Stop Me Before I Vote Again

It would mean the empire would turn inward ... for a spell. The New Deal was not internationalist at all.

I'm not talking about the third term FDR -- that guy, the post September 39 FDR was not Mr New Deal anymore, he was CnC OF the world's new hegemony.

I'm talking about the first two terms ... the first deal and then the real deal.

The first deal was in essence ... and I emphasize in essence -- corporatism; i.e. it was Benito Lite. The National Recovery Act was an attempt to massively violate our constitution, our way of doing business and our sense of what made us America -- but that's about all the good I can say for it. As a way to end the Depression it was, on balance, worse than Hooverism -- once one recognizes the part of the first term that was entrained by Hoover's policies and agencies, many of which were kept in a holding pattern by Congressional dems, waiting for the First Coming, so to speak. (BTW there are more then mere shades of Clinton after Bush I in all this.)

Examples of Hoover endeavours that the New Deal implemented include, off the top of my head, the famed Inauguration Day bank holiday declaration, the nest egg of a new economic order, the reconstruction finance corporation, and best of all, the public works administration.

Let me note, by way of parallel-universing, a Hoover II would not have run the ship through its drills so briskly as the Featherduster was wont to, but if instead of Franklin we had had and American Stanley Baldwin, I doubt the bottom line diff would have been all that much in FDR's favor -- through mid-'34 or so.

But at that point Hoover drops into the dustbin, even in his own universe, because FDR pulled off a second deal even as he coasted through his first term without serious political challenges. And this deal was the real deal, the massive course correction that allowed us to build a world class transfer system and industrial union movement -- the measures, in other words, that brought us all we so cherish that's under siege today.

To be continued....