There should also be no doubt that this president is capable of that leadership. Others have been, in times bleaker still, with fewer weapons at hand. “Powerful influences strive today to restore that kind of government with its doctrine that that government is best, which is most indifferent.” So said Franklin D. Roosevelt on the 31st of October, 1936, as he sought a second term against those who would freeze government spending and comfort the banks, while letting the people founder.
Change begins with saying aloud that which is wrong, saying it loudly and clearly, challenging those who would defend the wrong. The rest of it is best heard as Mr. Roosevelt said it, just three blocks from here.
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FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, FMR. PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace: business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs.
And we know now that government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob. Never before, in all our history, have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me. And I welcome their hatred.
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OLBERMANN: And there, Mr. President, is your template. Welcome their hatred. Seize the mood of this nation, identical tonight to what it was in 1936, nearly, as Mr. Roosevelt perfectly captured it. “Government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob.” And aspire also to what he added. “I should like to have it said of my first administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match.”
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