A great leader of the 20th century

A leader that I admire is Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd president of the United States. Though patrician by birth, upbringing and style, he believed in and fought for plain people — for the "forgotten man" (and woman), for the "third of the nation, ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished." He was loved because he radiated personal charm, joy in his work, optimism for the future. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a realist in means but an idealist in ends. Above all, Franklin Delano Roosevelt stood for humanity against ideology. Franklin Delano Roosevelt wanted to find practical ways to help decent men and women struggling day by day to make a happier world for themselves and their children. His technique was, as he said, "bold, persistent experimentation ... Take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another.
However, in the service of his objectives, he could be, and often was, devious, guileful, manipulative, evasive, dissembling, underhanded, even ruthless.
I find him interesting as he did not care only for himself but for others around him and stood for what he thought was correct. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was also willing to put in a lot of effort to
support what he believed in. Franklin Delano Roosevelt appeared, a magnificent, serene, exhilarating personality, buoyantly embodying new ideas, new courage, new confidence in America's ability to regain control over its future. His New Deal swiftly introduced measures for social protection, regulation and control. Laissez-faire ideologues and Roosevelt haters cried that he was putting the country on the road to communism, the only alternative permitted by the either/or creed. But Roosevelt understood that Social Security, unemployment compensation, public works, securities regulation, rural electrification, farm price supports, reciprocal-trade agreements, minimum wages and maximum hours, guarantees of collective bargaining and all the rest were saving capitalism from itself. A politician to his fingertips, he rejoiced in party combat. "I'm an old campaigner, and I love a good fight," he would say, and "Judge me by the enemies I have made." An optimist who fought his own brave way back from polio, he brought confidence and hope to a scared and stricken nation.