Obama = Hoover?

Walter Russell Mead, who invented the “Blue social model” as a way to label the 1950s-early 1960s great time in America when Democrats dominated our big government-big business-big labor everybody happy middle class way of life, is one of the best political analysts around. He now is out with a post that compares Obama not to Roosevelt, but to Herbert Hoover, the man Roosevelt defeated in a landslide.

Ironic. Perceptive. Unlike George Bush, who was out of office 4 months after the big crash of 2008, Hoover was stuck with the Great Depression for 3-1/2 long years. Hoover and the Depression merged in people’s minds by the time Roosevelt beat him in 1932. And Obama’s problem is that the same thing is happening with him. The Great Recession is Obama’s. As Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz says, “We own the economy.” Mead additionally points out that Hoover, like Obama, was an activist who believed government deficit spending could fix the economy.

Today Obama looks to be Mr. Problem (Hoover), not Mr. Cure (Roosevelt).

A little note: this blog first hinted at a parallel between Obama and Hoover rather than FDR earlier, in July 2009 in fact.