The Yardstick By Which To Measure Presidents.

"Not worth a bucket of warm spit", said Garner.

There are few that have priced spit.

I'll take his word for it.....however I suspect he actually said "warm piss" and the publically sensative media of the day, changed it to "spit."

Actually, piss has some very useful industrial uses....curing leather comes to mind.
That is the story, he SAID p*ss but it was changed to spit..................................

I seriously doubt there is a significant relative difference between human excretions.....

well, to most people, anyway.
 
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgVOR28iG_o]Sly and the Family Stone - Everyday People - YouTube[/ame]

A more appropriate standard for our elected leaders.
 
Hoover was NOT "callous"; Hoover did not see a Federal government solution to the Great Depression, and, in fact, it was the rise of the Third Reich that pulled the US fully out of the Depression. There was a slump in 1938 that could have led the US straight down again.

The Recession of 1937–1938 was a temporary reversal of the pre-war 1933 to 1941 economic recovery from the Great Depression in the United States. Economists disagree about the causes of this downturn, but agree that government austerity reversed the recovery.

One can argue only WWII got the US fully out of the Great Depression. After Pearl Harbor, even the extreme right wing supported war against fascism, not so before Pearl Harbor.

Certainly WWII had an economic impact. It created both production and it thinned out the workforce. But the New Deal already had the economy on a record recovery pace that has never been matched in our history.

Depression-GDP-output-1.gif


Yes, FDR and the New Deal were a HUGE success.

Top Five Years for GDP Expansion:

1942, +18.5%
1941, +17.1%
1943, +16.4%
1936, +13.0%
1934, +10.9%

Top Five Years for GDP Contraction:

1932, -13.1%
1946, -10.9%
1930, -8.6%
1931, -6.5%
2009, -3.5%

The greatest yearly increase in GDP occurred during the New Deal, AND, the LARGEST DROP IN UNEPLOYMENT in America history occurred during the New Deal...


Census document HS-29 (available in PDF). Quoting directly from Census data, here are the unemployment rates and total number of official unemployed at the beginning and end of the presidential terms since the Great Depression:

ROOSEVELT PRE-WWII NEW DEAL
1932 Unemployment Rate: 23.6% (12.8 million total unemployed)
1940 Unemployment Rate: 14.6% (8.1 million total unemployed)
Unemployment Rate Change: -9.0
Total unemployment percentage change: -36.7%

ROOSEVELT WWII
1941 Unemployment Rate: 9.9% (5.5 million total unemployed)
1944 Unemployment Rate: 1.2% (670,000 total unemployed)
Unemployment Rate Change: -8.7
Total unemployment percentage change: -87.9%

TRUMAN
1945 Unemployment Rate: 1.9% (1.0 million total unemployed)
1952 Unemployment Rate: 3.0% (1.8 million total unemployed)
Unemployment Rate Change: +1.1
Total unemployment percentage change: +81.0%

EISENHOWER
1953 Unemployment Rate: 2.9% (1.8 million total unemployed)
1960 Unemployment Rate: 5.5% (3.8 million total unemployed)
Unemployment Rate Change: +2.6%
Total unemployment percentage change: +110.03%

KENNEDY
1961 Unemployment Rate: 6.7% (4.7 million total unemployed)
1963 Unemployment Rate: 5.7% (4.0 million total unemployed)
Unemployment Rate Change: -1.0%
Total unemployment percentage change: -13.6%

JOHNSON
1964 Unemployment Rate: 5.2% (3.7 million total unemployed)
1968 Unemployment Rate: 3.6% (2.8 million total unemployed)
Unemployment Rate Change: -1.6%
Total unemployment percentage change: -25.6%

NIXON
1969 Unemployment Rate: 3.5% (2.8 million total unemployed)
1974 Unemployment Rate: 5.6% (5.1 million total unemployed)
Unemployment Rate Change: +2.1%
Total unemployment percentage change: +82.0%

FORD
1975 Unemployment Rate: 8.5% (7.9 million total unemployed)
1976 Unemployment Rate: 7.7% (7.4 million total unemployed)
Unemployment Rate Change: -0.8%
Total unemployment percentage change: -6.6%

