I'd planned a more elaborate post regarding the powerful "FDR Myth" in American electoral politics, but alas, rude interruptions from my life as a graduate student have prevented me from doing so. Suffice it to say that the FDR Myth--that the free market failed, Hoover's conservative policies were ineffective, and Roosevelt fixed the whole thing with government involvement--is back. This time, McCain plays the role of the inept Iowa Republican, refusing to buck conventional (constitutional?) wisdom to fix everything, and Obama is the heroic Progressive who rides into town and restores America to the Little Guy. Such arguments are invariably short on economic analysis, heavy on overwrought outrage about such things as an offhand comment that the fundamentals of the economy are strong. Try these on for size: my friend's Facebook
post of an Eric Rauchway column in the American Prospect (which is, far from "stunningly good," rather stunningly ignorant of economics), and
Froma Harrop on RealClearPolitics.
On the other hand, we have several columns from people who--what do you know!--actually know something about financial markets. And they seem to think that these problems have been caused--what do you know!--by some absurd regulations panickedly passed into law after the Enron scandal and absurd regulations forced on banks by racemongers in the Nineties. Here you go:
I know, guys. Ever since the unfettered free market--*snort*, interjects Michelle Malkin--caused the Great Depression, every economic downturn, every stock market crash, every downtick in employment has, to these economic illiterates, provided a reason to return to Thirties-style socialism. It must be disappointing that, for all the impassioned attacks against such left-wing bogeymen as "speculators," the free market isn't going to send the economy into a deregulation-induced tailspin while Republican fat cats retire to their mansions to let the exploited underclass rot in their sprawling Dubyavilles. Maybe next time.
The imagery would be more entertaining if it weren't politically effective.
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