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Advice to President Joe Biden
From President Franklin D. Roosevelt
On January 20, 2021, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. took the oath as the 46th President of the United States of America. As he put it in his inaugural speech:
“Few people in our nation’s history have been more challenged or found a time more challenging or difficult than the time we’re in now. Once-in-a-century virus that silently stalks the country. It’s taken as many lives in one year as America lost in all of World War II. Millions of jobs have been lost. Hundreds of thousands of businesses closed. A cry for racial justice, some four hundred years in the making moves us. The dream of justice for all will be deferred no longer.
“The cry for survival comes from planet itself, a cry that can’t be any more desperate or any more clear. And now a rise of political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism that we must confront and we will defeat.”
In looking forward to the challenges he faces, I recommend our 46th President first look back to the experience of our 32nd President, who also assumed office in the midst of challenging and difficult times, which threatened to overwhelm the nation.