But he was a master of manipulating the media, and of using the force
of government to do so, in effect FDR was able to rewrite history as
it happened.

Of course, George III (and every other president) do exactly the same thing.
Geroge III does it with unusual crassness. Bob, did you see the State Dept
report on Hannity's show or Limbaugh's show telling how terrorism was down
thanks to the policies of George III? They didn't report that a week later the
State Dept and Colin Powell were forced to admit that it was a pack of lies and
that we were actually less safe under George III, with terrorism up sharply
during his term of office.

Few people remember that by the time FDR took office the
economy was actually trending up again.

Few indeed. No sensible people, no historians--just a few John Birchers who
have no regard for the truth.

A similar situation is now in
effect where the economy has been trending strongly upward for almost
a year now, yet most people only hear the doom and gloom.

It's a legitimate question for the voters. If someone adopts disastrous
policies that eliminate 3 million jobs, should they be reelected if they
recover 1 million in the year before the election or should they be replaced
because of their net loss of 2 million? If the middle class has been ravaged
by tax cuts for the rich. should the proponent of those tax cuts be reelected
because Bill Gates is doing great?

FDR's economic policies, especially the defacto devaluation of the
dollar by 40% caused great economic disruption and only WWII saved the
US economy. I have often wondered if FDR was almost forced into going
to war due to his inability to deal with the economy in a successful
way.

You are right that the economy was very sluggish right up until the war. The
reason for that is very simple. At that time, the dawn of Keynesian economics,
the mechanisms of fiscal policy were poorly understood, and neither party
really knew how to dig us out of the hole.

The difference, and the reason for the confidence of the American people, was
that FDR was willing to relentlessly take action to reverse the effects of the
Great Depression. He legitimately felt the pain of the average American and
was willing to experiment with new means to deal with the problem.

Hoover just sat there and denied there was a problem. His job creation record
was--famously--aboutt as bad as George III.

Regards,
Tom