The latest New Yorker just arrived in my mailbox and, predictably, the cover, with its witches and demons cowering as John McCain and Sarah Palin approach, suggests there is nothing scarier than a surprise Republican victory next Tuesday. Well, that’s one way to look at it, and perhaps this will make up for the apparently too-subtle-for-New-Yorker-readers cartoon-Barack-and-Michelle-terrorist-fist-bumping debacle, but I myself choose instead to cast my vote for this bit from John Heilemann’s latest New York magazine piece:
Obama had been toying with vague FDR allusions for the past three days, but now he’s decided to lay his cards on the table and seize the mantle explicitly. With the specter of a full-blown depression looming, the Age of Roosevelt—the campaign he ran in 1932, the challenges he faced upon assuming office, the “bold, persistent experimentation” he called for and the New Deal edifice he erected in response—is much on the minds of the nominee and his inner circle. “A lot of people around Barack are reading books about FDR’s first hundred days,” says a member of Obama’s kitchen cabinet. “It’s a sign of the shift that’s going on emotionally: from being on this improbable mission to believing, Hey, we’re going to win.”
Two thoughts: One, okay, now I’m getting worried. Two, I wonder if while reporting this triumphant scene Heilemann has had any second thoughts about the endemic racism he declared was previously holding back this New New Deal? Or was one quarter of negative growth enough to cure the nation of this bane?
Our own Phil Klein sounded a lengthy and prescient alarm on the potential for this FDR-mania with his piece in the October print edition of TAS, “Obama’s New Deal.” See also, Michael Barone. And, considering all this, if you want to read something really scary this Halloween, scrap the Bram Stroker and Clive Barker. Pick up Amity Shlaes’ The Forgotten Man instead.
Post title sourcing here.
