In the past, Harper’s magazine has been so far ahead of the news cycle that Lewis Lapham, their venerable arch-liberal former editor, didn’t even bother to wait for the Republicans’ 2004 convention to actually occur before filing a story on its events. But, as I noticed in a Denver airport newsstand before flying back Sunday afternoon from a weekend confab with my partner in punditry at PJM Political, they’re running a cover story this month titled “Barack Hoover Obama.”
Gosh, there’s a shocker of a headline.
Last year, Orrin Judd, co-proprietor of the long-running Brothers Judd site and I repeatedly referenced variations on “Smoot-Hawley 2008″, as we riffed on echoes from Obama and his advisors on the campaign trail similar to the disastrous anti-free trade bill that Hoover reluctantly signed off in 1930, one of the first of many missteps the progressive Hoover and FDR both made on the way to prolonging the Depression far longer than it needed to be. As Mark Steyn presciently noted, other nations had economic Depressions at the start of the 1930s; the US had a Great Depression, earning that added sobriquet due to its needless longevity.
In October of 2008, in possibly the first reverse-Lapham ever, Hugh Hewitt wrote a blog post in October of 2008 with nearly the same title as Harper’s article this month. Back in August of ’08, Jim McTague of Barron’s magazine wrote, “It’s almost as if Obama wants to repeat the mistakes of Herbert Hoover.” (Watch CNBC video from last August here, which references that quote.) And Jeffery Lord of the American Spectator ran an article in December last year titled “Obama as Hoover”, even as Obama was merely Photoshopping signs promoting the otherwise powerless “Office of the President Elect.”
(And heaven knows Time and Newsweek have endlessly compared Obama to FDR; which means they’re tacitly comparing him to Hoover’s similar economic policies as well, even if they don’t know it.)
As Steyn wrote in March, “This is the point:”
The nuancey boys were wrong on Obama, and the knuckledragging morons were right. There is no post-partisan centrist “grappling” with the economy, only a transformative radical willing to make Americans poorer in the cause of massive government expansion. At some point, The Economist, Messrs [David] Brooks, [Christopher] Buckley & Co are going to have to acknowledge this. If they’re planning on spending the rest of his term tutting that his management style is obstructing the effective implementation of his centrist agenda, it’s going to be a long four years.
Or as Glenn Reynolds likes to ask, “Who were the rubes?”
Related: Rand Simberg writes, “Surprise, Surprise”:
The states hit hardest by the recession are getting the least amount of “stimulus.” Well, what else would you expect from Barack Hoover Obama?
And a few of the commenters below note how unfair in one sense the comparison is — Hoover was quite an accomplished engineer and won praise as secretary of commerce under President Harding before becoming president himself. Of course, both Hoover and Obama were successful authors before becoming president; the former via a best-selling textbook titled Principles of Mining (a topic that would be anathema to 21st century progressives); the latter via his autobiographical genuflections on his vast and storied pre-presidential career.
Also Related: “Unaccustomed As We Are To Defending FDR…”
It’s sad that Obama comes out a loser even in comparison to Herbert Hoover, who at least was an accomplished and well-regarded engineer who oversaw the recoveries of Europe after both World Wars.
I’m still trying to find out anything that Obama has done for anyone outside of, well, himself.
I’ve no doubt that Obama is going to make the Hoover Administration look incredibly competent. What is truly frightening is that Hoover had a truly impressive record of accomplishments prior to becoming president. Hoover also had executive experience. Obama? not so much. The main thing they have in common is that both of them seem(ed) to believe the adulation they received lauding them as “super geniuses” ala Wiley Coyote.
You can stop looking Oldrip57. There’s nothing to find. It’s all about him.
He has one thing in common with a Hoover.
I don’t like the comparison. Most of what we think we know about Hoover is from FRD-era electioneering and propaganda. Actually, Hoover was arguably the most intelligent man to sit in the Oval Office in the 20th century; he may have been at genuine genius level. This is not to claim that he was a great President, only that he was a great and brilliant American. We know now that intellectual horsepower isn’t a strong qualification for the Presidency, which is to a large degree about leadership rather than management. (In purely management positions, Hoover invariably excelled.) The other exceptionally intelligent Presidents of the last century – Wilson, almost certainly Nixon, possibly Clinton – would never be called unqualified successes, either.