CARTER
1977 Unemployment Rate: 7.1% (6.9 million total unemployed)
1980 Unemployment Rate: 7.1% (7.6 million total unemployed)
Unemployment Rate Change: 0.0
Total unemployment percentage change: +9.24%

REAGAN
1981 Unemployment Rate: 7.6% (8.2 million total unemployed)
1988 Unemployment Rate: 5.5% (6.7 million total unemployed)
Unemployment Rate Change: -2.1%
Total unemployment percentage change: -19.0%

BUSH I
1989 Unemployment Rate: 5.3% (6.5 million total unemployed)
1992 Unemployment Rate: 7.5% (9.6 million total unemployed)
Unemployment Rate Change: +2.2
Total unemployment percentage change: +47.2%

CLINTON
1993 Unemployment Rate: 6.9% (8.9 million total unemployed)
2000 Unemployment Rate: 4.0% (5.6 million total unemployed)
Unemployment Rate Change -2.9
Total unemployment percentage change: -36.3%

As you can see, in terms of the unemployment rate - that is, the percentage of the total workforce not working - the pre-WWII New Deal era saw the single largest drop in American history. Yes, I'll say that again for conservatives, just to make sure they get it: The PRE-WWII New Deal era from 1933-1940 - not the WWII era - saw the largest drop in the unemployment rate in American history. And by the way, that even includes the recession of 1937-1938.

Now, it is certainly true that the percentage drop of total unemployed was bigger in WWII than it was in the pre-WWII New Deal era. But as the data show, even by that metric, the pre-WWII New Deal era saw the second largest percentage drop in total unemployed in the 20th century, going from 12.8 million unemployed in Roosevelt's first year in office to 8.1 million unemployed at the end of his second term in 1940. That's a 36.7 percent drop - larger than the Clinton era (36.3%) and, yes conservatives, larger than the Reagan era (a mere 19%). At the absolute minimum, that would suggests the New Deal was a positive - not negative - economic force (and empirically more positive than, say, Reagan's free-market agenda).

These are the hard and fast numbers conservatives would like us all to forget with their claim that history proves massive spending packages like the New Deal will supposedly harm our economy.

The Forgotten Math: Pre-WWII New Deal Saw Biggest Drop In Unemployment Rate in American History

And you keep forgetting that your right wing austerity approach doesn't work. FDR found that out. FDR had his own right wing regressives to contend with, HERE is where that led.

The Recession of 1937–1938 was a temporary reversal of the pre-war 1933 to 1941 economic recovery from the Great Depression in the United States. Economists disagree about the causes of this downturn, but agree that government austerity reversed the recovery. wiki
 
We were at a record low also. Do not mistake my debate for disrespect for FDR, my parents were kids during the Great Depression, my grandparents explained it to me.
 
We were at a record low also. Do not mistake my debate for disrespect for FDR, my parents were kids during the Great Depression, my grandparents explained it to me.

If today's regressive blood letting crowd PC worships ever gains control, they will create a new LOW. The 'liquidate' and austerity thinking of Andrew Mellon will create death and destruction in America.

During the Great Depression conservatives raised the same objections to F.D.R.’s programs as they do today with Obama's. They said the economy must be left alone and it would correct itself in the long run. Commerce Secretary Harry Hopkins shot back: “People don’t eat in the long run. They eat every day.”

Mere parsimony (frugality, stinginess) is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy.
Edmund Burke

300 Economists Warn Congress: Don't Kill Growth And Jobs In The Name Of Deficit Reduction

A small army of economists warned Congress on Thursday not to focus on deficit reduction instead of job creation or else risk a 1937-style double-dip recession.

"History suggests that a tenuous recovery is no time to practice austerity," says a statement signed by more than 300 economists and policy experts. "In the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal generated growth and reduced the unemployment rate from 25 percent in 1932 to less than 10 percent in 1937. However, the deficit hawks of that era persuaded President Roosevelt to reverse course prematurely and move toward budget balance. The result was a severe recession that caused the economy to contract sharply and sent the unemployment rate soaring."

