I found this article today and thought it was a very interesting read. Eleanor Roosevelt is a fascinating person and a woman ahead of her time. The article goes on to compare Hillary Clinton to Roosevelt, so I’m not sure what their objective was in publishing it. I think provides a new perspective on Roosevelt with intriguing insights into her personal life. They suggest that “Eleanor, at 44, may also be the nation’s first high-profile cougar.” Cougar is not the way most people think of E.R!
Since the article does provide some comparison of Roosevelt and Clinton, I will put in my 2 cents on that. Perhaps down the road I will look back and appreciate what Hillary Clinton has done to help women progress in politics and in a man’s world, but I would not call her an Eleanor Roosevelt, just as I would not agree with comparisons of Anna Nicole to Marilyn Monroe. The article states that Clinton admires Roosevelt, so perhaps she strives to piggyback on the reputation of E.R. by suggesting the influence herself. Anna Nicole fancied herself a modern day Marilyn, mysterious death from a drug overdose and all. Just because a comparison can be made doesn’t make it so.
To be respected or admired, one should obtain such recognition on their own, not by drawing comparisons to people they are influenced by. I’m sorry, but Clinton has much to prove before making her own name in history to parallel that of Eleanor Roosevelt.
I hope you enjoy the article!

The Savvy, Salty Political Saint
Eleanor Roosevelt was not just an idealistic First Lady. As a new collection of papers reveals, she was also a smart, disciplined and unabashed strategist.
Julia Baird
NEWSWEEK
Updated: 2:33 PM ET Dec 15, 2007
Eleanor Roosevelt, a woman known for her upright back and moral certitude, secretly enjoyed having her palms read. One particular analysis, in October 1939, tickled her so much that she kept it in the drawer of her desk, along with poems that inspired her. The palmist wrote that the finger which showed leadership “is much bolder in your left hand, which shows inherent potentialities, than it is in your right hand which shows what actually happens. This leads me to believe that many times you’ve had to cramp your style.”
The fact that Eleanor kept this document for years is more revealing than the words themselves—did she believe she had qualities of leadership that were repressed, or thwarted by her position as First Lady? Despite all she achieved, and the esteemed place she holds in American history and affection, there’s a central lingering question about her legacy: what would she have been capable of achieving on her own, without the constraints placed on her sex at the time, and without her marriage to Franklin Delano Roosevelt?
The recently published first volume of her papers, “The Human Rights Years, 1945–48,” with a foreword by Hillary Clinton, provides important clues. It begins when Franklin Roosevelt died, and ends with the passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in which Eleanor played a crucial part. In allowing us to study her own words, in letters, speeches, columns and diary entries, a different portrait of the much-lionized woman emerges—one of a pragmatic, savvy politician. While she is remembered as a saintly, long-suffering figure, we can forget she was an indefatigable, disciplined activist—as historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote, a “tough and salty old lady”—who resisted stereotyping when she was alive, and constantly protested she was not interested in power while vigorously pursuing it.
Read the full story at http://www.newsweek.com/id/78177?GT1=43002