Monday, December 30, 2013

FDR and Obama--cut from the same cloth?

After watching the clips, I am wondering, is the old adage "the more things change, the more they stay the same" relevant here?

I know you were all relatively young in 2008, but our economy was very precarious, and we were not sure whether we would face another depression like in the 1930s.  This might make the comparison all the more relevant.


16 comments:

  1. Every democracy needs a leader and to be that you have to be chosen by the people. as long as democracy stands there will always be candidates actively looking for your vote and support. Also as a president you can gain prestige or be viewed as a failure hoover is seen as an incompetent ignorant fool, while roosevelt is seen as hero and trailblazer. when america went into its recession George bush received the brute for his failed policies and lack of sociability with the public. As the economy revives itself the president in office will be seen as a major success.

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  2. I think that Obama's and FDR's speeches are pretty similar; FDR's has a more strong tone and serious tone while Obama's has a more "soft" one, less violent, with music and stuff. But both of them sort of criticize the last presidents since it is the easier way to get people to their side. Obama does it more indirectly since he says what he believes in but he believes in everything that George Bush did not do. FDR is more violent and directly.

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  3. I think that that quote is relevant here. I think this because "the more things change" could be referring to things in the government like money or even who is running the country, the president. And "the more they stay the same" could be referring fact that all presidents are similar and have the same goals. Sometimes their dreams for the country may not come true, but each president has some type of thing they want to do to change the country, and most of the time its for the better. This quote could be perceived in many other ways in relation to america and its government/leaders. I agree with Laura on the speeches, they are similar. Most speeches done by presidents all sound the same or have something similar about them. They use different tones and kind of bash each other but not too harshly. They obviously do this just to get people to be on their side, like Laura said. Obamas speech is less towards saying all of the stuff he hates about Bush, and more of saying positive things. The positive things do go against what George Bush did, but he doesn't directly come out and say that Bush was awful and did nothing for this country.

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  4. Everyone needs a leader just like Sifiso said, and when bad things happen to a country the first person to blame is always the president or who ever is head in charge. But not all the time this would he his or her fault. It really is shocking that some people will never take any blame but to blame it on other people. But like what we have been talking about in class makes complete sense what Hoover was doing was all about independence and this is not the way to go at it but it is so much better as going together as a unit because a group of people is much strong then one single individual.

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  5. I think the two speeches were similar in the way that both leaders convinced people of a new way that would somehow effect our economy. Both leaders also convinced some people so much that they completely believed in everything that the leader said and thought it would indeed improve their economy, but both leaders only said enough to convince the people, and then conitinue to what they want but both did not prove successful at all. But then at the same time just like chandler said its not just the presidents fault, to start with , we the people, are the ones who elect our president, and there are many more people who have input on laws and how our country is wrong.

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  6. Some of you guys, above, said that both Obama and Roosevelt "criticize" the previous president a lot in order to make people to vote for them. And Obama did it more indirectly then Roosevelt did. I just want to add one thought that Obama didn't directly say "These are what Bush didn't do, and I will do them to make what what happen" probably is because Bush had done his two terms so there is no need to blame him but president Hoover had only done one term by the election of Roosevelt, so Roosevelt blamed the whole depression on him as what the public would do. Then Roosevelt would get more vote because the public would just think "Roosevelt is the President we need". Just like what sifiso said, the failure of a country would just automatically been counted as the president's fault.

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  7. I didn't like the FDR one because it didn't have sound at the beginning. Those are the kind of commercials that make you question whether or not you have to go to the bathroom because it's about nothing.
    Things do have to change because if we throw in our western motto of bettering over time than everything has to evolve or else you're screwed. Take russia for example they didn't evolve so they got lapped by every other country and now they no longer have to influence they once had and crave.
    honestlyobama is set because he has the suppert of the entire black community so theres no arguing him

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    1. when it became reality that america was ganna have their first black president people were flipping out. He could have done anything and he would still have such a big supports group strictly because of the fact that he's not white. Everything and anything he does is accepted and praised. Now with the whole healthcare debacle his ratings are going down in the polls but its not a big deal to his administration because he's not up for reelection. He has maybe a year till all the attention is back on the next gop candidate and our new president.