Democrats in Congress have had 1937 in mind since March 2009. "We're not going to let it happen again," vowed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) at the time.

Nevertheless, deficit hawks dominated the debate in Congress this summer as Democratic leaders struggled to reauthorize a series of programs created by the 2009 stimulus bill. Pelosi and her counterparts in the Senate have had seemingly little choice other than to sacrifice things like COBRA health insurance subsidies and enhanced unemployment benefits to win the support of deficit-hawkish Democrats and moderate Republicans.

"This is about a high road to recovery versus a low road to fiscal balance," said Bob Kuttner of the American Prospect and co-author of the statement, along with the Center for Economic and Policy Research's Dean Baker and the Robert Borosage and Roger Hickey from the Institute for America's Future. "The proper sequencing is: You get the recovery first, that requires increased public investment. And then the road to fiscal balance is much less arduous because people are working, businesses are investing, and tax revenues go up because you're back in recovery.

"There is also a low road to fiscal balance, where you have austerity and you get the budget balanced at the cost of whacking the real economy."

Click HERE to download a PDF of the report.
 
300 Economists Warn Congress: Don't Kill Growth And Jobs In The Name Of Deficit Reduction


Obviously we're spending in a good cause. Only $5 trillion more than we had, to end up with fewer jobs than the day Obama took office. Why not double down?
 
The ‘leave-it-alone liquidationists’ headed by Secretary of the Treasury Mellon…felt that government must keep its hands off and let the slump liquidate itself. Mr. Mellon had only one formula: ‘Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate’.…He held that even panic was not altogether a bad thing. He said: ‘It will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people’.

Telling.

We hear conservatives now making the same failed argument with regard to the December 2007 recession – note how conservatives today are just as callous as they were 82 years ago with regard to the suffering of the American people. Note also the typical conservative arrogance and elitism, they presume to ‘know what’s best’ for the people, including their ‘moral life’ and ‘values.’
The conservative failure to learn from history is as dangerous as the failed policies they advocate.


That's rich, coming from a leftwinger.

I was thinking the same thing.

I thought about posting something like... "Pot meet Kettle".

Immie
 
It is an op-ed...

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan


I love that quote. Look Peach I think your posts are not only well thought out, but I also believe you attempt to leave partisanship out of it.

Some fun some time. I actually try to look for your posts because I believe you mean what you say, and you are not trying to inflame.

You would be to me a Democrat. An honorable opponent. My type of a Democrat. Not many left these days.There's one guy I love to death. Guy called Doug. Real dem. Real time.

Honest dude. I love talking with him.

I vote Republican when the Republican is the better candidate...............

That sounds like something TDM would say, but we know she is lying when we ask things like, "so when was the last time you voted for a Republican?" and she totally avoids answering the question.

So I ask you... when was the last time you voted for a Republican?

Note: I expect you will answer.

Immie
 
300 Economists Warn Congress: Don't Kill Growth And Jobs In The Name Of Deficit Reduction


Obviously we're spending in a good cause. Only $5 trillion more than we had, to end up with fewer jobs than the day Obama took office. Why not double down?

You are more than welcome to 'emote' and parrot what you hear on Faux News, but FACTS and TRUTH betray your chirping.

The Republican Lie That ‘Obama Is A Job Killer’ In One Chart

unemployment-bush-v-obama.jpg


The GOP talking point that ’Obama is a job killer” is debunked in just one chart. President Obama took office in January 2009 when the ‘great recession’ was at it’s deepest. Up to that point millions of jobs had already been lost to the recession and in that month alone over 800,000 jobs were lost. In the following months many millions of additional jobs were lost. Certainly there is a point where we begin to direct blame for the economy towards Obama and away from Bush but it’s foolish at best to blame Obama for the millions of jobs lost within the first few months of his presidency when millions of jobs had already been shed leading up to the oath of office.

