http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/fdr-reagan-and-obama/
The Conscience of a Liberal
November 21, 2010, 2:07 am
Paul Krugman
FDR, Reagan, and Obama
Some readers may recall that back during the Democratic primary
Barack Obama shocked many progressives by praising Ronald Reagan
as someone who brought America a “sense of dynamism and
entrepreneurship that had been missing.” I was among those who
found this deeply troubling — because the idea that Reagan brought
a transfomation in American dynamism is a right-wing myth, not
borne out by the facts. (There was a surge in productivity and
innovation — but it happened in the 90s, under Clinton, not under
Reagan).
All the usual suspects pooh-poohed these concerns; it was
ridiculous, they said, to think of Obama as a captive of
right-wing mythology.
But are you so sure about that now?
And here’s this, from Thomas Ferguson: Obama saying
We didn’t actually, I think, do what Franklin Delano
Roosevelt did, which was basically wait for six months until the
thing had gotten so bad that it became an easier sell politically
because we thought that was irresponsible. We had to act quickly.
As Ferguson explains, this is a right-wing smear. What actually
happened was that during the interregnum between the 1932 election
and the1933 inauguration — which was much longer then, because the
inauguration didn’t take place until March — Herbert Hoover tried
to rope FDR into maintaining his policies, including rigid
adherence to the gold standard and fiscal austerity. FDR declined
to be part of this.
But Obama buys the right-wing smear.
More and more, it’s becoming clear that progressives who had their
hearts set on Obama were engaged in a huge act of self-delusion.
Once you got past the soaring rhetoric you noticed, if you
actually paid attention to what he said, that he largely accepted
the conservative storyline, a view of the world, including a
mythological history, that bears little resemblance to the facts.
And confronted with a situation utterly at odds with that
storyline … he stayed with the myth.
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