How to be a Great American President

I have worked out the formula for creating lasting legacy, and an image of true greatness. Someone told me a while back that the American people remember FDR fondly because he carried them through the Great Depression—even if he did make it longer with his bad policies, he was there for the people, and suffered with them (even if he skimmed the cream off the top*).

So, here is the formula:

1. Run for president right after a stock market crash, preferably with a bank correction, and preferably one that the current president is fudging up.
2. Enter office and immediately pass a bunch of laws that will slow the correction and lengthen the recession, and bash business a lot, and take them to court; ideally turn the recession into a depression.
3. Once the recession has set in, begin to transfer powers previously held by other branches to the executive. Don’t forget to reach for the gold, you’ll never get it if you don’t try.
4. Use these new powers to create a bunch of new wings of government directly controlled by you, and use them to transfer money from one group in society to another—preferably, take from the whole people and give to small groups that will reward you with lots of good publicity and votes.
5. Most important: make soothing, well-written speeches. Lots of them.

If done right, all the powers over the economy will be nicely controlled from Washington. As written up at the Franklin D. Roosevelt American Heritage Center:

Under the New Deal, the federal government greatly extended its power over the economy. By the end of the Roosevelt years, few questioned the right of the government to pay the farmer millions in subsidies not to grow crops, to enter plants to conduct union elections, to regulate business enterprises from utility companies to airlines, or even to compete directly with business by generating and distributing hydroelectric power. All of these powers had been ratified by the Supreme Court, which had even held that a man growing grain solely for his own use was affecting interstate commerce and hence subject to federal penalties.

Of course, there are other things that you can do to be remembered well, including fighting a long war. But I think those 5 can already bring about a legacy. If we do not learn, history truly does have a way of repeating itself—in this case, likely because someone did learn from history, and wanted to be the next Great American President. Let's not let him.

* John Flynn recalls the scandals that occurred and were well documented by newspapers at the time, of the Roosevelts’ abuses of their position. For example, Elliot Roosevelt had his father convince the A & P Tea Company to loan Elliot $200,000, backed by shares in a Texas radio station. The company went along in order to avoid the New Deal inquiries that Roosevelt could enflame. In 1942, the President gave $4,000 to A & P and demanded the “worthless” stock back. It was worth $1 million, but A & P gave it back to the New Deal architect, and deducted the $196,000 loss off their tax returns.