Bill Clinton, ever the sensitive one

From an essay by Bill Clinton titled "Getting it Right" in Time magazine's "Annual Making of America Issue," with its theme of "What Barack Obama Can Learn From FDR" --

Roosevelt understood that in a complex and perilous situation, you have to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time, and he was masterful in doing a variety of difficult things simultaneously.

Nice try, Thom

Subtle revisionism by Air America's Thom Hartmann on Friday in observing the anniversary of FDR's birth in 1882. Here is what Hartmann said before playing two audio clips from speeches by Roosevelt --

HARTMANN: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, speaking of what he saw when he became president ...

ROOSEVELT: I see one third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished ...

HARTMANN: ... And what he proposed to do about that, he said we have, that generation, and I would say again ...

ROOSEVELT: There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations, much is given. Of other generations, much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.

HARTMANN: There you go.

What Hartmann neglects to mention is that Roosevelt made the first remarks cited above in his second inaugural in January 1937, fully four years after he took office, and not "when he became president" as Hartmann claims. That four year time span, not incidentally, dovetails with the time it took for FDR's predecessor, Herbert Hoover, to allegedly cause the Great Depression.

Nor did Hartmann mention that Roosevelt's famous "Rendezvous With Destiny" speech was delivered at the Democratic National Convention in June 1936, in the last year of FDR's first term.

Hmm, wasn't there another political figure at the White House confined to a wheelchair?