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Even before taking office nearly 17 months ago, President Barack Obama was being touted by hopeful Democrats as the next Franklin D. Roosevelt — he of the fabled "first hundred days" and the New Deal that was credited, with some dispute, with pulling the country out of the Great Depression. Mr. Obama's own spurt of action and remedial legislation upon taking office was not quite so swift. But in his second year, by pushing and shoving, by coaxing members of his own party in Congress, he did achieve historic health insurance reform.

I had to laugh at Mark Ryan's letter about George W. Bush claiming that "the man woke up every morning and tried to do what was best for all Americans" ("Bush will be lauded by history," April 30). Lying to get us into a war to try to finish what his daddy couldn't, which resulted in the deaths of so many U.S. soldiers, wasn't doing what is best for all Americans. It was what was best for himself. Also, Mr. Ryan's remark that "Mr. Bush will go down in history rated far better than the presidents before and after him" is wishful thinking.

Pub Date: 4/25/97

Paul Dickson, a Garrett Park resident, loves the origins of words and is a compiler of word books and dictionaries. So imagine my delight and pleasure when my friend, Mary Garson, who is also fascinated with etymology, gave me a copy of Dickson's recently published book, "Words from the White House," a dictionary of presidential utterances that have become a part of the American vernacular. The next time you use "iffy," you might be surprised to learn that the word goes back to the New Deal.

Fifty years ago today, Franklin D. Roosevelt died while sitting for a portrait by Elizabeth Shoumatoff at the Little White House in Warm Springs, Ga. It is probably true that everyone school age or older in 1945 remembers today where he or she was when the news came. FDR was only 63 and was thought, mistakenly, by the public at large to be in good health. After 12 years as president in the dawn of the age of mass communication, he was the most familiar public figure in American history. So his death was a more sobering, saddening, personal and unexpected event than even the attack on Pearl Harbor had been over four years before.

BOSTON - Is it too late to put a family trademark on the New Deal? The way things are going, the founding father of Social Security will be an icon for the crowd that wants to unravel it. All that's left is for the Bush administration to change its theme song from "Hail to the Chief" to "Happy Days are Here Again." First, we had vague and fond references by President Bush to his 1930s predecessor. GWB makes FDR sound like a favorite ancestor whose charming-if-dusty old ideas just need a brush-up to "serve the needs of our time."

In Ellen Feldman's recently published novel, Lucy, the narrator of the tale is none other than Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, telling of her long, romantic love affair with President Franklin D. Roosevelt. While the novel is fiction, the affair between the president and Mercer, a descendant of the Carroll family of Maryland, was not. Born the daughter of Carroll Mercer and Minnie Mercer and educated in private schools, Mercer was 22 when she began working as Eleanor Roosevelt's social secretary in 1914.

"FDR" is sublime.The 4 1/2 -hour biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, which begins at 9 tonight on PBS, could be the best nonfiction, or dTC "reality," program you will see all year.It's that good.It does much that is daring, and even more that is revealing and touching. Best of all, it never sentimentalizes its subject.For starters, it tackles without apology the great lie of the Roosevelt presidency -- that the president was not really paralyzed or physically helpless.In fact, he was. With no hip muscles, Roosevelt could have been blown over by a sudden breeze, says host David McCullough.

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT was the greatest president of this century. His greatness lay in his ability to give the nation hope in the midst of crushing Depression and to lead it to victory in World War II. But what was the wellspring of his vitality, of his joy in political battle, of his ability to identify so closely with millions of Americans whose lives differed so completely from his?Was it his intelligence, his intuitive sense about where destiny was leading, his ability to articulate and manipulate?

FDR By Jean Edward Smith Random House / 859 pages / $35 At the conclusion of the conference at Casblanca, Morocco, in January 1943, Winston Churchill accompanied Franklin Delano Roosevelt to the airport. The prime minister watched as the president was helped up the runway. He then returned to his limousine and told the driver to depart before the plane took off. "It makes me far too nervous," he sighed. "If anything ever happened to that man, I couldn't stand it. He is the truest friend; he has the farthest vision; he is the greatest man I have ever known."

