A danger in comparing President Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidency to President Obama's is that we often "Reaganize" FDR; collapsing his presidency into a singularity and ignoring the wavering between inaction and action that all presidents exhibit. Even as President Obama fails to mimic the ideas behind FDR's political and policy successes, it should be noted that a lot of FDR's missteps and failures vis-a-vis reform and economic policy, of which there were many, are being repeated by President Obama.
Another danger is the two situations don't entirely overlap.
That said, the State of the Union Address is around 6 weeks away, and President Obama can follow FDR's lead and set a fighting tone for the election year.
Once upon a time:
On December 16, 1935, the Republican National Committee, preparing for the presidential year, summed up the situation from the conservative viewpoint. "The United States," it declared, "is facing as grave a crisis as has arisen in its history. The coming election will determine whether we hold to the American system of government or whether we shall sit idly by and allow it to be replaced by a socialistic state honeycombed with waste and extravagance and ruled by a dictatorship that mocks at the right of the States and the liberty of the citizen." ("Shadows Ahead" p. 502, The Politics of Upheaval, Arthur Schlesinger. 1960.)
Sound familiar?
With this backdrop of a red-baiting and paranoid opposition, Franklin D. Roosevelt in late 1935 (mirroring the present moment in the current electoral timeline) had been inclined to "soft-pedal" further reform to curry favor with middle America, with advisor Henry Morganthau hoping that perhaps after a year of economic recovery further reform could be attempted. I'll quote Schlesinger here:
[FDR] faced a complex political problem: how to reawaken enthusiasm on his left without aggravating discontent on his right. His disposition, as he thought about the impending message to Congress, was not to abandon the policy of moderation but rather to conceal it in a garb of militancy. (p. 502)
Again, sound familiar? Schlesinger continues:
[FDR's] formula was to combine a radical State of the Union message with a conservative budget in the apparent hope that brave words would restore the faith of the left while lack of deeds might in time restore the hope of the right. (pp. 502-3)
Uh, sound even more familiar?
Pursuing this strategy, Franklin D. Roosevelt gave a State of the Union address in early 1936 which was long on fiery rhetoric and short on substance. The actual substance which followed these fighting words mostly focused on balanced budgets, anticipated relief cuts, and the desire to implement no additional taxes. Politically this speech was a success and helped FDR's re-election prospects. And it did so in an Obama-like way, too, with a fiery speech cloaking moderate policy.
And the strategy mostly worked for FDR (politically). He won in 1936 in a landslide, albeit with a different political landscape; the politics of the New Deal had allowed Democrats to win during the 1934 mid-term elections and cause Republicans to consider becoming more progressive. Of course, FDR's post-New Deal inclination to slow-walk further reform likely didn't help anyone (policy-wise) and may have led to the economic dip in the latter half of the 1930's. And events in the Spring of 1936 at least caused him to rethink his general "no new revenues" approach, as he proposed a new corporate tax in addition to the usual, "let's close the loopholes" approach favored by all presidents who want revenue without new taxes. But the speech was helpful in creating the populist aura FDR needed to pursue his centrist policy course in 1936.
There's still time for such a "militant" speech out of President Obama. But again it seems the real problem is that entering 2012 the president is not politically positioned to fight vehemently enough even rhetorically, as FDR was. Nor does President Obama appear disposed to fight in a State of the Union address as a matter of personal desire, as FDR also was. So in terms of the 2012 campaign, it seems to be a personality problem, not a political one, that forestalls the traditionally successful approach taken by (the then moderate, like President Obama) FDR -- I don't know if a personality issue is easier or harder to solve than a political one. Probably much harder.
This diary is mostly about rhetoric, but it's worth nothing that in terms of the policy needed, we've been here before. If we do the same thing again it will be "farce" as well as "tragedy".