F.D.R. was the best loved and most hated American President of the 20th century. He was loved because, 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. Even Charles de Gaulle, who well knew Roosevelt's disdain for him, succumbed to the "glittering personality," as he put it, of "that artist, that seducer." "Meeting him," said Winston Churchill, "was like uncorking a bottle of champagne."

But he was hated too — hated because he called for change, and the changes he proposed reduced the power, status, income and self-esteem of those who profited most from the old order. Hatred is happily more fleeting than love. The men who sat in their clubs denouncing "that man in the White House," that "traitor to his class," have died off. Their children and grandchildren mostly find the New Deal reforms familiar, benign and beneficial.

When pollster John Zogby recently asked people to rate the century's Presidents, F.D.R. led the pack, even though only septuagenarians and their elders can remember him in the White House. Historians and political scientists are unanimous in placing F.D.R. with Washington and Lincoln as our three greatest Presidents.

Even Republicans have come to applaud this most successful of Democrats. Ronald Reagan voted four times for F.D.R. Newt Gingrich calls F.D.R. the greatest President of the century. Bob Dole praises F.D.R. as an "energetic and inspiring leader during the dark days of the Depression; a tough, single-minded Commander in Chief during World War II; and a statesman."

F.D.R. was not a perfect man. In the service of his objectives, he could be, and often was, devious, guileful, manipulative, evasive, dissembling, underhanded, even ruthless. But he had great strengths. He relished power and organized, or disorganized, his Administration so that conflict among his subordinates would ensure that the big decisions would come to him. 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.

He was a realist in means but an idealist in ends. Above all, F.D.R. stood for humanity against ideology. The 20th was the most ideological of centuries. Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin systematically sacrificed millions to false and terrible dogmas. Even within the democracies, ideologues believed that the Great Depression imposed an either/or choice: if you abandon laissez-faire, you are condemned to total statism. "Partial regimentation cannot be made to work," said Herbert Hoover, "and still maintain live democratic institutions."

Against the worship of abstractions, F.D.R. 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. But above all, try something." Except for the part about admitting failure frankly, that was the practice of his Administration.

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