There are Americans so disenchanted with democracy that when the political party they voted for does not win, they fuss and fume, refusing to show much respect for the democratic process that made America great.

For example, it often happens when a president such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt appears on the political scene, making sweeping changes during the Great Depression.  The stock market had crashed with Wall Street excesses such as people buying on Wall Street excesses such as people buying on margins, with money they didn't have.

Banks were going bust.  FDR courageously took charge with a bank holiday, enacting new laws to make sure such an economic debacle would never happen again.  But in 1987 there was another economic debacle which Wall Street called a "correction."  

The savings and loan industry had lost billions along with stock market investors.  The government acted swiftly to bail out the U.S. financial system.  Corruption had generated these economic losses for many Americans.  

There was a time when a young college freshman who had paid a disproportionate amount of time to following the exploits of baseball and football teams and was now seeking to play catch up and learn something about American history and politics received a Christmas gift that he found practical and intellectually stimulating.

This college freshman's father idolized President Franklin Delano Roosevelt among all other political leaders and gifted the young man just beginning his trek into the realm of knowledge with a copy of The Politics of Upheaval, the latest in the series of works on the only president in American history to be elected four times, by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

To provide an illustration of the importance of this work as a developmental tool on this young student's mind, it is necessary to move forward to when this same person's first historical work was published.

I know this individual well since it happens to be me.  I learned how absorbing I found Schlesinger's book, as well as the influence it had on me, when I was living in Cape Cod and was being interviewed about my first historical work, Struggle for the Holy Land, by a local radio personality, Rob Morris.

I took it upon myself to write this because I respect Al Gore immensely, and because I also respect President Franklin Roosevelt who has always been one of my true political and personal heroes. I wished to note some similarities between them as men, and for me this was truly a labor of love that I thoroughly enjoyed writing. I'm not a professional writer, but this is from my heart. I hope if you read it you feel the same.