Hannah Drossman's List: HISTORY AA

• For his efforts to settle the Russo-Japanese War, he became the first American to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
• He studied with tutors until he went to college at Harvard, where he earned good grades, wrote a book, The Naval War of 1812 (published in 1880), and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1880.
• Rose's father, John "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald, once served as mayor of Boston, while Joseph's father was the son of a former state representative and Boston ward boss.
• Joseph was the president of Columbia Trust, a bank in East Boston.
• moved the Kennedy family into a two-story mansion
• Roosevelt had no prospects for a presidential appointment, and he went to South Dakota, bought a ranch, raised cattle, wrote two books, helped arrest a band of outlaws, and lost about half of his net worth when his cattle died in severe winter weather.
• "Roosevelt was a many-sided man and every side was like an electric battery," said his friend, the nature-writer John Burroughs. "Such versatility, such vitality, such thoroughness, such copiousness, have rarely been united in one man."
• exclusive private school in Wallingford, Connecticut
• After graduating he studied briefly at Princeton before entering Harvard in fall 1936.
• majored in government
• Franklin Roosevelt appointed Joseph Kennedy as ambassador to Britain in 1937
• He spoke French and German fluently.
• After the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor in December 1941, John Kennedy joined the U.S. Navy and served in the Pacific.
• August 2, 1943, Lieutenant Kennedy steered his boat, PT 109, from Rendova Harbor in the Solomon Islands into Blackett Strait, where he joined other PT boats on patrol.
• Although in later life Roosevelt remembered Harvard primarily as a place where he had a good time, his record shows that he worked hard, usually studied about 40 hours a week, and earned solid grades.
• By 1902, inflation was high, and the citizenry blamed the trusts for high prices. Roosevelt responded by ordering his Justice Department to file an antitrust action against the Northern Securities Company, a holding company run by the richest men in the United States to control railroad rates. When the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the government's prosecution, Northern Securities was broken up. Roosevelt was nicknamed "trustbuster" for the Northern Securities case and the additional 40-plus prosecutions (including John D. Rockefeller's oil trust and James B. Duke's tobacco trust) that his administration pursued.
• He spent time completing his Naval History of the War of 1812, which he had started in college. One of several books he wrote over the years, it went through three editions, and reviewers praised it.
• portrayed him as a youthful, vigorous candidate.
• romantic idol

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• On February 14, 1884, Roosevelt's first wife,   Alice Lee Roosevelt, died during childbirth.   His mother died on the same day. After these   tragedies, Roosevelt spent time during the next   two years on his ranch in the Badlands of the   Dakota Territory. There, he had invested $40,000   in cattle on the Maltese Cross Ranch. He also   set up a second ranch, the Elkhorn and spent   many years as a cattle rancher. He mastered   his sorrow living in the saddle, driving cattle,   and hunting big game.
• Roosevelt   took an active part in ranch life, even looking   the part of a cowboy.
• He led two major scientific expeditions for   prominent American museums. One expedition was   to South America, and the other to Africa.

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• Dr. Thomas Woodrow Wilson was both a scholar and an active participant in American constitutional development. Trained in history and law, Wilson became one of the first practitioners of the new academic political science that was born in America toward the close of the nineteenth century. He taught at Bryn Mawr College and Wesleyan University, and became a professor at, and later president of, Princeton University.

• Wilson's great achievement as president was to persuade Americans, with impressive subtlety, to accept radical economic reforms and internationalism.
• In those days, before the age of mass media and mass participation, a president had to convince the elites that owned newspapers and ran political organizations of his cause. This allowed and even encouraged the nuances of a political philosopher.

• His first move—to hold regularly scheduled press conferences with the Washington press corps—was an innovation.
• Wilson's intentions were, of course, to control the flow of information from the capital to the country and to use it to shape public opinion. And this he did successfully, on the whole.
• Wilson also sought to educate and shape public opinion through state papers, addresses, and public statements. No president in American history has used these media with such remarkable power and success as Wilson did.
• On the highest level of discourse—when he sought to end the war in Europe, to enunciate American war aims, or to plead for ratification of the Treaty of Versailles—Wilson claimed to speak not for himself but for the American people.

