What would FDR do?

Published September 27, 2009 4:00am ET



In my Sunday Examiner column, I quoted from Barack Obama’s speech to the United Nations General Assembly last Wednesday, in a way that indicated a certain disapproval. In a Washington Post blogpost former George W. Bush chief speechwriter Michael Gerson is not so oblique as he issues a searing denunciation of Obama’s UN speech. My favorite paragraph:

Twice in his United Nations speech, Obama dares to quote Franklin Roosevelt. I have read quite a bit of Roosevelt’s rhetoric. It is impossible to imagine him, under any circumstances, unfairly criticizing his own country in an international forum in order to make himself look better in comparison. He would have considered such a rhetorical strategy shameful — as indeed it is.

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