It was really irresponsible of him to run when he had polio.

Our history would be so much better if he had just told everybody he couldn't handle the duties of the Presidency due to illness, and told the Democrats to run J. Hamilton Lewis. After all, Lewis was so much more electable and had so much more chance of beating Hoover.

If he had just acted responsibly and bowed out, maybe we would never have had that pesky New Deal legislation, including the WPA which employed my grandfather and the Social Security that now supports my partner. And, of course, he would not have sent the Democratic party spiralling down the toilet into irrelevance, depriving them of political power for decades. They have hardly yet extricated themselves from the terrible fallout of his crippled reign.