America’s next great president: Why Obama’s departure paves the way for the next FDR

[frazzled]

1. That's weird

Because the president Obama has been most compared to so far is precisely Lyndon Baines Johnson. At least from the circle of presidential historians I saw a while back talking on Charlie Rose. I think Doris Kearns Goodwin was most on that track, and the opinion was that for moving social policy in this country -- civil rights and health care put Obama in the Lyndon Johnson league.

As for the palm greasing and bullying: that's pretty irrelevant. Not only did Johnson have huge Democratic majorities, but those were the days in which you could actually bargain with reasonable Republicans. There was some comity. Obama could offer them the moon plus the Keystone pipeline and invading Iran and they'd still refuse to vote for any of his jobs legislation or anything else.

Waiting for the next FDR is a fool's errand. You'd have to get another World War in there to make it happen.