Dear Editor:
Your equating George W. Bush with FDR is spot-on ("Franklin
Delano Bush," October 20). Both presidents recklessly increased
government's role in the economy - a move that proved (in FDR's
case) and will prove (in Bush's case) to do nothing but saturate the
economy with such uncertainty as to frighten away entrepreneurs and
investors.
But popular history will almost surely remember Bush, not as a
second FDR, but as a second Herbert Hoover. The myth will be made
that Bush was a staunch free-marketeer who was succeeded in the
Oval Office by a charismatic saint whose hyperactive interventions
saved the economy (even though precious little evidence of economic
salvation will appear in the data). History will forget Bush's
interventions just as it has forgotten Hoover's - as it has
forgotten that Hoover signed the largest tariff hike in U.S.
history; as it has forgotten that Hoover tried to create jobs by
deporting hundreds of thousands of Mexicans; as it has forgotten
that Hoover signed the Emergency Relief and Construction Act, the
Federal Home Loan Bank Act, and created the Reconstruction Finance
Corporation; as it has forgotten that, with the Revenue Act of 1932,
Hoover raised the top marginal tax rate on personal incomes from
25 percent to 63 percent (in addition to raising the corporate-tax
rate).
History will repeat itself, blaming capitalism for a problem caused
and intensified by government interventions.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
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