Roosevelt deserves honor

I read with much amusement Josh Buckman’s op-ed (Jan. 22 commentary, “President undeserving of being honored on dime”) regarding the face of Franklin Roosevelt on the American dime. America has a great leader on its dime! Trying to equate Jayson Blair with a Pulitzer Prize and Joe Namath as head of NOW in the same breath with the minted image of FDR on the dime is conservative jabberwocky.

My grandfathers never knew much prosperity growing up and later trying to raise sizeable families in poverty-stricken southeastern Kentucky. What jobs and prosperity they did have were thanks to the work of Democrats like FDR and Harry Truman. Many of the New Deal programs did give jobs to many Americans who were out of work despite even if unemployment went up during his second term. I believe many of great projects such as Grand Coulee Dam and Tennessee Valley Authority resulted from U.S. Government policies brought about by FDR.

…Reagan was a B actor and he was a C minus president in my opinion. Reagan’s tax cuts and policies brought about the largest government deficits in history at that time. Yes, Reagan did help to bring about the decline and fall of “the evil empire.” However, this came about through consistent U.S. government policy by the administrations of Harry Truman (and probably back to FDR) to George Herbert Walker Bush. But sometimes it is necessary to team with evil to fight evil. If it hadn’t been with the help of our major Allies, the Soviet Union and Great Britain, we might be having German promoted in our schools as a second language. If memory serves me, the U.S. government under Ronald Reagan helped arm Sadaam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. Look where that has gotten us today!

Reagan already has at least one airport, an aircraft carrier and possibly a federal building and a few elementary schools named after him, that’s enough. I couldn’t stomach to see him on the dime.

James Engle Jr.

Father of Western student

Brandenburg