Barack Obama and the breakdown of the American Center

Call it a tale of two presidents. When Barack Obama was first elected President, the nation was truly in crisis, mired in an economic crisis unequaled since the Great Depression. The enthusiasm and hope greeting his election was compared by many to that which greeted Franklin Delano Roosevelt upon his ascension. Indeed, right after his election, Obama was featured on the cover of Time Magazine fashioned to look like FDR in his 1930s-era convertible.

The comparison seemed apt. After all, in 1932, FDR seemed to be coming to the rescue of a…