From his recent interview with Katie Couric:
“When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed. He said, ‘look, here’s what happened.’”
Your history’s a little off, Biden. Roosevelt was elected in 1932 and inaugurated in 1933, both after the 1929 crash. Plus TV’s were not yet made for consumer production, and were considered experimental technology. Ben Smith of Politco Writes:
As Reason’s Jesse Walker footnotes it: “And if you owned an experimental TV set in 1929, you would have seen him. And you would have said to yourself, ‘Who is that guy? What happened to President Hoover?’”
As with anyone, if he comes out to correct it, we’ll remove it from the tally. +1 for the blue camp.
Thanks for the tips, Bob F. and David C.
Tags: Biden
September 23rd, 2008 at 8:18 pm
FDR wasn’t president during the actual crash, but he was president during the much longer and more devastating banking liquidity crisis that caused the crash and followed for years after. FDR also did get on the radio many times explaining what happened and what he was doing to fix it.
This is a just gaffe like McCain’s “hot bottled water” or Obama’s “57 states”.
September 24th, 2008 at 4:04 am
I agree with Eric. The point is that past Presidents would talk to Americans to explain issues and what they want to do to fix them and Bush has not done this. He made errors in history, but his central point is not a lie.
September 24th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
If this is the sort of nitpicky stuff (not platform related in the slightest) that the Dem’s are being called out on as “lies” - so be it. Renaud is right - his history is off but his main point is dead on and not a lie.
September 26th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Actually, I believe Biden simply misspoke — it seems obvious that he was referring to Roosevelt’s famous “fireside chats” (see http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/firesi90.html) on radio.
In fact, these “fireside chats” were a fairly innovative use of the radio medium to create an image of familiarity and intimacy with the president in the minds of the public — a technique later used to great effect by JFK in the television medium.
I’m willing to give Biden the benefit of the doubt, and accept that he simply conflated the two presidents’ similar use of broadcast media (FDR with radio and JFK with television). It would be an easy (and trivial) error to make.
Disclaimer: I am not an American, and I am not affiliated with any U.S. political parties, but I do have a dirty little secret: I am an historian. I teach this stuff, God help me.
September 27th, 2008 at 5:32 am
It’s really a stretch to call this a lie. Obviously Biden misspoke. He never mentioned the actual date of 1929, and he was clearly referring to the economic crisis that followed the crash and lasted for years. I guess I think of a lie as deliberately saying something that you know to be untrue to mislead. That doesn’t appear to be the case here.
September 29th, 2008 at 7:06 am
Yeah this isn’t a lie, its a mistake.