The Hill Street Blahg

“That man has offered me unsolicited advice for six years, all of it bad.” So said President Calvin Coolidge of Herbert Hoover, his Republican successor. So begins today’s essay by Jeffery Lord at The American Spectator and it’s well worth the read. They say history always repeats itself. Let’s hope whoever They say is has it wrong this time as we’re about to enter the Age Of Plenty. Here’s an excerpt from today’s essay to whet your appetite for some historical relevance.

SEVENTY-NINE YEARS distant from the 1929 kick-off of the Great Depression, it is increasingly apparent that the policies of both Hoover and FDR failed to derail the economic chaos that repeated intervention in the economy brought about in both the United States and the world. In the case of FDR, his efforts backfired further in 1937, causing yet another depression-within-the-Great Depression. Contrary to liberal myth generated by liberal historians, the Depression never was ended until World War II put an end to the trauma that began on Hoover’s watch. Yet consciously or not, Obama has already signaled his consideration of Hoover and FDR’s favorites, policies that we now know to have failed when they weren’t busy making things worse.

From protectionism to a war on business to raising taxes to massive public spending that sucks up capital to the creation of make-work jobs for political purposes, Obama has in one form or another given the nod to them all. In particular, history records that Hoover’s support of the Smoot-Hawley tariff bill and the 1932 Revenue Bill, which jacked taxes from 25% to 63%, proved disastrous.