- Franklin D. Roosevelt, Second Inaugural Address, January 20, 1937

I’m opening tonight’s post with an interesting quote from FDR’s Second Inaugural Address.  The year was 1937, and FDR had just won the largest electoral landslide in the nation’s history en route to his second term as president.  The country was in the midst of the Great Depression, and the economic makeup of the country had drastically changed from just 10 years prior.

In the 1920′s, the private sector was the dominant force in the economy.  During the years of Republican President Calvin Coolidge, unemployment was at record lows, income taxes for top earners were slashed from 77% to 25%, and investment in our transforming national industry (from farming to manufacturing) provided the backdrop for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.  In a sense, everyone believed they had a chance to become Jay Gatsby, the (albeit fictitious) embodiment of the “Roaring 20′s”.

Less than a decade later, nothing could be further from reality.  As a reaction to the Crash of 1929 and its aftermath, government had quickly become the country’s dominant economic machine.  Republican President Hoover’s knee-jerk reactions and attempts at government intervention placed higher restrictions on the free market and stifled the engines of recovery.  Democratic President Roosevelt’s New Deal called for higher taxation, the creation of new entitlement programs, governmental control of private industries (specifically utilities), and a slient disregard for the Constitution.  In the implementation of the New Deal during his first term, FDR greatly exploited and even institutionalized class warfare.  By effectively declaring war on Wall Street and the private sector, Roosevelt appealed to the struggling and poor laborers, seniors, and farmers.  To Roosevelt and his political allies, only he could stand up to the corruption of Wall Street on behalf of the little guy.  By casting the private sector against the government, he inspired the lower classes to resent and despise the free market and the evils it could potentially bring.  Roosevelt had sought the unimagined power to do what he felt was morally right for the American people.  The stage had been set for the next 70 years of economic debate in the United States.

Here we are, 72 years later, and the battle between the public and private sectors is raging once again.  Faced with a recession not seen since the Carter administration, we must once again ask ourselves who we trust to pull ourselves out of this situation.  Do we trust the free market and Wall Street or the Chosen One and his collectivism-embracing allies?  Wall Street has already spoken, and sent a mighty volley towards 1600 Penn this afternoon:

President Obama, are you listening?  Will you declare war on the private sector like your party’s predecessors, or will you embrace the free-market principals that have made this nation the most wealthy in the world?  I’m afraid we already have your answer.

In closing, I’ll leave you with another quote, just as relevant now as it was in 1980:

“‘Trust me’ government asks that we concentrate our hopes and dreams on one man; that we trust him to do what’s best for us. My view of government places trust not in one person or one party, but in those values that transcend persons and parties. The trust is where it belongs–in the people.”

-Ronald Reagan, Speech Accepting the Republican Nomination for President, July 17, 1980

With the passage of today’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (full text here and here), we’ve officially returned to the big-government policies of the Carter administration.  Even Clinton knew better than to try something this bold and destructive.  As Karl Rove wrote in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, I’d like to thank the Democratic leadership for energizing the right and giving them a cause to rally around.  Now, if we can only convince them to bring charges against the Bush Administration…

Goodnight everyone, and see you tomorrow morning (2016).