Warning: What you are about to read is a deeply cynical view of the 2012 election. If you're looking for puppies and rainbows, check back with me another time. Many conservatives feel like this is the most important election in our lifetimes because we desperately need to reverse the damage done by the Obama administration and get the economy moving again. Indeed, each of the remaining GOP hopefuls makes some version of this argument. They will fix what President Barack Obama (or Washington)

Every week on the lecture trail, I meet progressives who are demoralized and/or infuriated by Barack Obama's performance as president. They insist that they will not work for him again or even vote for him. Many have signed petitions saying as much. They are finished with President Obama. I have criticized many of Mr. Obama's policies. But my progressive friends and allies are overlooking three things: (1) Many of them played a disastrous role in the 2000 election, preventing the Gore administration that should have been; (2)

Roma L. Klar, a former secretary who worked in the White House during the administrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman and ended her career with the Peace Corps, died Friday of heart failure at Brightview Assisted-Living in Catonsville. She was 98. Roma Lee Simmers, the daughter of farmers, was born and raised in Nowata, Okla., where she graduated in 1928 from Copan High School. After graduating in 1930 from Chillicothe Business College in Chillicothe, Mo., Mrs. Klar moved to Washington and went to work as a secretary for the federal government.

Even before taking office nearly 17 months ago, President Barack Obama was being touted by hopeful Democrats as the next Franklin D. Roosevelt — he of the fabled "first hundred days" and the New Deal that was credited, with some dispute, with pulling the country out of the Great Depression. Mr. Obama's own spurt of action and remedial legislation upon taking office was not quite so swift. But in his second year, by pushing and shoving, by coaxing members of his own party in Congress, he did achieve historic health insurance reform.

Joseph Ignatius Huesman, a retired Towson lawyer and World War II veteran, died March 3 of a stroke at Oak Crest Village. He was 88. Mr. Huesman, the son of a Canton Railroad shop worker and a homemaker, was born in Baltimore and raised in Mount Washington. After graduating from Loyola High School in 1939, Mr. Huesman earned a bachelor's degree in 1943 from what is now Loyola University of Maryland. A day after graduating from college, he joined the Marine Corps. After attending officer candidate school at Quantico, Va., he was commissioned a second lieutenant in July 1943, and was assigned to the Marine detachment aboard the heavy cruiser USS Quincy.

You hear lots of comparisons between our current economic troubles and the Great Depression. One big difference: Back then, a worried nation had President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his fireside chats. In these radio broadcasts, Roosevelt explained the crisis of the moment and what steps he and Congress were taking to fix it. He encouraged Americans to play their part, whether it was to have patience or make sacrifices. Roosevelt's words guided the country through its worst economic days and a war. And their calming effect still works today.

FDR: INTO THE STORM, 1937-1940.Kenneth S. Davis.Random House.664 pages. $35."I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished." So said Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his eloquent second inaugural address in January 1937.He spoke not in "despair," but in "hope." He was determined to finish what the New Deal had begun four years earlier: "to make every American citizen the subject of his country's interest and concern. . . . The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."

Fifty years ago this Wednesday, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died. I was only 8 years old, but I can recall the day as if it were yesterday. I was in my father's barber shop during the afternoon of April 12, 1945, when the news was brought in by doleful neighbors. Within a hour or so, my town's main street was filled with weeping citizens.Ironically, the man who appeared so loved that he was elected four consecutive times to the White House is not the object of such widespread adulation today.

The Forgotten Man A New History of the Great Depression By Amity Shlaes Harper/Collins / 464 pages / $26.95 "The people of my district still have Franklin Roosevelt's picture on the walls of their homes," a Chicago congressman declared in 1960. "They remember the black days of the Depression, and how Roosevelt led them out of it." Historians tend to agree that Roosevelt provided masterful leadership in the two great crises of the 20th century - the Great Depression and World War II - and deserves to be ranked among the nation's greatest presidents.