IT’S MAGIC

Oh give me a home with a government loan

And a mortgage I ain’t paying no more

With stimulus dough I can call my own

And the wolf slinks away from my door.

Stim, stim, stimulus

Dot’s wot I learned in my school.

Dough, dough, it’s fabulous,

That Obama he ain’t no fool.

He’ll find us the gelt to pay off our debt

Tho’ the clouds we see are cumulus

Payin’ a debt just ain’t no sweat

If you can just score some…stimulus.

Stim, stim, stimulus

It’s all comin’ out of a pool

In the land of Oz so famous

Ooh, that man is so cool!

Mythology seems to get into any consideration of the current breakdown of the economic machine. That’s not too unusual in times of stress. People look for a savior to come to their rescue from out of nowhere. As you see, he did, and he got into my head, triggering a poetic reaction which also extended to his land of origin. Not that he’s actually Ozian, it’s just that if one took seriously the mystic qualities with which he’s been invested, he would have to be. Luckily all this has been exaggerated and it’s been ascertained that he is a member of the human race.

That settles that. But mythology still intrudes, the most popular variety right now being the golden legend about the New Deal of the Thirties, also featuring a superhuman character who used a magic wand to bring prosperity out of disaster and a new day to dawn on an America raised to glory through his inspired leadership. All this has made for a hard act for Obama to follow, like a singer following Pavarotti.

Well, it’s not that bad. Roosevelt, the man I’ve been alluding to, did not actually perform miracles. His New Deal just didn’t live up to its advertisements when it came to lifting the country out of the Great Depression. Let that be a consolation for his successor. If he flops, he just has to remember that FDR did too. That’ll make him feel better. For a few minutes anyhow.

What happened in the Thirties? As I’ve written before, it was saved by the Forties, that is, by World War II. Unemployment, the curse, disappeared. As one writer has said “Roosevelt hadn’t known what to do with the extra people in 1938, but now he did; he could make them soldiers.” All those folks who are convinced that Obama will get us out of the Middle East and make peace with all our enemies should take heed of this. Roosevelt was a peacemaker too until 1939. By then he’d been fighting unemployment since 1933 and hadn’t gotten anywhere after some early success. Things had actually gotten worse in 1937. Overnight, from a supporter of the Neutrality Act FDR became a warrior thirsting for battle and summoning his armies to follow him to victory or death. He found it thrilling. His cousin Theodore had been the same way.

Could Obama turn out the same? Politicians, as I’ve just shown, often go to war when domestic troubles get them down and a diversion is needed. Being still the richest country in the world we have no shortage of enemies who’d enjoy taking a crack at us. I worry about Hillary Clinton being the Secretary of State. She tends to rub people the wrong way. So does Biden when you come to think about it. With a couple of troublemakers like that on the loose, anything could happen.

Going back to Roosevelt, he took the 1937 increase in unemployment very hard. He concluded that it had been cooked up by the “interests” to make him look bad. They wanted revenge for his forty-six state sweep in the 1936 election and his attacks on businessmen in his speeches. Calling them “economic royalists” and “princes of privilege” didn’t endear FDR to them. Although it hardly seems likely that they would reduce hiring of help just to spite Roosevelt, it could also have been possible that attacks like these served to weaken confidence in his attitude toward business and thereby indirectly reduced activity, including hiring.

Roosevelt tried to have it both ways -- beat up on business and at the same time beg it to bring back prosperity by extending credit to customers, investing in new equipment, exporting to new markets and generally whipping itself into a lather of activity which in the opinion of businessman and in his would not just strengthen the country but also his regime. A lot of the businessmen thought the two outcomes were incompatible.

Obama, with his soak-the-rich ideas seems to be on the same track as the Roosevelt of 1938. He should remember that the successful Roosevelt was the FDR of 1939. With war raging in Europe and threatening to spread here, FDR allied himself with the businessmen of the country, who became his favorite people. The first was William Knudsen of General Motors, who took charge of war production. After him came men like Charles Wilson, also of GM, and Charles Wilson II of GE, then William Jeffers of Union Pacific, Henry Kaiser, Andrew Higgins, Donald Nelson of Sears and literally thousands of others, including Wall Streeters. Roosevelt told the world he was giving Dr. New Deal a rest and substituting Dr. Win-the-War. It worked: he won the war, stayed in power and died at his peak. Obama, take notice.