Nothing becomes a Saturday morning like watching someone be really good at politics. This week, Hillary showed that she could deliver a masterpiece of a speech. And, that maybe she’s getting the hang of being stand-up comic funny while also cutting the knife deep and quick across her rival’s hamstring.

Not that this is a new thing. Here’s a one-minute clip of FDR in December, 1938 at the University of North Carolina, mocking his critics. You could cut and paste this performance into 2016 (o.k., I just did), and it’s funny and feels contemporary.

1938 was a terrible year for Roosevelt and the New Deal. He’d overplayed his hand on a number of fronts: court packing, challenging anti-New Deal Democrats in congressional primaries, and mostly failing in those challenges. In the November mid-terms a month ago, the Democrats lost six senate seats and 71 House seats.

And here he is in North Carolina, still master of the game.

Love the smile that he can’t suppress when he says, “Actually, I’m an exceedingly mild mannered person.”

And the trademark throwing back of the head at the end: “I’m a devotee of scrambled eggs!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQRwcI0-Nm4

I thought to post this because it’s a great clip from one of the greatest political performers.  But, then I read the entire speech. It’s here and pretty remarkable.

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=15578

He’s at once aligning himself with the forces of modernity, but at the same time goes back to the beginning of the country and the Democratic Party. Fascinating in part because for all of us, the Democratic Party started with the New Deal. Here’s the leader of the New Deal, going back into history to justify his program.

“The very birth of the Democratic Party, at a time when President Washington publicly expressed the hope that the Nation could be run without Parties, was due to the simple fact that the Government itself was dominated by the great commercial and shipping interests of the seaboard, and failed to give recognition to the needs and the desires of the masses of the inhabitants of the original Thirteen States who did not subscribe to their theory that birth, wealth or political position could give to the possessors of these qualifications the sole right to govern. Hence the Democratic Party.”

I’d look to Mr. Jones to keep FDR honest on his reading of history. I suspect that he wasn’t above bending it to his own purposes.  He does, for example, totally gloss over the Civil War because he needed all those white supremacist committee chairs to support his legislation.