Mary Grabar, Resident Fellow, The Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization (AHI), uses her in-depth knowledge of Franklin Roosevelt to give readers a historical perspective on this year’s presidential race. Her latest piece warns that Americans have reason to fear a replay of FDR’s four terms in the White House.
In “Kamala Harris is Poised to Revive the Worst Aspects of FDR’s Socialist Agenda” in the October 8 issue of The Federalist, an online magazine devoted to politics, religion, and culture, Dr. Grabar shows personal as well as policy parallels between the New Deal president and the current Democratic nominee. Her much-anticipated new book Debunking FDR: The Man and the Myths (Regnery 2024) will be published later this fall.
Roosevelt governed erratically, to say the least. He “was barely capable of keeping a sustained thought, flitting from one subject to another, like Kamala Harris does in ‘word salads.’” Just like Harris, FDR incorporated non sequiturs in his speeches, and his understanding of economics was abysmal. Yet he, like Harris, “felt himself qualified to plan the economy and the lives of all Americans.”
Just one example, according to Dr. Grabar, can be seen in his administration’s early approach to prices: “Instead of letting prices bottom out and the economy recover as it had after World War I, [his] Brain Trust ordered farmers … to plow under crops and then taxed processors.” The new National Recovery Administration bureaucracy had the paradoxical effect of driving out small businesses by fixing prices. As a result, people who were already hungry experienced food shortages and increased prices. Harris’ pressure on the federal government to curb what she calls producer “price-gouging” will have the same net effect as FDR’s policies.
Dr. Grabar says Harris and FDR also share a desire for redistributionism. Her ideas about wealth transfers sound a lot like New York Times columnist Nikole Hannah-Jones, who argues “for reparations because of advantages in white ‘generational wealth.’’’ Harris is a long-time admirer of Hannah-Jones.
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