is not enough for him just to talk about hope. His actions and words must exude hope.