Forbes blogger, apparently unfamiliar with the Democratic Party primary electorate, compared Barack Obama to FDR as a means of insulting him. For that matter, he seems pretty unfamiliar with the broader American electorate as well. I seem to recall no less a figure than George W. Bush feeling the need to try to wrap himself in FDR's mantle while he tried to dismantle Social Security.
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Where It Hurts
29 Aug 2007 04:28 pm
Comments (20)
I've been waiting for someone to cover Obama's mortgage plan, and I have to say, if the right-wing is going to describe it as "Obama Steals a Page from FDR", I'm pretty pleased.
FDR is a pretty good divider between wing nuts and the rest of America.
What better illustration to highlight completely different world views than one group ranking him in the top 2 or 3 presidents while the others think of him about like they do Stalin.
Eh, the "broader American electorate" is pretty stupid, and both parties play to this stupidity. Republicans harp on income tax rates even though they know that the income tax is so heavily progressive that most Americans aren't net payers of it. Meanwhile, the Santa Claus party promises brand new entitlements even though they know that our current entitlements are unsustainable without growth-killing tax increases, unpopular spending cuts, or higher deficit spending.
It's depressing that presidential candidates have to pander to this economic stupidity. It's too bad we can't have appointed technocrats handle federal economic policies (sort of like the way the Federal Reserve handles monetary policy) and then let our presidents focus on stuff like gay marriage and which countries we should bomb. We would be a richer country with a lot less debt if we set up social safety net closer to the way Singapore has, but it's hard to imagine any system that economically rational being enacted here. Santa Claus systems get more votes.
Franklin Delano Rosenfeld destroyed this country and all its great traditions.
Correction: looks like Singapore's government debt is higher than ours as a percentage of GDP. Guess they found other stuff to spend the money on (e.g., infrastructure). So maybe we'd still have the same level of debt if we didn't need to borrow to pay for our entitlements. Though we might have more tangible stuff to show for it (better roads, transportation, etc.).
That being said, I'm not sure this is really fair. The Forbes blogger isn't writing as a partisan hack. He's writing for readers of Forbes magazine. He reflects their biases and prejudices, which are obviously going to be in favor of the financial services industry. That these remarks would not be good criticisms for political candidates to make seems irrelevant.
But it goes to show you how faithfully the wingnut talking points get passed around. This blogger is able to blame the suicide of a specific kid in Brooklyn on FDR's economic policies, 70 years after the fact. You have to respect people who can take argument by anecdote to that level.
He called Shlaes' The Forgotten Man the book of the year...wow. The more I think of it, that book becomes the epitome of the depths to which we have sunk during this administration.
You have to wonder if the people from Forbes have ever been to the U.S.
I've insulted Obama by saying he has nothing ocmmon with FDR.
Hey, Armando:
Today the IAFF! Tomorrow the Democratic Club of Stamford Connecticut!
I can feel the Chris-mentum building!
Alabama makes fun of Mississippi, and Ohio makes fun of West Virginia, so why shouldn't Petey make fun of Armando?
Like all libertarians, I don't exactly have a high opinion of FDR, but the "a boy committed suicide on HIS WATCH" has to be the lamest argument ever.
"By 1937, investors and businessmen were sick of FDR's capriciousness. Capital went on strike. Businessmen stopped investing and hiring. The 1932-1936 recovery collapsed, leaving "a depression within a depression," writes Shlaes. Consequences were dire. In Brooklyn, in 1937, a 13-year-old boy named William Troeller hanged himself. The boy worried that his parents and five siblings weren't getting enough food."
On the other side of the coin, leaders in the business community with fascist leanings had planned on ending American democracy by overthrowing FDR, but that can be safely ignored by a magazine named for and started by a family that partly made their millions of selling opium to China and backing the British in the Opium War.
Hey Petey:
I hope we can agree that both John Edwards and Chris Dodd had the correct reactions to Bush's proposal for more Iraq funding.
I sincerely hope that Obama and Clinton can join them in taking the right stance on this.
It is mildly amusing that the wingnuts are projecting their hatred of FDR on the country as a whole. Few people reject the New Deal as such, some people have been fooled about the status of its crown jewel which of course is Social Security. But it is more a matter of 'more in sorrow than anger' thing.
Generally speaking I think most people would be thrilled if they were told tomorrow that Social Security was fully funded going forward, they would have a hard time believing it, it would fly in the face of everything they have been told over the last 24 years, but few would regard it as bad news.
I have spent years following up on Baker and Weisbrot's Phony Cricis and spreading the word. The numbers show that we are only two or three years from opening a can FDR Whoopass on these guys and few of them see it coming. Social Security is not broke and Medicare is in a lot less trouble than most people think. The details are in the numbers.
Perhaps that was obscure. The Economic Right argument rests on the assertion that government social programs are proven failures and tax cuts are proven successes. Their whole intellectual super structure comes crashing down by any combination of solvent Social Security and discredited Laffer. Well both positions are this close to vindication and frankly the more aware Right Economists are all too aware of that.
But certain of their herd of sheep are happily trotting up the ramp to slaughter, all the time responding to shots at FDR with "Good one!" with no awareness that the joke is shaping up to be on them.
You have to wonder if the people from Forbes have ever been to the U.S.
Not the part of the U.S. most of the rest of us live in.
Anyone who cites a hack like Amity Shlaes in an argument about FDR is not a trustworthy person.
Comments closed September 12, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
You're talking about a man who used the word "poopy" in his opening sentence.
Posted by mad6798j | August 29, 2007 4:41 PM