President Barack Hussein Obama is no Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

On Wednesday, with unemployment at 7.6%, President Obama declared:

“A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe…”

Thursday, the president said:

“The time for action is now, because we know that if we do not act, a bad situation will become dramatically worse. Crisis could turn into catastrophe for families and businesses across the country.”

In 1933, with unemployment at 25%, President Roosevelt declared in his First Inaugural address:

This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

So, with unemployment three times what we face now, FDR expressed confidence in the American people to persevere without respect to any particular legislative action.

By contrast, President Obama declares that Americans can only avert catastrophe his particular $900 Billion and counting prescribed action is taken.

Actions matter, and in tomorrow’s column, in this daily series scrutinizing this critical debate over the so-called stimulus bill , I will scrutinize both the actions of FDR that prolonged the Great Depression as well as those that reinforced FDR’s confidence in an America people that did endure and went on to save the world from fascist domination and unprecedented prosperity.

I would suggest that Obama’s proposed actions more resemble those of Hoover without the Dam, and would suggest that FDR had not the luxury of hindsight that we have and that Obama and the Democrats seem determined to repeat mistakes made in the 1930s, some of which FDR reversed.

But I digress.

For today, my purpose is to remind with a quote from then candidate Obama directed at his opponent Hillary Clinton:

Words matter.

Yes, they do, and one of the reasons that both FDR and Ronald Wilson Reagan were great is that their words inspired Americans to excel.

Some have defended Obama’s fear tactics this week by equating them with President George W. Bush’s words after September 11, 2001 warning Americans that a vigorous defense at home and offense abroad was required to prevent further attacks on the homeland.

Over the past few years, I have even heard Bush critics cite FDR’s above “fear itself” quote as if it were a contrast. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The danger of fascism had not yet reared its expansionist head in 1933. When it did in the late 1930s, and especially after December 7, 1941, President Roosevelt did describe what we had to fear abroad.

By contrast, President Obama seems to have more confidence in despots abroad to play nice with us, that for Americans to overcome an economic crisis brought on by bad liberal housing/credit policies at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The fact is that Obama’s Pelosi GovernmentGrowthulus bill is the real danger to a quicker recovery.

Words matter, and Obama is becoming, fear itself.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson