From time to time, 1601 Pennsylvania Avenue will ask house residents their greatest regrets during their time in office. A literal apology is not required. We leave that to the discretion of the ex-president. Today’s ex-president: Franklin Roosevelt.
Franklin Roosevelt: Bullet proof. I am mother f–king bullet proof. And that doesn’t count the time Johnny Ola tried to kill me.
I assumed the moral authority to fundamentally change the relationship between citizens and their government in a manner unseen since the Civil War. I employed a nakedly political strategy to alter the membership of the Supreme Court so they could rubber stamp my agenda. I feigned association with the Common Man when my idea of privation is Sunday brunch without strawberries and cream. I spit in the face of the hallowed two-term only tradition established by George Washington himself. Many historians now argue my shotgun blast of economic recovery programs actually extended the Depression in the United States as other industrialized nations emerged from the calamity.
And for all of this I’m lionized because I gave toothless morons jobs digging holes in Yosemite Park and let Churchill beat me in Hearts during WWII. Statues, airports, elementary schools. If I were alive at this moment, do you think I’d ever handle a dime? Possibly, if only to flick them at Latins.
But the real evidence I’m bullet proof? I ordered over 70,000 Americans into concentration camps because their skin color was different than mine.
