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Tuesday, February 10, 2009

O CAPTAIN.... There's no idea so dumb and feckless that it won't be tried again, no matter how many times it has failed in the past. I'm tempted to stop there because it says all that this post can possibly say, no matter how long it goes on. But. I have to go on, because everything old is new again, and I'm old enough to know that the mass media adulation of a fool president has happened before and that that adulation was so deep and successful in PR terms that it bodes ill for what we're about to endure.

Having given away the whole point of the post in my lede, I will tantalize you to read more by telling you that my ancestral memory goes all the way back to the first messiah of the twentieth century, with personal recollections of what that time was really like. Further, I promise to be as amusing as possible in (re)acquainting you youngsters with the New Deal as it was portrayed by the MSM of the time and what it was in reality. I'm going to close on a nearly impossible thing: asking you to sit through a ten minute interview with an author who wrote a book about the economic facts of the New Deal, which couldn't be any more at odds with our new president's characterization of its mythological salvational power:


Have I made the challenge difficult enough? Then I'll up the ante by telling you that I think we, as Americans, are equal to this challenge. We can come through this impossible post with our heads held high and our confidence in the future undiminished.

Let's begin with the fun stuff. The biggest thing the FDR administration had in common with the Obama administration was the worshipful attitude of the MSM and Hollywood. For example, everyone who listens to NPR will love this bouquet to the WPA:


In a loving mood yet, are we? All those actors, acting for FDR. There's more.

The biggest initiative Roosevelt launched in his first term was the largest intrusion by the government into the free marketplace in the history of the United States. The description accompanying a YouTube video since withdrawn provides a good overview of its scope:

Here's how the newsreels treated the most radical big government reform FDR attempted in his four terms:


Initially, of course, the NRA was fantastically popular. Everyone was for it. And it was launched with lavish claims about what it would mean for labor, and unions, and average working people. Government was finally going to set things right for "working people." (You know the drill.) The thing was, the NRA was a gigantic turkey. It didn't bring about national recovery. Instead, its massive bureaucracy crushed small businessmen -- the ones who create most of the jobs -- under the heavy foot of the federal government in a way that even the FDR-adoring press (eventually) had to acknowledge: And, finally, the federal government had to retreat and confess the failure.


The real distinguishing characteristic of the New Deal was not economic science but economic experimentation. FDR had a free hand in his first term and he was willing to try anything that sounded good to voters. Most of his programs got favorable press coverage, including the WPA (and its partner the PWA), the CCC, and the AAA. They poured money into the economy through channels that looked as if they were helping the common man, but somehow the overall economy -- staggering under a burden of federal debt securities that was competing for investment dollars with the private sector -- never actually got better. The NRA was struck down by the Supreme Court and then so was the AAA, the Agricultural Adjustment Act (for which there's no available glowing YouTube video, but only this arid Wikipedia entry):


The Supreme Court ultimately said no. That's when FDR decided that the constitution was standing in his way and attempted to expand the size of the Supreme Court, so that he could appoint jurists who would approve his messianic plans to save the American capitalist system from itself. Interestingly, YouTube also contains no contemporaneous video coverage of this landmark assault on the constitution. Despite the fact that it marks the end of FDR's real influence with congress, the only video now available is a recent (and oddly cheerful) AP history retrospective that ends 1:30 into the following clip:


Does all this sound a little less 'hope and changey' than you might have expected from the greatest president in the twentieth century? It's certainly not what you were taught about Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the savior of the capitalist system in America.

Well. I can assure you it's not true that everyone loved him. For once CP and I agree on something. His recollections are identical. CP's grandfather took care of five families throughout the Great Depression, providing employment where there was none to black families in his hometown. Yet he had to endure the humiliation of having his annual salary published in the local newspaper via an edict from the president of the United States. You see, he was making an obscene amount of money at the time, $15,000 or more. It was important that the common man know who the thieving capitalist enemy was. When CP's mother heard of FDR's death in 1944, she telephoned this estimable man and said, "FDR is dead. What happens now?" She'd never known another president since the age of ten. He replied simply, "Thank God, at last."

My own recollections are even darker. This man was my father. I knew him later, of course, when he was only remembering a president who had tried to turn the country against him and his family for his entire childhood and youth. I grew up hearing claims I never heard confirmed by the mainstream media, that FDR was a failure, that he deepened the Depression, that he was willing to do absolutely anything to get reelected, that he was the worst president the country ever had. And I came, in time, to know this about my father:


It's simply false that FDR was universally admired and that there was never any doubt his policies had rescued the American economy from the Great Depression. The truth is, there's a growing school of revisionist thought which asserts that FDR almost single-handedly kept the United States in a depression that could have been cured with a lot less government interference, no matter how much he is idolized by people who swallowed the MSM idolatry of the time. Shouldn't a president of the United States know that this would-be savior's legacy is vigorously disputed by real historians? Except that no one anywhere knows exactly what it is Obama studied in his school and college years. Here's a blog post from the day after his election:


Well, forget the explanations. There weren't any in the thirties, and there won't be any now. FDR talked a lot about the "Forgotten Man," meaning the out-of-work guy who elected Roosevelt four times. But even in FDR's day, there were souls who looked beyond his patrician populism and saw the real forgotten man he trampled in his rush to greatness:


Now. Are you ready for ten minutes of honesty about the New Deal? The title of the book is "The Forgotten Man," and its author exands on Sumner's definition as follows:


Here's the ten minute interview I threatened you with earlier. I can't show it to you here (unexpectedly withdrawn) but I do have a teaser. Watch both and then enjoy the special dessert I've prepared for you.

Well done. Ready for a sweet glimpse of our shared future?  Please don't smack your lips.


Batten down the, uh, whatever you can batten down. Trust me, the earth will shake.

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