FDR was a master of the spoken political word, beginning in the first full decade in which radio was universal. FDR was matched by Churchill and Hitler, two other early rhetorical masters of radio. Victorious wars . Both Presidents oversaw huge wars that were successfully prosecuted on the battlefield. Churchill had the same post-war battlefield advantage, and he therefore looms large in the textbooks.
Victors write the history textbooks.
The magnitude of the loss of life and the gigantic economic cost made post-war revisionism difficult to sell to the American public. The public was not psychologically prepared to consider any suggestion that these deaths and costs had been avoidable and therefore in vain. Well-timed deaths . FDR died shortly before Hitler committed suicide, and he thereby escaped responsibility for dropping the two atomic bombs. Woodrow Wilson did not die soon enough after World War I, and his reputation suffered, as did his party at the polls in the next election.