The most influental U.S. presidential loser of the 20th Century?

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

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Yes halting the banking collapse was due to his PR skills, why doesn't he deserve due credit for something that was 100% on him such as his PR skills? PR skills are vital to a good presidency in time of crisis and if his were such that he stopped one of the worst threats to our banking system than I'd say he's put them to a very good use.

First off, I'd already acknowledged that when it came to PR that was the one are FDR excelled at.  Still, it wasn't the only way the crisis could have stopped, merely the quickest.

There were other examples of strikes and labor-management conflict you declined to cite. San Fransisco in 1934, for example, ...

For obvious reasons, I'm more familiar with labor issues that affected the South than San Francisco.  I figured one example would suffice to illustrate my point.

The problem with using something that happened in 1934 to say he had a poor record on that, was that it ignores the Wagner Act (1935) which radically altered the balance of power from management to labor, and at least temporarily brought a form of mediation to the constant bickering. It wasn't a perfect system (strikes were rampant and a bit too much power was given to big labor), but it ended the even more unbalanced status quo that had previously existed for 50 years, yes.

Actually, I'd argue that the Wagner Act set up an equally unbalanced status.  We didn't really get a good balance on this issue until Taft-Hartley.

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Robert Moses isn't the sum of all New Deal beautification and construction projects.

No, but he's a handy example, especially since his work is often criticized.

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It well known he was merely a very strong advocate of a national level conservation corps (based on the success of the examples you mentioned) rather than its originator. I think I'm missing your point in this here somewhere?

My point is that if some other person had won the Democratic nomination in 1932, there was a fair chance he would have established similar programs.  If one is going to claim that FDR was a spectacular success in all areas, as was done in the post I was replying to, then that implies that there was something uniquely special about the man.

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This postulates that US involvement in WWII was inevitable and a complete accident. That's not a view I can reconcile with. Certainly the buildup and mobilization could have been ordered much later than it was IRL.

Lend-Lease could have happened later or even not at all with a different President, but not the American buildup.  That had begun well before the start of WWII in response to the buildups begun in Europe and Japan.

[Frink]

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Well I think we can agree that you probably don't end up with Taft-Hartley without the Wagner Act happening first. The central point I was trying to make is that it halted a good deal of the extremely heated labor unrest we were seeing on the West Coast in 1934, Minnesota, etc. by moving it to the courts.

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Wow.. I just realized how much of an arrogant bastard I came off as there. I apologize.

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I was claiming the main accomplishments of his presidency as a whole were evidence of a spectacular success; not that FDR was a uniquely special saint thrust down upon us from the gods for good behavior. I don't think I implied that at all, but merely implied that I think the real accomplishments of his presidency were a spectacular success.

For the record I think if Garner or Smith had won the nomination there is a good chance we would have seen similar relief programs out of both necessity and utility. Smith, in particular, probably only took his rightward turn in reaction to his loss to Roosevelt in the convention.

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It wasn't to the same scale as it was starting in about 1938/39 or so, but yes it was a not often talked about part of the New Deal from the beginning.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Goldwater.

He shifted the GOP back to Cosnervatism, became a Cosnervative icon, and, don't forget this, ended up inspiring Reagan to get into politics, which led to something called the "Reagan Era", which shifted America back to the right, more to pre-FDR alignment. Reagan caused a more moderate candidate like Clinton to win the Democratic nomination instead of a genuine, bonafide Liberal, and thus, this all leads back to Goldwater's devastating loss in 1964.

[Phony Moderate]

Probably Barry Goldwater.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Despite all the ardent arguing for Goldwater, there may be another...

According to wikipedia, Al Smith helped for the "New Deal Coalition" of workers and immigrants that helped FDR get elected. I this is accepeted as true, then Al Smith may be the most influential loser, having casued subsequent success for the Democrats for five straight terms, as well as helping America move more to the Left between 1932 and 1980. However, that's only if what Wikipedia said is true about the "New Deal Coalition".