That's fine....

FDR gets a pass for being a progressive radical of the first order (the standard bearer of US leftist ideology), because the country was in such bad shape, and after all he recited the pledge so he must, must love the Constitution he continually attempted to get around. But Obama, he goes a just a couple blocks down FDR's mile long road & he's an American hating Constitution defiler who must be stopped, even though he was overwhelmingly elected as well.

Ok, thats fine.

You know this would ALL make sense if you were a consistent progressive, into 2012. What continues to baffle me is that in 2012 you oppose any candidate that would get even CLOSE to an FDR agenda. But wait, I forgot, if we enter another catastrophic depression on par with the 1930's, THEN you'll back such a candidate. THEN this stuff would work. THEN there's a reason to abandon your 2012 principles ... to save them, I guess.

Titus, either this kind of crap works (New Deal, top down, planned economies) or it doesn't. You saythey don't. UNLESS it gets really, really bad, THEN it would work (because it DID work, then). You dont "need" Obama to do that, now, though, because now it wont ... sorta ... pretty much, work ... now. What the hell does that mean, you dont "need" him to do it now? Does it work or not? We are certainly capable as a nation of duplicating the general theme, direction & mass bureaucratic dissemination inherit in those policies (& Lord knows this President is trying). Yet you currently oppose such an ideology & the policy course it would yield.

As an aside, I'll answer your carpet bombing analogy/question. Would it work to have turned Iraq into fused glass - yes. Would I advocate it? No. But I DO know it would work if they tried it. In other words, denying the military my approval doesnt mean it wouldn't work to bring an early and swift end to the insurgency, it would. The risk/reward just doesn't make it for me, strategically - that's not the same as saying it wouldnt work were the decision made. Even if I thought nukes were the wrong approach(& obviously I do), I still know they'd work (they would end the war). So I'll change the dynamic of the question to address what I see as a facile comparison (war is on a slightly different risk/reward measurement system than economics, if you ask me): even if you would not advocate it, even if you disapproved of its' implementation,even if you thought it the wrong approach to reach the goal, in the end would a new New Deal work if they tried it?

By the way a simple question: you admit that FDR's tax policy (& I'll throw in the embargos inherited from Hoover) had a retarding effect on the recovery. Now you know, like you know your name, how economically stifling oppressively high taxes are. Do you think the rest of New Deal, as it existed then, was enough to not only compensate but overcome that retarding effect for a net New Deal benefit? Because those oppressive tax rates were as much a part of the New Deal agenda as SSI. I, for one, knowing what I do about basic economics, can not see how the answer to that question is "yes." And if you answer yes you're telling me thats how good the rest of New Deal was, even with oppressively high tax rates it STILL works. Really? It was that good huh? But it wont work now ... right? Come on man.

Another simple question: as president you propose an overall multi year economic recovery agenda, and 80% of it gets thrown out as unconstitutional. Do you have a "successful" agenda? Bear in mind, that remaining 20% includes those oppressive taxes.

My bottom line on your defense - I submit if New Deal "doesnt work" or wouldnt work in times like these, then they hadn't a prayer of working during a time when things were much, much worse. How can you not see the logic in that simple statement?

I will believe to my dying breath that any conservative in 2012 (read: YOU), who defends New Deal is doing so based on an emotional, nostalgic, "I own a tool bearing a WPA stamp" connection ... nothing else makes sense.