Had Donald Trump been the U.S. president hosting this week’s APEC meetings, I have no doubt that the headline from the event would have been unchanged. It would have been: “He’s a dictator.”
The only difference is it would be Xi Jinping who was saying it to describe Trump.
Other than that, though, a Trump-hosted APEC meeting would likely have been unrecognizably different from the successful and productive forum hosted by President Joe Biden.
Can you explain for someone not from the US?
It’s very important to the US Right to demonize Franklin Roosevelt as much as possible. His policies included public works projects that employed millions, including artists and writers. He was an advocate of racial justice and general reformer. One of the really funny things is that the Right had to wait until most of the people who’d voted for FDR were dead before they could really unload on him. He was so popular in his lifetime that he won the Presidency four times.
Thanks for explaining.
He’s an amazing figure, no matter where you’re from. He was born rich and became a champion of the poor, overcame polio, and created policies that are still in place today.
Franklin D Roosevelt was a highly popular Democratic president who served 12 years (elected 4 times and then died in office) as president of the US. Generally speaking, the US has what are called term limits of 2 terms of 4 years maximum as the president. Before FDR, only a couple of presidents even attempted to run for a 3rd term as it was seen as tacky (though not illegal at the time) to try for longer service as the country’s leader. The two term limit was a tradition set by the first president George Washington who had the opportunity to become first literally and then effectively king of the United States after the revolution but declined to serve longer than 8 consecutive years. This unwritten rule essentially went unbroken until FDR came to power with such popularity that his opposition in the elections didn’t stand a chance.
Efforts to write into law the term limit tradition were spearheaded by Republicans for obvious reasons but in the end they were right to do so. The term limits should be used to stop situations like Putin in Russia and Xi in China who effectively run unopposed out of fear for people’s lives. They are presidents as much as any dictator is president. They may be president in name but effectively, they run the country and manager to always win despite their unpopularity both locally and internationally and if they were to run a fair election, they would simply lose.
The OP was suggesting that FDR was effectively an American Dictator in the same fashion of Vladimir Putin because of the fact that he was elected so many times. But the fact of the matter is that FDR was an incredible force of popularity in the country and pushed for many changes that impact equality among Americans and his policies, while radical for the time, have influenced both ends of the American political discussion for the better.
That is nothing to say why Republicans dislike FDR having been such a popular leader. That you may want to do your own research on.
Thanks for the explanation. I never knew anything about FDR before this, but he sounds like an interesting person to learn about.
I find your commnet lucid and thoughtful.
I’d argue that term limits are actually a bad thing. They weaken a President in his second term, and make it harder for them to push long term programs. The GOP actually screwed themselves, because Reagan would certainly have won a third term, as would Ike.
Also, in Congress and the Senate. Imposing term limits without campaign finance reform would just mean that the same fat cats would have to find new stooges ever other term.
I feel the issue at hand is less about the number of years or terms leading, and instead is about how hard each party tries to revert the others progress for the sake of “my party better” even though at the end of the day, the majority of citizens all want the same things and effectively disagree on a narrow handful of topics that the media uses to divide us. If we could see past the manipulation and vote for the leaders that will unite us then we wouldn’t need lifetime appointments because all of the leaders would be working together through time to move our country and world forward.
But as long as there is money in politics and ne’er-do-wells vying for power that we might allow into our leadership positions, we can stop them from driving our nation totally into the dirt by limiting how long they are allowed to serve. I feel similarly about Congress and the judiciary. Specifically age limits for Congress and both age and term limits for executive appointment supreme court seats.