I was looking back at NY Times editorial endorsements from past elections, and I came across ones from 1940 and 1944. It was interesting, because they actually backed Wilkie in '40 but returned to Roosevelt in '44. The main reasoning was that the Democrats foreign policy was better in latter contest. In these two short editorials, one can learn about the agenda of Roosevelt. The paper essentially faulted the president for taking too much control over the economy, advocating deficit spending, and acting imperial (the court packing plan, "purges" of moderate Democrats, etc.). Nevertheless, these editorials made me feel that a) if Roosevelt would have been allowed to do what he really wanted, this country would have been better, and b) if Roosevelt wouldn't have died in 1945, most of his agenda would have been passed. We could have ended up with a country that strived for full employment, national health care, and guaranteed housing. It seems likely that if Roosevelt didn't attempt the Supreme Court power grab in 1937 (which undermined his domestic agenda for good, because it raised the specter of abuse of power) and managed to hang on until 1948, he could have passed most of his Second Bill of Rights. Unfortunately, when he died, his cult of personality died with him. Truman could not fill the vacuum, and a large part of the reason that the Democrats got wiped out in 1946 was a mixture of public dislike of Truman and poor labor-related decisions he made.
This led me to look more critically at Truman's record, and, in fact, it's awful. He dropped the Bomb(s). He recognized Israel without conditions. He twice try seizure, nationalization, and forced enlistment to end strikes. He stoked the flames of the Cold War in '45-'46. All four of his Supreme Court choices were awful, and they decidedly moved the Court to the right and ruined any attempt to solidify a left-leaning majority. (It took Eisenhower's ironic picks of Warren and Brennan to do that.*) His main (and perhaps only) significant domestic contributions were the Housing Act, which has had a mixed legacy, and some civil rights legislation, which was admittedly quite significant. In general, however, his presidency was a failure. The fact that historians have reassessed it positively makes me fear that something like this could eventually happen to Bush's.
What are the implications of this window into the past? It made me realize that the popularity of the president is important. Roosevelt's popularity sustained the Democrats not only in elections, but in the passage of legislation. The same perhaps could have been said of Johnson in 1964-66, following the Kennedy assassination. But the poor popularity of Cater and Clinton (during his first two years) damaged the Democratic party and the respective presidencies. If Obama wins, he will need to keep his popularity high in order to maintain a Democratic majority and allow his policy initiatives to be passed. With these conditions, it's possible the dams could burst and we could finally get Roosevelt's Second Bill of Rights and Truman's Fair Deal passed in full. And it will have taken only 60 years.
One final thing about the Democratic party: There has only been a few periods in the last 100 years in which substantial domestic changes have been passed by the Democrats.
1913-1916
1933-1938
1964-1966
1993
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*A few facts about the Court. The last time that it had a clear 5-4 liberal majority was between the years of 1956-1969. Those were the only 13 years of the entire 20th Century (and arguably the history of the Republic) that this happened. Additionally, it has been 55 years since the Court had a Democratic-appointed Chief Justice. Imagine what the country would have been like if we had something like the Warren Court for the last forty years. Gay marriage probably would have been made legal a decade ago, and gun bans would have been upheld. Instead, the Court today teeters between center-right and full-blown reactionary.
