Anyone who associates a President with the economy is either a charlatan or an idiot. That goes for Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter, and so on. Most people have never gotten beyond thinking in terms of primitive causality: A happened, then B happened, therefore A caused B. To say that "X will tank the economy" is more than a little simplistic, especially considering that there is no agreement on what the definitions of "economy", "money", and "prosperity" are.
Most people seem to prefer comfortable fallacy to the cool breeze of truth. What I just wrote probably seems a bit twee, but it only goes to show just how much Nietzsche was thinking prospectively of our age when he wrote about the time when the "Last Man" would rule, a time in which the person in no need of the state would seem superfluous.
"Getting Hoovered" (both the concept and the phrase) is an invention of people who have it in their interest to ensure that we believe politics to be relevant to our lives. But, it is not, no matter the hype. Hoover no more destroyed the economy than Roosevelt saved it. Why don't people say that Alf Landon rescued the country in the Great Depression? They might as well - he was certainly a more honourable man than FDR. And in the end, isn't it honor, rectitude, love of truth, and honesty that bring about the reckoning needed to reclaim the good times? -ng- |
