Stop Repeating Yourself

Jonathan Alter, student of history:

Where’s Franklin Roosevelt when we need him? While campaigning amid 25 percent unemployment in 1932, Roosevelt argued for what he called “bold, persistent experimentation.”

As he put it: “It is common sense to take one method and try it. If it fails, admit failure frankly and try another. But above all, try something.”

This spirit of creativity and experimentation is missing in today’s Washington, especially on jobs creation.

Persistant bold experimentation — stimulus, string-pushing, ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank — is precisely why we have a jobs problem, and precisely why unemployment never dropped below double digits until WWII came along.