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• Franklin Roosevelt's personality, liked by 80.3%,  disliked by 11.7%* of the people (liked in fact by a majority in every  section of the U. S., of every class and occupation)
• F. D. R. as  President, approved of "in general" by 54.8%, disapproved of by  33.9%
• Against F. D. R. in general are the Prosperous (61.3%) who dislike him  on every point except his personality, rearmament policy,  international policy.
• Retired people (56.8%) who like  only his personality, his rearmament and international policies

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• Series of weekly radio broadcasts delivered by U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on his plans to combat the Great Depression, so called because many Americans sat by their hearths to hear the president on their home radios.
• Roosevelt first took to the airwaves at 10 P.M. eastern time on March 12, 1933, to address the nation on the impending bank crisis.

• During the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt used the medium of radio to deliver a series of "fireside chats." In the broadcasts, Roosevelt attempted to garner public support for his New Deal programs. The increasing use of broadcast technology revolutionized the presidency. As presidents became more responsible for directly communicating with the public, charisma and rhetorical style played increasingly important roles in defining the effectiveness of a president.

     
• FDR's years in office would be marked by memorable feats of rhetoric, and elements of Roosevelt's speeches became part of popular culture.
• Therefore, although he inherited the problems resulting from the stock market crash and early phases of the national economic crisis later known as the Great Depression, Roosevelt projected images of hope and recovery.
• Through these direct appeals to the American voter, Roosevelt attempted to convince the nation that intervention against Germany and Italy was the best course of action for the security of the country.
• From his programs to his epigrammatic phrases, such as "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself," Franklin Delano Roosevelt helped shape the way Americans thought about the nation's character and fortitude.

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• A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Thursday indicates that 71 percent of the American public disapprove of how Bush is handling his job as president.
• "No president has ever had a higher disapproval rating in any CNN or Gallup Poll; in fact, this is the first time that any president's disapproval rating has cracked the 70 percent mark," said Keating Holland, CNN's polling director.
• "Bush's approval rating, which stands at 28 percent in our new poll, remains better than the all-time lows set by Harry Truman and Richard Nixon [22 percent and 24 percent, respectively], but even those two presidents never got a disapproval rating in the 70s,"
• President Nixon's disapproval rating in August 1974 stood at 66 percent
• The poll also indicates that support for the war in Iraq has never been lower. Thirty percent of those questioned favored the war, while 68 percent opposed it.
• The poll's sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

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• Personality cults sometimes form in power-hungry regimes, such as Stalinist Russia or Mao's China. Through extensive government-led propaganda campaigns, the leader is elevated to an almost divine level. He is venerated as a liberator and a savior in the war against good and evil. He wins the blind adulation of an effectively brainwashed public. And he is neither questioned nor held accountable.
• Much of Bush's popular appeal comes from his well-rehearsed down-home Texas style.
• Combine the good ol' boy demeanor with religion, and you've got yourself a ticket to red-state glory. Bush overcame a nasty drinking problem when he found religion. This became his new addiction, his new obsession, his new escape from reality.
• In July of 2004, Bush told an Amish group in Pennsylvania that "God speaks through me."

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• “Wilson very definitely gave the impression of being a cold fish, but he was a deeply passionate  man,” says writer Louis Auchincloss.
• He believed that he was directed by God, and he frequently said so. He  thought that God had made him president of the United States.”
• He believed that he was directed by God, and he frequently said so. He  thought that God had made him president of the United States.”

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• But in truth, he had a great capacity for warm friendship. His energy, magnetic personality, and high ideals won for him the loyalty of many friends and political supporters.

• From Reaganism to Clintonism and Back to Bushism

• The closest to Bush's average of six references per major address is Ronald Reagan, who averaged 4.75 in his comparable speeches.  

   
• Jimmy Carter, considered one of the most pious of presidents, mentioned God only twice in four addresses, according to the analysis. Other also-rans in God references were Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson -- also wartime presidents -- at 1.69 and 1.5 references per speech, respectively.
• Presidents since Roosevelt have commonly spoken as petitioners of God, seeking blessing, favor and guidance. By contrast, Domke said, Bush's pronouncements position him as a prophet, issuing declarations of divine desires for the nation and world.
• For example, Bush said in 2003 that "the liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity."
• "It's one thing to state that there is a God and that Americans should listen to Him, which is what presidents have generally done," Domke said. "In contrast, Bush speaks as if he knows exactly what God wants."

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