Posted by
Compassionate Conservative on Sunday, May 31, 2009 5:46:19 PM
You know, the Teens, the upcoming decade that will include the years Twenty-Thirteen through Twenty-Nineteen Will they look like the Nineteen-Thirties or the Nineteen-Eighties?
The Nineteen-Thirties were arguably the worst decade this country has ever experienced, at least economically. They began with the Great Depression in full swing and ended with it still going strong, but, remarkably, the same party was in power for most of a decade marked by economic failure. How did this happen? A glib career Democrat politician convinced the American voter, with high-flown rhetoric, that he was doing a great job fixing a problem that was all the making of a hapless Republican President. Somehow, he persuaded the nation while standing for election for President for the third time that in 1940 the Great Depression was the fault of Herbert Hoover and the Republicans, who had left office almost eight years earlier.
The Nineteen-Eighties, on the other hand, were arguably the best decade this country has ever experienced economically, and the prosperity continued for most of the next two decades as well. The followed the era of "malaise" in the 1970s, a decade marked by "stagflation" which ended with the one-term presidency of Jimmy Carter. The complete failure of both Carter's domestic and foreign policies led to the upset election in 1980 of one Ronald Reagan, a bold communicator who could make the American people understand why conservatism was good for them. Reagan jumpstarted the stagnant economy with tax cuts and then went on to defeat the Soviet empire in the Cold War to begin not only a new era of prosperity but also of American dominance in international affairs.
In its economic policies, the current administration resembles the free-spending Roosevelt Administration, and Barack Obama certainly has been successful in convincing average Americans that he represents a "change" for the better. Of course, FDR, a strong President even if his economic policies were extremely flawed, would never have countenanced appeasement of dangerous foreign regimes. In that, Obama much more closely resembles Carter, and his combination of weak economic and foreign policies should be setting up a scenario very much like 1980, where we will elect this generation's answer to Reagan in 2012. In any case, at this point, the best we can hope for is that we have a new President by Twenty-Thirteen. That way, we can have some hope that the Teens will look like the Eighties and not the Thirties.