What I love about this statement from John McCain on the Great Depression is that it's the kind of thing that would have gotten him endlessly mocked during the campaign:
The job of the presidency, in my view, is to give people hope, give people hope. Whether you happen to have liked Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s policies, and there’s a number of them I still think exacerbated the Great Depression, but he gave the fireside chats, and gave people hope and optimism for the future. I think that’s, there’s no problem that America can’t prevail over, because we’re still the greatest nation in the world.
So in McCain's view, it wasn't FDR's massive public investment policy that dragged us out of the Great Depression, it was his "fireside chats." Americans just aren't being tough enough, and if they could only be as tough as John McCain, then we wouldn't have a recession. There isn't a lack of capital, only a lack of will. Obama just needs to jump on YouTube and tell our nation of whiners to keep a stiff upper lip, and we'll be out of the recession faster than you can say "Works Progress Administration."
-- A. Serwer
