Jon Meacham frequently offers erroneous assessments of either history or politics within the pages of the magazine he edits.

In Newsweek‘s year-end issue, Meacham offers examples of both types of error.

In his editor’s note, he gives us this gem about the America of 1933, Newsweek‘s inaugural year and the first year of a new presidential administration:

Then, Franklin D. Roosevelt … was coming to power, and before he was done we were living in a completely different, and better, world.

What’s not said explicitly but is certainly implied in that sentence is that FDR’s policies helped make the world “different, and better.” The world was certainly different in 1945, when FDR died in office, and it was undoubtedly better.

But you’d have a hard time making the case that FDR’s policies, which extended the Great Depression through two full presidential terms, made the world a better place. The successful conclusion of World War II was responsible for that result.

Perhaps Mr. Meacham should read Amity Shlaes’ book-length account of the impact of Roosevelt’s misguided policies before he returns to his own book-writing endeavors.

More disturbing than the misplaced FDR worship, perhaps, is Meacham’s second major error: a failure to distinguish between right and left. In an article about power, he tells us:

The discussion of power makes many left-of-center Americans somewhat
uncomfortable, for it can be offensive to democratic sensibilities.
Many right-of-center Americans, too, find the conversation unsettling,
for it inevitably leads to thoughts of a governing elite, which
conservatives in recent decades have chosen to vilify for rhetorical
purposes.

Really? I think you’ll find the many “left-of-center Americans” have no problem discussing power: the power to confiscate and redistribute wealth, to set rules and regulations for the way people conduct their lives, to insert government into more and more areas of the private sector. It’s fear of power falling into the wrong hands, not the offense to “democratic sensibilities,” that bothers them.

As for Meacham’s characterization of those on the right, he suggests that concerns about a “governing elite” amount to mere rhetoric. Not so. While some partisans on the right (take John McCain … please) could abide a big government that adopts policies they prefer, most believe the answer to a failing government is less government. Fear of a governing elite is fear of the exact state of affairs that modern-day progressives support.