When Hillary Rodham Clinton gathers her supporters at Four Freedoms Park on New York’s Roosevelt Island for a campaign kickoff rally Saturday, the president she will identify herself with won’t be her husband, Bill Clinton, or either of the presidents who appointed her to posts in their administrations, Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter. Instead, she will reach back through the generations to the Democrat who wins the highest marks from political scientists, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
It was in January 1941, with Axis powers spreading across the globe, that Roosevelt, clutching the sides of the lectern at the front of the House chamber, enunciated his vision for a “world founded on four essential freedoms” — freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. He also warned against using America’s assistance for its allies as an excuse for sacrificing the very things “worth fighting for” at home.
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