There was a spate of time around the inauguration when certain Obama-FDR comparisons were en vogue, and indeed yesterday I attended a Roosevelt Institute conference that urged the president to be bolder and more Roosevelty, willing to reach outside the mainstream. But Nate Silver comes along with a data-driven reminder of our current executive's structural challenges:
He doesn't have the seats! The other thing to remember is that the economic distress of the Great Depression still greatly exceeded our own very fierce Great Recession, giving a FDR a lot more leeway to find radical solutions to our problems; Obama, instead, offers moderate solutions to our problems and is called a radical by the right and a disappointment by the left. Important to remember as Obama fights to pass one of the most important pieces of reform legislation in decades. It does suggest, though, that Obama needs to up his efforts on the party-building front.
-- Tim Fernholz
