Friday, September 26, 2008
Recalling Franklin Roosevelt
Latest. As Americans start their day, it’s increasingly clear that the House Republicans are holding out against the Republican President’s bail-out. If Bush and the majority Democrats do a deal over their heads and McCain continues to share Rep qualms, and the deal works, Bush hands the presidency on a plate to Obama. Will tonight’s debate go on? There’s plenty to talk about.
In the middle of the bailout deadlock I searched for lines on: “What would FDR do?” And sure enough up they popped. But first, where are we now? Politically in chaos, the Republicans are split over the amazing phenomenon of an “unAmerican” state takeover of a large chunk of the US financial industry by a Republican administration. Bush sucks, Paulson kneels down before Speaker Pelosi and Pelosi replies: “ I didn’t know you were a Catholic”. McCain seems to have flunked it, sitting silent at the big round table and then siding with the Republican no-dealers. Obama has waffled “for more time.” Arianna Queen of the Democratic blogs raps him to show leadership. True to form and status the New York Times sonorously bemoans The Absence of Leadership. Echoing the great phrase from Roosevelt’s first inaugural, the NYT intones: “ It took President Bush until Wednesday night to address the American people about the nation’s financial crisis, and pretty much all he had to offer was fear itself…. Given Mr. Bush’s shockingly weak performance, the only ones who could provide that are the two men battling to succeed him. So far, neither John McCain nor Barack Obama is offering that leadership.”
Two pieces even question whether the presidency is worth having now.
The Times’ Gerard Baker gives all sorts of reasons for calling it “The Presidency you wouldn’t want to win”, goes on to suggest that Hillary might pick up the following term and ends by hedging his bets: “....history suggests an unsettlingly binary possibility. Either the next president is destined for the cruel obscurity of one-term failure. Or he is set to join the pantheon.” (Thanks for the firm line Gerry.)
Ted Widmer of the Washington Post asks “Why on Earth would anyone want to be president right now?” But at least going on to offer an answer.
“After Lincoln’s, no presidency began under darker clouds than Franklin D. Roosevelt’s. The U.S. financial system was in vastly worse shape than it is even today, totalitarianism was looming abroad, and the New York Stock Exchange had actually shut down. But Roosevelt knew that Herbert Hoover had given him, in FDR’s own words, “an easy act to follow.” On that dark inaugural day in 1933, the new president was only five sentences into his maiden speech when the sonorous attack on “fear itself” came; nothing was the same after that. Roosevelt launched a sustained attack on Hoover’s laissez-faire policies; there’s a reason he called the New Deal new.”
So what would FDR have done? He certainly didn’t go about moaning he’d be a one-term President. He projected more optimism than he had any right to feel and set a cracking pace for the legendary first 100 days and beyond. It didn’t solved much but it improved morale and started to build the magic ingredient of confidence. The Last Chance Democracy café (who they?) offers Obama sage advice, but too late. Do what FDR did in response to lame duck President Hoover ( read across Bush). ” President Herbert Hoover contacted Franklin Roosevelt, who was then the president-elect, asking him to endorse Hoover’s proposed responses to the crisis and to enter into a joint proclamation….The two men needed to show solidarity, Hoover insisted, in order to calm the panic. But FDR turned him down cold. He didn’t want to waste his political capital.”
Richard Reeves political scientist and biographer of Reagan declares: “whoever is in charge of the government looks for a bracelet with the letters “WWRD.” “What Would Roosevelt Do?” “Paulson was appointed by a president, administration and party that has spent the past 70 years attacking most of what the New Deal did or tried to do.” So the era of Big Government pursued until Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society eschewed ever after even by Clinton, is back in business. No wonder there’s deadlock. While you wasit for news browse in the extracts from J Kenneth Galbraith’s “The Great Crash: 1929.”
Brian Walker @ 10:11 AM
Sky news channel, where they are always on, most likely on BBC news 24 also.
Posted by on Sep 26, 2008 @ 08:37 PMCheers !
Posted by on Sep 26, 2008 @ 08:39 PMHey, I got a bracelet too!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r_jTgGeVU4
Posted by on Sep 27, 2008 @ 07:43 AMWhat a wonderful debate. For years I have been searching for an alternative drug-free remedy for insomnia and now at last it arrives.
And such eloquence of analysis:
McCain: Iraq has a lousy government and therefore has a lousy economy.
Posted by on Sep 27, 2008 @ 09:07 AMUnsurprisingly, the government-sponsored entity’s claim that it was not underwritten by the US government was regarded as it has since been shown to be: a convenient fiction which claimed that the US taxpayer was not exposed to risk from this hybrid half-private, half-government business.
Is the idea that the US taxpayer is not exposed to the risks taken by the market not then also a lie, given that the US government now owns 80% of AIG ?
The Americans need to reacquaint themselves with Milton Friedman, not quasi-socialists like FDR who are ultimately responsible for the mess that the US now finds itself in.
FDR’s been dead for over 60 years, during that time there have been many booms and recessions, and this particular one is somehow all his fault ? The low-interest policies of the Fed and the lack of regulation in the mortgage market and investment banking industries are nothing to do with it ? You really are stretching this shit.
Posted by on Sep 27, 2008 @ 10:05 AMDave ,
‘The question should be “What did FDR do?”
FDR coming to power in 1932 probably prevented the USA from sliding into an even worse depression and the USA would have ended up as a totalitarian State of the right or left - but most probably the right . Had the USA been such a State they would never have gone to war against Germany and Italy . Britain would have has no recourse except to accomodate to the Axis powers .
‘The Americans need to reacquaint themselves with Milton Friedman’
Trickle down economics is wonderful in theory and no doubt and mathematically coherent economics . Unfortunately in the real world as it’s dwelt in by human beings and not just economists a reliance on trickle down economics alone could be the straw which breaks the backs of our democracies . The USA makes it’s ‘red claw capitalism ’ work by incarcerating 3 million of it’s people and by ‘importing ’ some 12 million illegal aliens who occupy the bottom layers of American society and who don’t have a vote and who help to depress the wages and salaries of Americans .
‘not quasi-socialists like FDR’
FDR was regarded as a ‘traitor ’ to his class . Ultimately however he proved a saviour for them . His policies helped to create a broader middle class and a higher waged working class which provided America with it’s great age of prosperity 1941 through 1976 approx.‘Less government, not more of it. ‘
The USA needs more focused government in areas were a real difference can be affected in the lives of ordinary Americans . As the Government is elected by the people -it’s focus needs to be directed to the interests of what is called Main St America . The american people know that Wall St cares not a jot for anything else but the bottom line and it’s next quarterly report ! As that is the business of Wall St -fine . Wall St is an essential part of the market economy and it’s member companies have to be allowed to fail and succeed based on the ‘free market ‘
But not at the expense of American democracy ..
Posted by on Sep 27, 2008 @ 10:24 AMNor can John McCain who in 2005 & 2006 co-sponsored a reform bill on Fannie & Freddie.
I wouldn’t trust McCain on this issue - he has ‘form’ going back to the S&L;crisis of the 1980s.
Posted by on Sep 27, 2008 @ 10:30 AMShocking Video Unearthed Democrats in their own words Covering up the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Scam that caused our Economic Crisis
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7RsThere is plenty of blame to go around but these guys were right in the middle of this mess - for years.
Posted by on Sep 29, 2008 @ 11:30 AM
