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DON'T REPEAT ERRORS OF NEW DEAL
...Even more than specific New Deal projects, Obama and his fellow Democrats are evoking Roosevelt's leadership style. In school, we learned that it was FDR's personality that pulled the country through the Depression. If only, the suggestion is, we can have a strong enough leader, Americans will also find recovery again. We need some "bold persistent experimentation" of the Roosevelt variety.

There is evidence, however, that FDR's very strength was a negative, because he used it to give himself a license to do true experimenting. In his second inaugural address, FDR said that he sought "an instrument of unimagined power for the establishment of a morally better world."

No one knew what it meant, and markets were terrified. Everyone feared FDR would regulate or prosecute them next. Businesses refused to invest. The 1930s' second half proved frustrating for the country: The economy was always recovering but never quite recovered. The Dow didn't get back to its 1929 level until the mid-'50s.

These facts are important to bear in mind. The New Deal inspired. But it is the wrong deal for the country, even now.