Bob Hope Quotes
I've always voted for Franklin Roosevelt for President. My father before me always voted for Franklin Roosevelt for President.
Hope cracked this joke after Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected for an unprecedented fourth term as president:
Bob Hope, 1903-2003, Actor & Comedian, Remark, White House correspondents' dinner, 1945
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
FDR was terribly affable and was at the opposite end of the spectrum from the ideologues. Therefore he never offered specific programs. He was this grossly underestimated by many of the pundits of the day as being shallow with few or no ideas. Actually, he implemented more new ideas and programs than any other President in history but was very pragmatic about them and not really wedded to any of them. If one thing did not work, he tried another. The people and the Congress grew to trust him as no other president in our history although he always had his right wing enemies.
This was the statement that caused many senators to block her appointment as a Federal judge.
Coughlin was an early and valued supporter of FDR, but after Roosevelt’s election the priest became dissatisfied that Roosevelt was not radical enough. FDR also wanted to distance himself from many of the Fascist and Socialist ideas of Coughlin and especially his racism and anti-Semitism. Coughlin then flip-flopped and became a vicious Roosevelt Critic. Few realize that he ever supported Roosevelt.
Hoover, a brilliant administrator before his presidency, was so ideological about the role of government that when the Great Depression came, he was unwilling to use government directly to cope with the new problems. He was turned out of office in favor of FDR and the New Deal which the voters ratified 4 times. Hoover was embarrassed by the New Deal successes and lashed out with many insults. In this case, he called the New Deal “fascist”. See {629055} for another quote where he labels the New Deal communistic. Ironically, Hoover is rated by most historians as one of the least effective Presidents in American history while Roosevelt is always rated among the top 3 presidents.
In 1938 with America still in the depression, Random House published a 5 volume compendium of FDR's papers and speeches. It sold poorly.
In an irony, the first President limited by a term limit amendment pushed by Republicans remembering FDR turned out to be fellow Republican, Dwight D. Eisenhower.
The Ambassador was not on the best terms with FDR. He met with the Luces, key Republicans on Wendell Willkie's team regarding his delivery of the Catholic vote.
After JFK’s assassination, many of his appointees who were liberal Democrats, were concerned that LBJ was a Southern conservative and might not want to serve in a conservative administration. Johnson satisfied Heller and all of the other Kennedy appointees who he asked to stay on. Actually, Johnson was more liberal than JFK, and proved it during his Presidency.
Mitchell was the first African American to be elected to the United States Congress as a Democrat. The few other Blacks were Republicans from the Reconstruction period after the Civil War. The President was FDR and Mitchell was elected in the midst of the Great Depression.
Ironically, the Republican Presidents who had no business experience did much better with the American economy—Nixon, Eisenhower, and Reagan than the Republican businessmen. And the one Democrat who was a successful businessman—Jimmy Carter—presided over a terrible economy. The key variable seems to be business experience which gives leaders a false sense of being able to control things more than is real and develops an empathy with a narrow slice of the electorate—other businessmen—who are much more interested in short term profits rather than the health of the economy as a whole.
Leslie Townes "Bob" Hope KBE was a British-American stand-up comedian, vaudevillian, actor, singer, dancer, athlete and author. With a career that spanned nearly 80 years, Hope appeared in more than 70 short and feature films, with 54 feature films with Hope as star, including a series of seven "Road" musical comedy movies with Bing Crosby as Hope's top-billed partner.