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  8. In a democracy, as sifiso said, the president is the single person that is the face of the serious decision making for our country, he has to be elected by the people for the people in order for the people to acknowledge what he says, the laws and bills he passes, etc. The two speeches were similar in the way that the focus was on something to somehow alter the economy which was at both times in both FDR and Obamas election time a serious problem for the united states. As everything has in the past few decades, advertising and public communications has become more advanced in the way that the same amount of criticism about the previous president is present in both FDR and Obamas ad's, but Obama's Ad was a lot more subtle about it. The public is extremely vulnerable to information on television and it has been proved many different times. Depending on the time of the broadcast, for example, in FDR's time the public would have been more effected by a more direct criticism, as in Obama's election time, because Bush was wildly popular, having been reelected a second time, the smarter idea for his ad was to criticize Bush, but not to the point that he would loose the vote of those who voted for Bush in the first two elections.

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  9. I found both of these speeches moving and inspiring. They are a lot similar. They both seem to criticize the previous president and his policies in order to gain more favor. I believe FDR's speech had a more serious overtone, but that may just be my interpretation because it's in black and white. Obama's words were a bit weak in that he didn't say much about what he was going to do. He just said what he believed in.

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  10. The phrase "the more things change, the more they stay the same" is relevant, because there will never be a point where there is absolutely no problems in the government. The government deals with similar issues every year, and with each new solution comes a new set of problems caused by those solutions. So with these solutions comes problems that pop up again and again. Many things that are constant and controlling in society have constant problems and fixing them is an endless cycle. With money, the country either has it or it doesn't. As the country pays it's loans, it takes out more for other things. That's why even if we consider ourselves "progressing", we will always have problems. Constant things work in endless cycles.

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  11. FDR's speech was much more serious and he criticized the previous president, President Hoover. On the other hand, President Obama's speech was more inspiring and enthusiastic. His video was created to try and get the support of the people and to get them to like him. However, he only talked about what he wanted to do once he became president, not how he would do it.
    I think that the quote "the more things change, the more they stay the same" is completely relevant because although many changes may occur, the deeper problem is not actually solved. For example, Hoover was president for the Great Depression. He tried to fix the country, but instead he made it worse in some ways. Hoover made many changes to try and solve the problems created by the Great Depression, but the more changes he made, the more things stayed the same.

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  12. At first I found it a little eerie how similar the two advertisements were, especially since they were for campaigns that were so far apart in history. Clearly, the old adage given above is emblematic of this occurrence. The saying is true because no matter how far we advance, our economy will still cycle between its prosperous high points and depressing low points. This will always be true, and this is why both candidates capitalized on the delicate economy of their time by promising economic prosperity to the American people and highlighting the faults of their predecessors.

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  13. There are a few factors which make the speeches be similar in the way they are delivered. For one, Obama was after bush who was considered to be "a bad president" not to mention that the economy was going through a downward spiral and people were beginning to become scared. FDR also came after a "bad president", Hoover who had tried to help the Depression but whose attempts only made it worst. In his situation however, they were actually in a state of panic. Perhaps these were the reasons why their ad campaigns were so similar. Similar in the presentation, in the way that they bash the other candidate (Obama in a less offensive and direct manner) and that they place the power with the people.

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  14. The quote does relate to changes in US during the Hoover and FDR's presidency. My understanding of the quote would be that apparent changes do not affect deeper levels or the core of a situation. While changes were made from Hoover to FDR, these changes still could not fully address the issues or solve all problems. Hoover preferred to help corporate, state government instead of individuals; FDR's plan was to tax the rich and help the poor. Bizarrely, what FDR was doing is similar to what Obama's plan. They are both elected during the crisis, and both were expected to relief the nation's stress. Providing financial relief to individuals are on both of their agenda. It is indeed interesting to see how patterns of history repeat, but sadly, no one has been able to fix the same problem yet.

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  15. I agree with almost everyone else because I do think that this quote is relevant to the two speeches. Both Obamas and FDRs speeches, while they both have different tones and structures, at the end both claim to offer the same idea of a new plan. The quote "the more things change, the more they stay the same" is relevant here because even though the presidents over the years keep changing and some of their overall outlooks on the country might be different, nothing ever changes and the problem keeps getting worse leaving the next president to deal with the same problem of the economy, etc. all over again.

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