If we can't have an FDR, we will settle for a Truman

Yes, Obama will have to do much more than just tonight's speech to make that comparison a reality.

I would just remind people that the conventional wisdom about Truman in 1947 was that he was a wuss. That obviously changed in 1948. Mitt Romney would make a great Thomas Dewey, by the way.

"We're just mild about Harry", people used to say.

We'll see. Stranger things have happened.

Don't pee in my Wheaties.

in the name of job creation. Then he's gonna come out with a program of bipartisan spending cuts to pay for those tax cuts.

Sorry, but the only one Obama is giving hell to is the left of center people who voted for him.

People used to say that to reflect their belief in his mediocrity.

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Glad Obama decided to show some umbrage....now that reelection is on the line. But did he have to put Medicare & Soc Sec payroll investments on the table? If any Teapub did that, we would all scream bloody murder. It's not right, no matter who does it.

The Republicans have been calling Obama "Barry" as a covert insult -- partly using a childhood nickname as a kind of racist dog-whistle, equivalent to calling someone "Boy," and partly a reference to the Obama-is-a-secret-Muslim thing. (Since he was known as Barry Soetoro when he was living with his mother and stepfather in Indonesia.)

But the moment "Barry" Obama becomes equated in people's minds with Harry Truman, it ceases to be an insult and becomes a statement of implicit power.

If the Democrats could re-take "Barry" and make something positive of it, it would be effectively a semantic judo move -- using the Republicans' own strength against them. And that could be very interesting.

We're not going to get either one. What we got was a Reagan.

It was HST who memorably said that "the Republicans think I give them hell. All I do is tell the truth and they think it's hell."

Harry Truman had no time for shitweasel bankers and corporate execs in $5000 suits bent on stealing the country blind. He was a genuine man of the people and never forgot who he was fighting for.

I'd happily settle for a gutsy guy like Truman again.