The 2009 stimulus bill was signed into law in February of that year and you can see in the chart that job losses begin to recede quite rapidly in the following months until finally positive job growth begins a year later in March 2010. It could be argued that positive job growth really didn’t take shape until October of 2010 because much of the job growth (and then losses) from March 2010 to September 2010 was due to the temporary hiring related to the 2010 census.

Each month from October 2010 until November 2011 (and now December 2011) has seen job growth. Out of the 35 full months (including December 2011 – not shown in the chart above) Obama has been in office, 18 months (again, including December 2011 – 200,000 jobs created) have seen job growth. More important is the trend. There is no reason to believe we won’t see continued job growth through all of 2012 which will only improve Obama’s creation-to-loss ratio.
 
300 Economists Warn Congress: Don't Kill Growth And Jobs In The Name Of Deficit Reduction


Obviously we're spending in a good cause. Only $5 trillion more than we had, to end up with fewer jobs than the day Obama took office. Why not double down?

You are more than welcome to 'emote' and parrot what you hear on Faux News, but FACTS and TRUTH betray your chirping.

The Republican Lie That ‘Obama Is A Job Killer’ In One Chart

unemployment-bush-v-obama.jpg


The GOP talking point that ’Obama is a job killer” is debunked in just one chart. President Obama took office in January 2009 when the ‘great recession’ was at it’s deepest. Up to that point millions of jobs had already been lost to the recession and in that month alone over 800,000 jobs were lost. In the following months many millions of additional jobs were lost. Certainly there is a point where we begin to direct blame for the economy towards Obama and away from Bush but it’s foolish at best to blame Obama for the millions of jobs lost within the first few months of his presidency when millions of jobs had already been shed leading up to the oath of office.

The 2009 stimulus bill was signed into law in February of that year and you can see in the chart that job losses begin to recede quite rapidly in the following months until finally positive job growth begins a year later in March 2010. It could be argued that positive job growth really didn’t take shape until October of 2010 because much of the job growth (and then losses) from March 2010 to September 2010 was due to the temporary hiring related to the 2010 census.

Each month from October 2010 until November 2011 (and now December 2011) has seen job growth. Out of the 35 full months (including December 2011 – not shown in the chart above) Obama has been in office, 18 months (again, including December 2011 – 200,000 jobs created) have seen job growth. More important is the trend. There is no reason to believe we won’t see continued job growth through all of 2012 which will only improve Obama’s creation-to-loss ratio.

The GOP talking point that ’Obama is a job killer” is debunked in just one chart.

Maybe you didn't understand?

We spent $5 trillion more than we had, in a bit over 3 years, to end up with fewer jobs than the day Obama took office. Why not double down?
 
Yes, Hayward writes opinion pieces, NOT history.

1. So....no errors in the OP?

2. Not all is from Hayward. I included the reference to Frazer's “The Golden Bough.”
Did you read it?
I used that because he explores the nature of the relationship of the tribal leader to the primitive folks, and that relationship exists for folks who need a 'daddy-President' to take care of them.
As in 'I won't have to put gas in my car,' or 'he'll give me free medical care.'

Very different from conservatives who value personal responsibility.


3 .Now, as for history...are you prepared to argue that Wilson and FDR undermined and ignore the Constitution?

Or that that is not history?

Neither "undermined" the Constitution, the Constitution is a LIVING document. One can disagree with how it is interpreted, but to say one human can change it is nonsense.

I do not see The Golden Bough as political either; a great work on faith as the motivation for belief, rather than tradition.


The consideration you fail to include is that the Depression altered the thinking of many citizens:

"The Depression created a new psychology of politics. People no longer looked to classical liberalism/ democracy, which they held responsible for the Depression. Rather, for protection and guidance, they were now willing to place their trust in a new type of authoritarian state, personified by Il Duce and the Fuhrer in Italy and Germany, and by President Roosevelt in the United States.

These new types of leaders were really the old type of leaders: those discussed in antiquity, and in Frazer’s The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, a wide-ranging, comparative study of mythology and religion. Just as pagan religious rituals were designed to relieve the stresses on agrarian societies, so these totalitarian leaders took on the ability to alleviate the pressures on the economy. And resistance to the ways of these leaders was just as dangerous as it was in earlier times."
Schivelbusch, "Three New Deals."

