Why Obama can't be compared to FDR
Another
great post from Ezra Klein:
In “Reaching for a New Deal,” Theda
Skocpol and Lawrence Jacobs recall with bemusement the sepia-tinged
excitement that greeted Obama’s victory in 2008. What the FDR-obsessed
pundits missed, the two political scientists say, was that “the timing,
nature, and severity” of the economic crises the two presidents faced
were very different.
Franklin D. Roosevelt won the presidency in
1932, three years into the Great Depression. The unemployment rate that
year was 23.6 percent. Obama won the presidency in 2008, mere months
into the financial crisis; unemployment was at 6.8 percent.
Consequently, the two presidents faced political systems prepared to do very different things.
In his new book, “The New Deal: A Modern History,” Michael
Hiltzik makes clear that though FDR was an unusually energetic and
ambitious president, he was paired with an unusually energetic and
ambitious Congress.
Take the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.,
which ended traditional bank runs by insuring commercial bank deposits.
FDR opposed it. He believed that “the weak banks will pull down the
strong.” But senators from rural states represented those small, weak
banks. Deposit insurance was part of the price they exacted to pass the
Glass-Steagall banking law. “You will have to come to a deposit
guarantee eventually, Cap’n,” Roosevelt’s vice president, John Nance
Garner, told him. He did — but only because Congress forced him into it.
This
happened again and again throughout the New Deal. FDR wanted to go far.
But Congress often wanted to go further — occasionally over the
president’s objections.
Read the whole thing.