The Second Coming Of Herbert Hoover

The title of this post was heisted from Howie Carr’s piece at The Boston Herald.  Depending upon whose version of history you rely on, the indisputable truth about President Herbert Hoover was his epic failure to end the downward economic spiral known as The Great Depression.

Fred Barnes, Executive Editor of The Weekly Standard, puts forward the notion that the gelding who currently occupies the Oval Office “has been hurt by the media’s leniency.”

“Both his presidency and reelection prospects have suffered. He’s grown lazy and complacent. The media have encouraged him to believe his speeches are irresistible political catnip, though they aren’t. His overreliance on words hasn’t helped.”

Dean Baker, Co-Director for The Center For Economic and Policy Research, recently chided The Washington Post for the conspicuous absence of expert ridicule of this president when Obama said, “I have to admit, I didn’t know how steep the climb was going to be. Because we didn’t realize—we just found out a week ago that the economy that last few months in 2008 was even worse than we had realized.”

Baker, writing for Business Insider offers his reasoning:

“It is true that the Commerce Department just revised down the GDP data to show that the decline at the start of the recession was even steeper than had previously been reported. However, by far the most meaningful measure of the steepness of the climb needed for recovery is the employment to population ratio (EPOP): the percentage of the working age population with jobs. This is reported monthly and is not subject to substantial revision.”

“President Obama's team always knew exactly how far the EPOP had fallen since the start of the downturn and therefore knows how many people must be put to work to get the economy back to full employment. The lower than previously reported GDP is an interesting piece of information, but tells us almost nothing new about how much ground must be made up.”

“The Post should have included the comments of economists ridiculing the idea that President Obama has just now discovered how bad the downturn was. It might even be worth a separate article or two. If the statement is actually true (i.e. President Obama just realized how bad the downturn was) then it is deserving of far more attention than his comment about working class whites being bitter and clinging to gun and religion before the Pennsylvania primary.”

Clearly, with this president we have moved past Jimmy Carter V2.0, past Herbert Hoover into Nero imagery.