The simple minded, the childish, or, possibly, the trusting, tend to turn over responsibility a 'father-figure.'

This may be primitive tribes, or modern liberals.
 
Couple things about your chart skippy.

1. The unemplyment rate is still much higher under Obama (note unemployment line)
2. Adding all the red and substracting all the green under Obama is still a loss.
3. Your chart disproves what you suggest.
 
The ‘leave-it-alone liquidationists’ headed by Secretary of the Treasury Mellon…felt that government must keep its hands off and let the slump liquidate itself. Mr. Mellon had only one formula: ‘Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate’.…He held that even panic was not altogether a bad thing. He said: ‘It will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people’.

Telling.

We hear conservatives now making the same failed argument with regard to the December 2007 recession – note how conservatives today are just as callous as they were 82 years ago with regard to the suffering of the American people. Note also the typical conservative arrogance and elitism, they presume to ‘know what’s best’ for the people, including their ‘moral life’ and ‘values.’

The conservative failure to learn from history is as dangerous as the failed policies they advocate.

Did you say you wanted to learn from history?

Coming right up!

"America's greatest depression fighter was Warren Gamaliel Harding. An Ohio senator when he was elected president in 1920, he followed the much praised Woodrow Wilson— who had brought America into World War I, built up huge federal bureaucracies, imprisoned dissenters, and incurred $25 billion of debt.

Harding inherited Wilson's mess— in particular, a post–World War I depression that was almost as severe, from peak to trough, as the Great Contraction from 1929 to 1933 that FDR would later inherit. The estimated gross national product plunged 24 percent from $91.5 billion in 1920 to $69.6 billion in 1921. The number of unemployed people jumped from 2.1 million to 4.9 million.

One of Harding's campaign slogans was "less government in business," and it served him well. Harding embraced the advice of Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon and called for tax cuts in his first message to Congress on April 12, 1921. The highest taxes, on corporate revenues and "excess" profits, were to be cut. Personal income taxes were to be left as is, with a top rate of 8 percent of incomes above $4,000. Harding recognized the crucial importance of encouraging the investment that is essential for growth and jobs, something that FDR never did.

President-Elect Obama ought to consider the model of Warren G. Harding, whose policies raised Americans’ standard of living, and lifted the nation itself out of a depression…

In 1922, the House passed a veterans' bonus bill 333-70, without saying how the bonuses would be funded. The senate passed it 35-17. Despite intense lobbying from the American Legion, Harding vetoed the bill on September 19— just six weeks before congressional elections, when presidents generally throw goodies at voters. Harding said it was unfair to add to the burdens of 110 million taxpayers.

Harding's Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover wanted government intervention in the economy— which as president he was to pursue when he faced the Great Depression a decade later— but Harding would have none of it. He insisted that relief measures were a local responsibility."
Not-So-Great Depression - Jim Powell - National Review Online

Yep. Too bad Barry didn't read a little history.

Instead of following FDR's failed polices he could have used Hardings.

We all know which policies worked.
 
The ‘leave-it-alone liquidationists’ headed by Secretary of the Treasury Mellon…felt that government must keep its hands off and let the slump liquidate itself. Mr. Mellon had only one formula: ‘Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate’.…He held that even panic was not altogether a bad thing. He said: ‘It will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people’.

Telling.

We hear conservatives now making the same failed argument with regard to the December 2007 recession – note how conservatives today are just as callous as they were 82 years ago with regard to the suffering of the American people. Note also the typical conservative arrogance and elitism, they presume to ‘know what’s best’ for the people, including their ‘moral life’ and ‘values.’

The conservative failure to learn from history is as dangerous as the failed policies they advocate.

Did you say you wanted to learn from history?

Coming right up!

"America's greatest depression fighter was Warren Gamaliel Harding. An Ohio senator when he was elected president in 1920, he followed the much praised Woodrow Wilson— who had brought America into World War I, built up huge federal bureaucracies, imprisoned dissenters, and incurred $25 billion of debt.

