- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
"Let's hope Obama is not a second FDR since the latter's policies not only worsened the Depression but also prolonged it."
FDR was a pragmatist and an experimentalist. His policies during his first term helped tremendously, on the whole. After 1936, he tried to avoid deficit spending, the conservative approach [that he had run on in 1932] with catastrophic consequences.
Keynesianism was only then being invented. We have the advantage of 75 years' study. But scholarship doesn't decide goals.
The Conservatives have ruled for 30 years, and enriched only the already-rich, while wrecking the country with a collapsed economy, huge debt, war for conquest, the disgrace of torture, and greatly aggravated factionalism.
The opposite of everything Bush has done would noty be perfect, but it would be better.
