A word of advice to Obama's critics

Read a biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (preferably one written by a professional historian rather than by a partisan hack). Granted, the circumstances (political, economic, international) were very different in many respects. Granted, too, the New Deal was of questionable efficacy in getting America out of the Great Depression an eventuality for which the country had to await the onset of the Second World War. But at least FDR was trying to do SOMETHING, something different from just relying on the same old nostrums (and the same old personnel) that had done so much to bring about the depression in the first place. Perhaps more importantly, Roosevelt saw the crisis confronting him as an opportunity to bring about (or at least try to bring about) certain fundamental changes in the relationship between government and society, as well as in some concrete governmental policies.
Does Obama have a comparable longer-term vision? It would seem so; indeed, one might claim that the current president, more open to contemporary realities, less hidebound by traditional constraints of class and gender and race, sees even farther than his predecessor of seven decades before. To what extent he will succeed in realizing his vision remains to be seen. But if nothing else, he offers a worthy alternative to those who prefer to seek solace in the latest biography of Herbert Hoover.