Harding inherited Wilson's mess— in particular, a post–World War I depression that was almost as severe, from peak to trough, as the Great Contraction from 1929 to 1933 that FDR would later inherit. The estimated gross national product plunged 24 percent from $91.5 billion in 1920 to $69.6 billion in 1921. The number of unemployed people jumped from 2.1 million to 4.9 million.

One of Harding's campaign slogans was "less government in business," and it served him well. Harding embraced the advice of Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon and called for tax cuts in his first message to Congress on April 12, 1921. The highest taxes, on corporate revenues and "excess" profits, were to be cut. Personal income taxes were to be left as is, with a top rate of 8 percent of incomes above $4,000. Harding recognized the crucial importance of encouraging the investment that is essential for growth and jobs, something that FDR never did.

President-Elect Obama ought to consider the model of Warren G. Harding, whose policies raised Americans’ standard of living, and lifted the nation itself out of a depression…

In 1922, the House passed a veterans' bonus bill 333-70, without saying how the bonuses would be funded. The senate passed it 35-17. Despite intense lobbying from the American Legion, Harding vetoed the bill on September 19— just six weeks before congressional elections, when presidents generally throw goodies at voters. Harding said it was unfair to add to the burdens of 110 million taxpayers.

Harding's Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover wanted government intervention in the economy— which as president he was to pursue when he faced the Great Depression a decade later— but Harding would have none of it. He insisted that relief measures were a local responsibility."
Not-So-Great Depression - Jim Powell - National Review Online

Yep. Too bad Barry didn't read a little history.

Instead of following FDR's failed polices he could have used Hardings.

We all know which policies worked.

You know, Claudette, they don't care which works.

For Liberal-Progressives, it's all about the apocryphal 'fairness-equality' thing.

1. By the 20th century, the new ‘equality’ became a threat to freedom. FDR’s New Deal and Truman’s Fair Deal claimed the rectification of inequalities as within the purview of government. LBJ’s Great Society championed the redistribution of wealth and status in the name of equality. Realize that the concomitant movement toward collectivism meant a decline in the freedoms of business, private associations, families, and individuals.
Bork, "Slouching Toward Gomorrah."

2. Cultural elites and intellectuals, such as Christopher Lasch, state that “economic inequality is intrinsically undesirable…Luxury is morally repugnant, and its incompatibility with democratic ideals, moreover, has been consistently recognized in the traditions that shape our political culture…[A] moral condemnation of great wealth must inform any defense of the free market, and that moral condemnation must be backed up with effective political action.” Christopher Lasch, “The Revolt of the Elites, and the Betrayal of Democracy,” p. 22
Extension of this view changes democracy into socialism: the political ‘one person, one vote,’ becomes the economic mandate of socialism.

3. The desire for equality of income or of wealth is, of course, but one aspect of a more general desire for equality. “The essence of the moral idea of socialism is that human equality is the supreme value in life.” Martin Malia, “A Fatal Logic,” The National Interest, Spring 1993, pp. 80, 87
 
Did you say you wanted to learn from history?

Coming right up!

"America's greatest depression fighter was Warren Gamaliel Harding. An Ohio senator when he was elected president in 1920, he followed the much praised Woodrow Wilson— who had brought America into World War I, built up huge federal bureaucracies, imprisoned dissenters, and incurred $25 billion of debt.

Harding inherited Wilson's mess— in particular, a post–World War I depression that was almost as severe, from peak to trough, as the Great Contraction from 1929 to 1933 that FDR would later inherit. The estimated gross national product plunged 24 percent from $91.5 billion in 1920 to $69.6 billion in 1921. The number of unemployed people jumped from 2.1 million to 4.9 million.

One of Harding's campaign slogans was "less government in business," and it served him well. Harding embraced the advice of Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon and called for tax cuts in his first message to Congress on April 12, 1921. The highest taxes, on corporate revenues and "excess" profits, were to be cut. Personal income taxes were to be left as is, with a top rate of 8 percent of incomes above $4,000. Harding recognized the crucial importance of encouraging the investment that is essential for growth and jobs, something that FDR never did.

