Bill Clinton: What Obama can learn from FDR (Time)

[Jackeens]

Getting It Right

By PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON

My grandfather was a dirt farmer with only a sixth-grade education. During the Depression, he eked out a living selling blocks of ice. But in those days, even though he was poor, he knew someone special: from listening to the fireside chats on the radio, he knew Franklin Roosevelt. And he believed that Roosevelt knew what his life was like — and cared about it too.

I grew up listening to my grandfather's tales of what it was like to live through the Depression and the war and what Roosevelt meant to him. When I was President, in another time of change and uncertainty, I often looked at the portrait of F.D.R. in the Roosevelt Room and remembered my grandfather's stories.

More: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1906802_1906838_1906981,00.html