Cross posted at Tall Tales
Co-opting Democratic messages is all the rage in the McCain campaign these days.
Following the debate, this was the lead sentence of the McCain campaign's statement:
John McCain won tonight's debate with strong, clear straight talk about setting a new direction for our country and fighting for working families.
Now, given that Democrats won big in 2006 with the slogan "A New Direction for America" and a pledge to fight for "working families," you can see why McCain decided to lift these core Democratic messages.
But that rhetorical theft pales in comparison to McCain's repeated attempts in recent days to co-opt the most entrenched anti-Republican message of the past century -- the failure of Herbert Hoover:
The last President to raise taxes and restrict trade in a bad economy as Senator Obama proposes was Herbert Hoover. That turned a recession into a depression. They say those who don't learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them. Well, my friends, I know my history lessons, and I sure won't make the mistakes Senator Obama will.
Democrats cannot let that revisionist, supply-side distortion of history stand.
The Republican Great Depression began in 1929, not 1932, and it was the direct result of 9 years of unrelenting trickle-down economics delivered under three Republican Presidents (Harding, Coolidge and Hoover) and their treasury Secretary, the anti-tax, anti-regulation corporate titan, Andrew Mellon.
As I write in the introduction of my new book, Yeah, Right: "This Economy Is Strong and Other Tall Tales:
Hoover came to the presidency in March 1929 after a campaign in which he insisted that a "continuation of the policies of the Republican party is fundamentally necessary to the future advancement of this progress and to the further building up of this prosperity."
When the market crashed in October 1929, the true cost of the Republicans' get-rich-today-and-don't-worry-about-tomorrow policies became all too apparent. Years of corporate deregulation, Wall Street manipulation, rampant speculation, cuts in taxation for the wealthy, and easy-credit expansion for consumers had fueled an unsustainable bubble of artificial wealth that popped with devastating effect.
But Hoover refused to acknowledge the collapse. The "fundamental business of the country," he insisted, was "on a sound and prosperous basis."
Compare those pre- and post- crash Hoover statements to these pre- and post-crash McCain statements:
He should be judged very, very well as far as the economy is concerned. We're in a long sustained period of economic growth.
- John McCain on George W. Bush, March 5, 2007
I still believe the fundamentals of our economy are strong.
- August 2008
Based on that record, there are few people in America who could more rightly claim to be the heir of Herbert Hoover than John McCain (if you're thinking Bush, you're close, but he's actually Calvin Coolidge's heir).
So how can McCain justify his attacks on the man he was emulating so closely through September 15 (the date of his most recent "fundamentals are strong" statement)?
Simple -- claim that Hoover's signing of the Revenue Act of 1932 caused the Depression. It happened a long time ago. People won't remember specific dates. So just claim it. Again and again.
To quote Barack Obama:
Enough
Here's the truth:
The Great Depression began in October 1929.
For the math challenged among us (read, "supply-side/trickle-down economists"), that is two years and eight months prior to the enactment of the Revenue Act of 1932, and more than three years prior to taxes being collected under the new, progressive rates for high-income earners.
The first day for filing new income tax returns under the Act was March 14, 1933 -- after Hoover left office, and after the worst of the Depression had passed.
And following the move to a more progressive tax system in 1933, America went on to build the largest middle class the world had ever known under Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower while maintaining -- and, indeed, increasing -- the rates on high-income earners (top marginal rates were over 90% under Ike.)
That is the history.
There is an admirable Republican model to emulate in this history (Ike), but McCain has chosen to reject that model for the Coolidge-Hoover-Bush trickle-down model that has led America into its two greatest economic crises over the past century.
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Source for McCain Background Quotes: Yeah, Right pages 72 & 73
Online Sources: March 2007; August 2008