I think it’s just that historians like to focus on powerful people – and power grabs – and not the small stuff that incrementally became great stuff and the stuff of our modern world. For example, James Watt should be much better known than either Roosevelt. It was Lincoln though that ruined the historic relationship of the people and government created for the Republic and yet is revered by historians and the press (likely for that reason given their statist bent). It was the old, I-had-to-destroy-the-Constitution-to-save-it line that is so ridiculous but accepted and taught to us in state-run or state-accredited schools. Destroy he did.
I’ve never understood the reverence for Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He did pick great Generals and led this country to victory in WWII. But on the other hand he totally mismanaged the economy, enacted freedom-sapping policies which never did get this country out of the Great Depression, and tried to circumvent constitutional separation of powers (now who does that remind me of?).
Then there is the issue of FDR and the SHOAH (the Holocaust). Did he fail to help the Jews who were suffering under Hitler because he was powerless, or because of more nefarious reasons? Why didn’t he bomb and destroy the train tracks that were shipping Jews to the camps? Why wasn’t he allowing more Jews into the country? Pressuring Britain to allow Jews to move from Nazi controlled areas into what was then called Palestine?