Whew... tough morning.

Man, the schedule around here is getting tough this late in the school year... with the oldest boy working till 9 PM three nights a week, the 9 year old going to a new school and Liz and I both working full time.  Can't seem to find a routine anymore...

I got home and read Ryan's two posts.  If I hadn't been so tired, I'd have posted already, but here's my thoughts:

On Hoover:  I can't argue with anything you said... at all.  I even made the point myself once that New Deal "began" with the last two years of Hoover's administration.  The measures he took (via a more than liberal Congress) did absolutely nothing to turn the economy around... and he was starting what FDR would finish.

If I had to defend my rampant generalization (something I blame you for doing far too often, I know) about GOP "hands off" policies moving into the 1930s, it would be that it was a half-assed effort, at best.  Hoover never budged from his "balanced budget" position as President, and too much "progressive" policy would make that impossible (even though it was impossible at that point, anyway).  However, I can't deny that this is a weak argument.

On Morgenthau:  You picked the right New Dealer to use as an example of the disillusioned, and I will even go so far as to say he wasn't the most prominent.  FDR's first Vice President (John Nance Garner) also had changed his mind almost completely by the second term ('36 to '40), and fought the President on almost everything he wanted done.  Want to find opposition to New Deal from within the Administration?  Look at some of his quotes...

Lest you forget, I don't need to go far to see real opposition to New Deal... my paternal grandfather never had a good thing to say about any of it, to the best of my recollection.  Even mentioning the tools he still had with "WPA" burned into their handles was enough to start an anti-FDR rant from Ray H.  I know it wasn't a 100% support base for his efforts, no doubt... but his popularity then and in subsequent decades has shown his legacy to be pretty solid.

On the Second Bill of Rights:  I'm no fan of this SotU speech... lets get this straight right now.  I don't doubt for a minute that the man held pretty strong, leftist leanings... and that (real or imagined) successes in his efforts after his first term, whether due to policies or not, bolstered and built up these leanings and reinforced the idea that he could do more.  By 1944, when he gave the speech, he was very very ill... too ill by far to have gone to the Yalta conference, and his closest advisers (even one that went to my high school, Admiral William D. Leahy) voiced real concern that he was not capable of making important decisions.

If I have any response, it is that nothing really came of the Second Bill of Rights.  He gave the speech, it was well received at the time... but I think most people understood that the "rights" he was advocating for were not "inherent" rights like those defined in the Bill of Rights.  Everything within the list he made in 1944 can be "protected" by guarantying the "equal opportunity" for, rather than the guaranteed provision of by the Fedeal government... and most were already equally available to white, Protestant males in American society then anyway.

On ending this once and for all:  Nothing I seem to say ever seems to be considered by Ryan in this debate.  I can't point to programs like FDIC, the SEC, WPA, TVA, Golden Gate or any of the other "success" stories of the New Deal without admitting the failure of NRA, REA, or the rest of the alphabet soup stuff, yet he can ring off failure upon failure without acknowledging any successes at all.  No explanation has been given as to why no depression-level economic crisis has happened since 1932, in spite of continued "New Deal" policies rolling all the way into the 1980s and beyond.  Short-term success in areas like temporary employment for 8 million people and the development of national infrastructure unparalleled since the railroad boom of the 1880s mean nothing if the bill to pay for them couldn't be squared away before the end of the fiscal year.  When I question the continued "New Deal" efforts throughout the Eisenhower administrations, it is either ignored or dismissed as "apples and oranges" even though the level of deficit spending on a domestic agenda is directly comparable to FDR's and it can be coupled with a "boom economy" from '52 through '58.  Dollar for dollar, Reagan spent more in a peacetime economy than FDR did, but he did it with lower taxes and increased revenue (and it was a far smaller percentage of the GDP... I know).  I am routinely baffled by the changing "requirements" of the debate... not entirely Ryan's fault, since the premise of the debate change with each incarnation, but we do seem to flash back and forth over and over again.

I cannot adequately prove that FDR's New Deal policies DIDN'T prolong the era of the Great Depression, but I feel I have given adequate proof that the depression that started in Oct of 1929 was OVER AND DONE by 1934, and after that the nation suffered nothing more than recessions that never lasted more than one year.  I can no more show that the New Deal didn't retard the recovery than Ryan can show me that it did nothing... but I cannot deny that certain particulars within the New Deal structure were harmful, wasteful or counter-productive.  The excessive taxes certainly make his point beyond my ability to deny.

More importantly, no "progressive" plan since New Deal has shown me that it worked... not the Great Society, not the War on Poverty, nothing.  I cannot point to a "progressive" plan prior to New Deal, either, that would show any real success.  I am not a progressive... nor am I a liberal, and if I cannot adequately define and defend what worked in 1932 but hasn't worked before or since, then I am forced by rational and adult conscience to admit that I cannot continue the debate and must concede the point entirely.

That said, I have to ask that, given my concession of the argument that New Deal "worked"... I'm going to ask that Ryan answers this simple question:  Without giving FDR any of the "credit" for success (since I know none will be given) in the 1930s... something did work.  What was it?  What pearl among the swill contributed to the end of the "boom-bust" cycle the US had been functioning under for the 140 years prior to  New Deal?  Something must have... it can't simply have ended with no contributing factor... so what program or policy did what needed to be done, in spite of FDR rather than because of him?

I ask because the era of New Deal continued until the 1980s... and the US economy reached heights unimagined in that period of time... and every President after FDR continued the paradigm he started.  How is that possible, if everything FDR did was wrong and contrary to sound economic policy?