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A stone's throw from the National Mall in Washington, D.C., located on a narrow strip of land between the tidal basin

and the Potomac River, is the memorial to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

This is no modest plaque, nothing like the man's first Washington Memorial, a desk-sized

stone set quietly before the National Archives. No, this is a sweeping seven and a half

acre landscape divided into four outdoor areas, each representing one of FDR's four terms in office.

Water moves throughout, crashing downward to evoke the shock of the Wall Street crash,

cascading over stepped granite in tribute to New Deal dams,

then bursting outward in a restless spray, a reflection of a world at war.

Here stand bronze figures of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, the president's beloved dog, Thala,

citizens waiting in breadlines, a man bent toward a radio to hear a fireside

chat, and Roosevelt himself memorialized not once but twice. It is a monument to a life's achievement,

but like most monuments it functions primarily to celebrate, not to question, which raises an

uncomfortable thought.

Should we question Franklin Roosevelt?

Did the man have any failures at all?

Well, of course he did.

He was only human.

But this monument?

An honestly popular American history so often seems to suggest otherwise.

...