Those who look to President-elect Obama as the vehicle for a revival of FDR-style politics should be careful what they wish for.
Sure, the principle-free partisans want a president whose style and political skill will guarantee Democratic hegemony for at least a generation. In that regard, FDR offers a good template.
Other well-meaning folks, though, want Obama to emulate Roosevelt because they believe the latter?s big-government policies pulled the United States out of the depths of the Great Depression.
We?ve discussed this myth before in this forum, and Jonah Goldberg tackles the topic again in the latest print edition of National Review:
While it?s certainly true that there is no consensus that the New Deal prolonged the Great Depression, there is a sweeping consensus that the New Deal didn?t end it. The vast majority of historians and economists ? including Paul Krugman ? will concede that the Great Depression didn?t end until either World War II or the post-war economic boom (that?s a whole other argument). In other words, only after FDR himself admitted he was no longer going to play the role of ?Dr. New Deal? and instead became ?Dr. Win-the-War? was there any real chance of ending the Great Depression. If a golfer can?t hit the ball to save his life with a five-iron, but smacks the dickens out of it with a seven-iron, it?s hard to see how his improved score demonstrates the effectiveness of five-irons.
