Stanley B. Greenberg Stanley B. Greenberg is CEO of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner. Greenberg has served as pollster to several world leaders and collaborates with a Republican polling firm on bi-partisan surveys for National Public Radio. Greenberg founded the company in 1980 after a decade of teaching at Yale University, where he received a Guggenheim Fellowship. He was educated at Miami University and Harvard University, where he received his Ph.D. He is the author of Dispatches from the War Room: In the Trenches with Five Extraordinary Leaders and The Two Americas: Our Current Political Deadlock and How to Break It. Greenberg is co-founder with James Carville of Democracy Corps - a non-profit initiative providing opinion research and strategic advice to aid progressive organizations. He also served as principal polling advisor to the Democratic Leadership Council during the formative years of change (1988-1994) for the Democratic Party.

FDR: A Lesson in How to Use the People’s Love

Stanley Greenberg sees lessons for Obama in FDR’s use of popular support.

As President Barack Obama moves past his first 100 days, polls show him with historic job approval ratings. Even more, they show a country that likes its president and is beginning to feel better about itself. Other presidents and national leaders have been similarly “popular,” but those we remember understood that a bond with people in perilous times allows them to take greater risks and act boldly to bring change.

That is why we look to FDR’s first 100 days. Franklin Roosevelt, too, came to office with deep popular support and…