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The quintessential counterpoint to the age of Bush fear, of course, was the golden age of FDR who told America in his first Inaugural Address: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." What a contrast to the Bushevik slogan: "Be afraid, always afraid, so we can seize unlimited power."

In the "Defining Moment: FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope," Jonathan Alter has penned a 400-page well-researched book that describes how a man crippled by polio restored optimism to a nation stricken by the economic failures of Republican rule. In short, Roosevelt galvanized Americans to believe that they could surmount the hardships of the Great Depression through a unified national resolve.

For FDR, we were all in this together. For Bush, we are all in this separately.

Alter emphasizes that Roosevelt created an aura of hope that often superseded his slow start in actually accomplishing concrete goals in the beginning of his first administration. His first order of business was repairing a crisis of spirit among the American people. And, to that extent, he succeeded magnificently.

By 2006, FDR had become the whipping boy for the right wing nuts of all that is wrong with America, probably because he believed that the relationship between the people of American and their government is a sacred, mutually beneficial trust. This is anathema to the Bushes, Norquists and Cheneys of the world, whose motto is, "Give me and my friends all the loot and get lost."

The irony, of course, is that FDR was uniquely qualified to ensure the continuance of a democracy and the capitalist economic system in the United States, at a time when the discontent among the Depression's poor and unemployed WW I Veterans was ready to boil over into Communism or something akin to it.

So the man who saved capitalism is now the voodoo doll for the wing nuts. It just shows you how brain dead they are.

Alter is known to many BuzzFlash readers as a long-time liberal Newsweek columnist and commentator for NBC. He's a hometown boy for BuzzFlash, since he is from a prominent liberal Democratic family in Chicago and married to the sister of a friend of ours. He's also a great guy.

We like "The Defining Moment," because it is great to recall a time of hope, when leadership meant eliminating fear not fanning its flames.

Read his book. It's nice to remember when you could have pride in your government and trust your leadership.

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