A year and a half later, Obama has indeed honored Time's bold prediction. The parallels between FDR and BHO are hard to miss: the eagerness to improvise, the impulse to control, the urge to scapegoat, the willingness to let business wonder what fresh hell tomorrow might bring. To understand the long-term effects of this style in the real world, it pays to revisit the past.
If there is any one image that evokes the whimsy of the original New Deal, it is this one: FDR sitting in his bedroom with Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr., picking the daily price of gold.
Just five years earlier, America had sat astride the economic world, the repository of most of its gold and even more of its hope.
Businesses, Coolidge felt, could plan more confidently if they could trust their government not to jack with the law of the land.
the White House's hands-off approach to the sharp downturn of 1920 had allowed businesses to cut their losses, trim their payrolls, and get back to work quickly
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