Smoot-Hawley notwithstanding, I see nothing in Obama’s career so far which puts him anywhere near Hoover’s league. I don’t even see anything which puts him in Huey Long’s league.
Tom -
When I heard the One’s comments on the Warren Supremes not going far enough in the redistribution of wealth, my mind immediately popped to Huey Long. His ranting and screaming about that was unreal, and it promised that the haves would soon be the have nots, and that the have nots would soon be the sort-of-haves. All of them, of course, had to pay tribute to Huey’s “deduct box.”
Meet the new boss, and so forth.
I didn’t think I would see it this soon, if at all, but it feels like the media is starting to acknowledge what an empty suit Obambi actually is.
My guess is that because Obama is looking like an inexperienced meathead loser, some of the media elites are trying to figure out how to distance themselves from their former man-crush.
If the economy perks up or if he gets a foreign/domestic policy victory sometime soon, much of this MSM backsliding will stop. If not, the rats will continue to jump ship.
Well, Obama’s certainly no FDR. FDR at least said the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. But Obama, for all his campaigning on “Hope and Change”, was really elected out of fear (of economic collapse) and anger (at the GOP for Bush letting it happen on his watch), and not surprisingly he and his fellow Dems have been stoking those same emotions to drive their agenda.
Of course, we all remember what Yoda said about fear and anger… don’t we?
I’m still trying to find out anything that Obama has done for anyone outside of, well, himself.
Be fair, now! The Won did bring down the House of Clinton. Remember how during the run-up to the 2008 elections Hilly the Hun was Ms. Inevitability, the 100%-guaranteed 44th President of the United States?
And remember: the pants-down Presidency of William Jefferson Clinton destroyed the feminist movement. We can see a similar dynamic at work with regards to Washington’s meanest and dirtiest lobby, the “civil rights” movement. People are starting to question the wisdom of turning the Presidency into yet another Affirmative Action hire. The Won may yet have something major to contribute to America, even if it is the destruction of the race-baiting machine that helped to elect Him.
He’s not Herbert Hoover, folks: he’s Woodrow Wilson. Examine Wilson’s career and outlooks very carefully- and take this as a warning.
From the Bene Gesserit ‘Litany Against Fear’:
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the
little-death that brings total obliteration …”
—-
“My … what a big worm!” – Paul A.
Wilson, like Obama, was a pretend-intellectual who didn’t like to put effort into his writing.
The Actual Role of Government
We are getting an object lesson about the actual role of government. Is it a caring institution that will make us rich after it squashes big business? Or, is it regulatory oppressor with a big sign in neon “Buy your favors and loopholes here”
Worst economy since…….Grover Cleveland?
Comparisons with Hoover are especially apt since Obama is ignoring the traditional Keynesian model for deficit spending. Keynes would have been shocked at the idea of any tax increases during a severe recession and he would have been horrified that we ran deficits during good times instead of raising taxes to cool down the economy.
Obama model is clearly not based on economic but on power. He wants to tax and borrow to transfer wealth from people who did not support him to people who did. The vast amount of uncertainty he has injected into economic planning will reduce economic growth for a decade or more.
Comparing him to Hoover is an insult to Hoover.
He certainly sucks like a Hoover……
Intelligence is important, but it can be used for freedom or for the dark side, central planning. Both Hoover and FDR worked in Woodrow Wilson’s administration, and all were so-called Progressive.
I’ve said it before and I’ll have to say it again: Spend five minutes and read the story of the Cloward-Piven Strategy enunciated in the mid-60′s by a couple of ultra-lib Columbia professors. Hope-a-Dope’s plans make sense only under this umbrella.
>He certainly sucks like a Hoover……
I said it first.
Hoover started the whole “Americans have a right to own a home” mantra back in 1920. As a proper progressive, he was already tuned into the idea of burdening the American economy.
There are numerous examples from generations ago that can be dug up in various national archives of buffoons and deluded fools mouthing much of the same pronouncements and offering many of the same prescriptions for progress and justice as the red-rubber-nose-wearing, giant-shoed John Wayne Gacey-costumed goons and goonettes that dominate Congress now.