President-Elect Obama ought to consider the model of Warren G. Harding, whose policies raised Americans’ standard of living, and lifted the nation itself out of a depression…

In 1922, the House passed a veterans' bonus bill 333-70, without saying how the bonuses would be funded. The senate passed it 35-17. Despite intense lobbying from the American Legion, Harding vetoed the bill on September 19— just six weeks before congressional elections, when presidents generally throw goodies at voters. Harding said it was unfair to add to the burdens of 110 million taxpayers.

Harding's Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover wanted government intervention in the economy— which as president he was to pursue when he faced the Great Depression a decade later— but Harding would have none of it. He insisted that relief measures were a local responsibility."
Not-So-Great Depression - Jim Powell - National Review Online

Yep. Too bad Barry didn't read a little history.

Instead of following FDR's failed polices he could have used Hardings.

We all know which policies worked.

You know, Claudette, they don't care which works.

For Liberal-Progressives, it's all about the apocryphal 'fairness-equality' thing.

1. By the 20th century, the new ‘equality’ became a threat to freedom. FDR’s New Deal and Truman’s Fair Deal claimed the rectification of inequalities as within the purview of government. LBJ’s Great Society championed the redistribution of wealth and status in the name of equality. Realize that the concomitant movement toward collectivism meant a decline in the freedoms of business, private associations, families, and individuals.
Bork, "Slouching Toward Gomorrah."

2. Cultural elites and intellectuals, such as Christopher Lasch, state that “economic inequality is intrinsically undesirable…Luxury is morally repugnant, and its incompatibility with democratic ideals, moreover, has been consistently recognized in the traditions that shape our political culture…[A] moral condemnation of great wealth must inform any defense of the free market, and that moral condemnation must be backed up with effective political action.” Christopher Lasch, “The Revolt of the Elites, and the Betrayal of Democracy,” p. 22
Extension of this view changes democracy into socialism: the political ‘one person, one vote,’ becomes the economic mandate of socialism.

3. The desire for equality of income or of wealth is, of course, but one aspect of a more general desire for equality. “The essence of the moral idea of socialism is that human equality is the supreme value in life.” Martin Malia, “A Fatal Logic,” The National Interest, Spring 1993, pp. 80, 87

One has to wonder how far these nimwitts will push their social equality agendas.

As Thatcher said, "“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.

The Iron Lady was oh so right.
 
I'd count Ford even higher; he did what was right for the country, and gave up a chance to be elected. Not many Presidents you can name who would have made the sacrifice.

I'm not conviced everyone who has been seated in the Oval Office has been a willing participant....or at least continued to be a willing participant. Frankly, I doubt most of our VP's who became Presidents were really happy about having the job, primarily because they have a realistic POV about how much it sucks.

"Not worth a bucket of warm spit", said Garner.

Like Harry Truman said, no difference between a piano player in a whore house and a politician.
 
Many leading academics find that the greatest modern Presidents are those that have made government bigger and more powerful, and have expanded the reach of the presidency, i.e., Woodrow Wilson and FDR. By the same token, those Presidents with a limited-government POV, such as Harding, Coolidge and Reagan, are treated dismissively by journalists and historians.

Incorrect, George W. Bush made government bigger and more powerful, and expanded the reach of the presidency and is treated dismissively by journalists and historians.

The same is true concerning Nixon, with regard to making government bigger and more powerful. Nixon also oversaw a republican administration that attempted to expand the reach of the presidency through a criminal conspiracy. That criminal conspiracy failed only as a consequence of the conspirators’ incompetence.

Nixon is as close as we’ve come to a dictatorship and the destruction of the Republic. The Republic was saved by the Constitution and the Supreme Court, adhering to the rule of law, the same rule of law republicans seek to violate each and every time they occupy the WH.

Nonsense. Nixon, whom I loath, and Bush, whom I can do without, got nothin' on Wilson, FDR or LBJ in that regard. It's not even close.
 

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