FDR biographer Jean Edward Smith has a good one:
PRESIDENT OBAMA’S apparent readiness to backtrack on the public insurance option in his health care package is not just a concession to his political opponents — this fixation on securing bipartisan support for health care reform suggests that the Democratic Party has forgotten how to govern and the White House has forgotten how to lead.
This was not true of Franklin Roosevelt and the Democratic Congresses that enacted the New Deal. With the exception of the Emergency Banking Act of 1933 (which gave the president authority to close the nation’s banks and which passed the House of Representatives unanimously), the principal legislative innovations of the 1930s were enacted over the vigorous opposition of a deeply entrenched minority. Majority rule, as Roosevelt saw it, did not require his opponents’ permission....
Roosevelt relished the opposition of vested interests. He fashioned his governing majority by deliberately attacking those who favored the status quo. His opponents hated him — and he profited from their hatred. "Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today," he told a national radio audience on the eve of the 1936 election. "They are unanimous in their hatred for me — and I welcome their hatred."
....
Roosevelt understood that governing involved choice and that choice engendered dissent. He accepted opposition as part of the process. It is time for the Obama administration to step up to the plate and make some hard choices.
Health care reform enacted by a Democratic majority is still meaningful reform. Even if it is passed without Republican support, it would still be the law of the land.
Healthcare reform enacted by a Democratic majority is the only real reform we're going to get. There won't be a Republican effort at all to support it, if the comments of one of the only Republicans "negotiating" is any guide. And if it's up to President Snowe, it is highly unlikely to be meaningful.
It's not too late for Obama to take a lesson from FDR on this. There's far worse fates for history to judge than to be hated by right-wing extremists.