When I was growing up in Michigan, in the 1950s, my family always spent our summer vacations camping in that state's beautiful state parks. The trails, the signs, rest stations, observation posts, and even the campsites themselves where we pitched our tents-- all of this infrastructure had been created by the public works projects FDR commissioned in the 1930s.
I remember feeling grateful to the nameless people who made my boyhood experiences possible. My cousins and I would range far out along the trails at Ludington, for example, especially the Island Trail, rich with blueberries. Occasionally, we would stumble upon deer, raccoons, skunks, even black bears, all of which scared the pants off of us, growing up as we did in the cities and suburbs of the great Midwest.
We'd retreat along those trails as fast as lightening.
When I suggest what this country needs now is a New New Deal, these are the memories that inform me. In the depths of the Great Depression, men and women paid by our national government produced socially valuable infrastructure projects that made my generation's experiences so much more rich than otherwise could have been imagined.
What I hope President Obama understands is this legacy. Today's needs are far more complex and vexing than those in FDR's time. Yet the magnitude of the challenge is roughly equivalent.
As I can contest, doing the right thing, as Roosevelt did, will not necessarily endear you to Americans as long as you shall live. I grew up in a time when I heard far more vilification of FDR from those dear to me than praise.
But the great arc of history flattens out these anomalies. This is what our new, young President needs to know. Your popularity in our time matters not. In your daughters' time, and beyond, the judgment will be cast.
Somehow, I suspect, Barack Obama knows what I am talking about...
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