Finding His Inner FDR: Lincoln belongs to the ages; Roosevelt belongs to ours.

[DeepModem Mom]

WP: Finding His Inner FDR
By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, November 18, 2008; Page A27

Enough Lincoln. More FDR. This is my shorthand advice to Barack Obama, who in several interviews has talked about wanting to emulate Abraham Lincoln. He said that along with the Bible, the book he would take with him to a desert island would be Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Team of Rivals." It's a useful book -- but not if that desert island has high unemployment, a housing crisis, a frozen financial system and no consumer confidence. In that case, a book about Franklin D. Roosevelt would do better.

There need not be a contest between these two great presidents, both of them remarkable politicians. But the one quality Roosevelt had that Lincoln, at least in his popular portrayal, did not is sheer exuberance. FDR, who called Al Smith a "happy warrior," was himself a happy warrior. It was his jaunty enthusiasm and his willingness to try almost anything to break the back of the Great Depression that mattered most. It had to -- after all, in the end, nothing worked.

The revisionist take on Roosevelt is contained in Amity Shlaes's book "The Forgotten Man." She argues that New Deal programs not only failed to lift the country out of the Depression, they made things worse. Shlaes has been criticized on this point, but her overall argument is beyond dispute: The New Deal did not end the Depression. World War II did....

***

In the past week, I've spoken with a gaggle of experts, some of them in finance, some in real estate and some in just plain investments. I've interviewed media magnates, both foreign and domestic, an investment banker, a manufacturer, and a former banker. This is what I have to report: Economically, we're in a recession. Psychologically, we're in a depression. The reason: None of these experts knows what to do.

Oh, sure, most everyone thinks some sort of spending plan would be a good idea -- get to work on the infrastructure. Most of them think we've got to thaw the frozen credit system. Schemes come and schemes go, but the suddenness of the collapse -- last year, the head of Goldman Sachs earned $68.5 million; this year, about $68 million less -- has produced a severe loss of faith in what once seemed an economic system blessed by God himself. Something has gone wrong. But what?

The solution is out there . . . somewhere. But it will take time and trial to find it. Obama knows this. It was one of the things he mentioned on "60 Minutes." But what he might not appreciate is that among his many gifts, the one that might matter most is how close he can come to Rooseveltian enthusiasm -- that optimism, that capacity for empathy that made so many ordinary people love this rich man and stick with him. Lincoln, a sometimes melancholy and somber man, belongs, as Edwin M. Stanton said, "to the ages." Roosevelt belongs to ours.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/17/AR2008111702919.html?nav=hcmodule

[ben_meyers]

1. The dirty little secret

The New Deal did not end the Depression. World War II did....

And none other than Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winning economist is saying...

And F.D.R. wasn’t just reluctant to pursue an all-out fiscal expansion — he was eager to return to conservative budget principles. That eagerness almost destroyed his legacy. After winning a smashing election victory in 1936, the Roosevelt administration cut spending and raised taxes, precipitating an economic relapse that drove the unemployment rate back into double digits and led to a major defeat in the 1938 midterm elections.

What saved the economy, and the New Deal, was the enormous public works project known as World War II, which finally provided a fiscal stimulus adequate to the economy’s needs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/opinion/10krugman.html?_r=1&hp

When Obama said you may not like some of what we need to do, just stand with us, well hang on to your draft age children. (male and female, and up to age 45)