In the news/This week in the War, 20–26 January 1941: Presidential Inauguration

Today is the day of Barack Obama’s public inauguration as President of the United States. The Chief Justice remembered his lines, Michelle’s dress met with universal approval, and the President entered his second term without a hitch.

This week in the war, 20 January 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was inaugurated and entered his third term as President. A striking video of the FDR inauguration was put out recently by The Guardian newspaper.

Health care, gun control, putting the country on its feet, are issues with which Obama is currently grappling. With Roosevelt, the issues were neutrality (i.e. backing out of it) and increased war aid for Britain.

It would be a different world, today, if FDR had not won a third term. Britain would likely not have survived, and Hitler would have won a war that the USA might never have entered.

Obama, too, might make the world a different place. Let’s wait and see.