The president who is needed...

With the economic disaster of the Bush years (collapse of the economy and huge deficit in return for nothing but endless, costly wars), America needed one particular president.

America didn't need President Kennedy, President Nixon, President Ford, President Carter, President Reagan, President First Bush, or President Clinton.

A part of President Johnson was needed in terms of social programs that make life better for Americans. A part of President Eisenhower was needed in terms of developing large work projects like the interstate highway project. A part of President Truman was needed in terms of ending discrimination, this time for gay soldiers, in the military.

But mainly, following the disasters of President George W. Bush, America needed President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Obviously, on the 2008 campaign trail, John McCain, with his Republican beliefs that the economy would remedy its own problems without any governmental involvement, sounded like President Hoover, not FDR.

Barack Obama, pushed by other populists on the campaign trail, talked about the need for smart, progressive policies that would help citizens by adding jobs, end wasteful spending on overseas military occupancy, and provide a real, comprehensive health care plan.

With 15 million people out of work, America needs an FDR-style jobs creation plan that, in the same FDR manner, doesn't acquiesce decisions and funding to the will of the state governors and state governments. Some people say WWII got America out of the lingering problems of the Great Depression. But, if so, exactly how? It was because, in expanding FDR's pre-war jobs programs, Americans were put to work in communities and in factories that made products for the war effort. (Many of those factories, by the way, that were unionized then or later for good wages.) If FDR had deferred those jobs to some foreign, cheap-labor country, the war effort itself--employing large numbers of soldiers on the governmental payroll--would have been largely deficit without community and job benefit. That wouldn't have created a lasting, better American economy (and also is why modern wars are budget-busters now). FDR knew that jobs were needed here, whether or not there was a war.

Now in his presidency, we, and Obama himself, should hope that he is the FDR that the country desperately needed and needs. That's what will give Obama a legacy and pull America through its tough times.