Obama’s a looming presence at exhibit of FDR’s first days

Sworn in as president in the midst of a deep economic crisis, Franklin D. Roosevelt turned his first 100 days into a swirl of action as he sought to right the sinking ship of state.

At first glance, the analogy between Roosevelt in 1933 and President-elect Barack Obama in 2009 seems almost too obvious. But at the New-York Historical Society, a new exhibition, “A New President Takes Command: FDR’s First Hundred Days,” avoids overly simplified comparisons between the early stage of the New Deal and expectations surrounding the new administration.

Curator Stephen Edidin says comparisons between the two presidents taking office, one during the Great Depression, the other in the middle of the worst economic crisis since then, are complex.

“When it first came up in the press, people tried to make it a direct parallel, but Obama himself said that’s not really the case,” he said. (Obama has said he wants to be judged on his first 1,000 days, not 100.)

The exhibition consists of items selected from the permanent collection of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, N.Y. Last spring, that museum had its own FDR exhibition, “Action, and Action Now: FDR’s First 100 Days.”

Edidin notes that the most famous line in Roosevelt’s inaugural speech, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” did not draw applause at the time.

“The one that did was, ‘Action, action now,’ ” he said.

This theme is illustrated by a political cartoon showing a heroic FDR at the throttle of a smoke-belching locomotive labeled “U.S. Recovery-New Deal Special,” as Uncle Sam stands trackside cheering him on.

Other cartoons also portray him as a man of action -- chopping down a tree labeled “Do Nothing Policy”; walking a tightrope above Niagara Falls with the headline, “Hazardous -- But It Must Be Done”; and as a lumberjack breaking up a logjam of issues such as “National Defense,” “Petty Politics” and “Beer Problem.” The last one, Edidin said, refers to an FDR initiative to legalize low-alcohol beer, a precursor to the repeal of Prohibition in December 1933.

The drawings of Roosevelt at the time offer no hint of him as a polio victim -- a handicap that amazingly remained semi-secret throughout his presidency.

A set of the braces is included in the exhibition, all of which fills just a single wall case -- perhaps appropriate for a display covering less than 3% of Roosevelt’s 3,692 days in the White House, most of them filled with tumult.

The most interesting items include original typewritten pages of Roosevelt’s famous fireside chats on radio. The pages, with handwritten marginal notes, are the ones from which FDR actually spoke to millions.

“They felt they were making an immediate connection with the populace . . . even though the chats were totally scripted, the same way the photography was,” Edidin said.

Largely in response to the fireside chats, the White House began receiving 50,000 letters a week, 10 times what Roosevelt’s predecessor, Herbert Hoover, had received.

A New Yorker magazine cover dated March 4, 1933 -- Inauguration Day -- depicts an ebullient Roosevelt seated in a limousine next to a dour-faced Hoover, whose own attempts to cope with the collapsing economy had largely failed.

According to Edidin, that cover, drawn weeks earlier by famed cartoonist Peter Arno, was never published. “The editors pulled it because they didn’t think it was serious enough,” he said.