My earliest memories of US elections go back to the FDR era - following the Great Depression of the Thirties and his New Deal that changed the face of USA and much of the world at that time - for good or evil. And now the Americans and rest of the world face another recession, reminiscent of the Great Depression, and pine for a great leader to pull them out of their misery.
I have lived through the era of 14 US Presidents and Barack Hussein Obama will be the 15th, if I live long enough to see his inauguration on January 20, 2009. Earliest name of a then living US President that I remember (only vaguely) is Herbert Hoover, who presided over the Great Depression of 1929 and early thirties.
The one I vividly recall is Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) who assumed office in 1933 and continued till his death in April 1944 due to a brain haemorrhage. Though a cripple much of his adult life (he was struck by polio and lost use of his legs) he was elected for four consecutive terms and can rightly be called a President for Life, since he died in office during his fourth term, succeeded by his Veep, Harry S. Truman.
FDR is renowned for many things. His New Deal pulled Americans out of the Great Depression and built the nation to its eventual greatness. He saw the rise of Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, General Franco and Tojo, who unleashed the Second World War, besides several other aggressions of conquest.
USSR had gone Communist earlier, but Joseph Stalin's era coincided with FDR's. USA, aloof during the early war (WWII) years, joined the fray when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour on December 7, 1941. US entry in the war changed the complexion and fortunes of war resulting in ultimate defeat of the Axis Powers.
During FDR's time, the Manhattan Project was started, but it was left to his successor (HST) to unleash the horrors of nuclear war when he gave orders to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. That was also the time when Bretton Woods conference established the international financial institutions like the IMF, W.B. et al, and the UNO came into existence, with the avowed purpose of banishing war from the globe for all time, which in hindsight, looks like a cruel joke!
US PRESIDENTS FOLLOWING TRUMAN ARE AS FOLLOWS:
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a) Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-60)
b) John F. Kennedy (1961-63)
c) Lyndon B. Johnson (1963-68)
d) Richard Nixon (1969-71)
e) George Agnew (1971-72)
f) Gerald Ford (1973-76)
g) Jimmy Carter (1977-80)
h) Ronald Reagan (1981-88)
i) George Bush (Sr) (1989-92)
j) Bill Clinton (1993-2000)
k) George Bush (Jr) (2001-08)
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