As any student of history knows, the Republican party as we now know it (you know, the one that trade marked Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt but threw all their ideas under the bus) really came into being in the 1920's.
There are eerie similarities to what we see from the GOP today. And while we are certainly not in the midst of anything close to what the Great Depression was all about, those similarities extend to John McCain - who now seems seperated at birth from the the one Republican all Americans used to love to hate - Herbert Hoover.
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Today, John McCain officially became the new Herbert Hoover. Why? Because in 1932, in the midst of his re-election campaign (while running against a brilliant, progressive candidate with amazing oratorical ability - Franklin Delano Roosevelt), Hoover looked at the public with an absolutely straight face and said that the economy was sound and it would soon get better. The best prescription Hoover felt was needed was to cut taxes and put more money into the pockets of the rich and their corporations, even as he suggested this would be a fundamental change of governance. Sound familiar?
Now, I'm not suggested we are in the midst of, or even on the eve of, another economic depression. That doesn't matter. Everything is relative, and people are hurting. The war in Iraq, and the obvious blunder it was, only adds to their anxiety. Hoover was oblivious to these concerns, and so is McCain.
Actually, the Republicans then and the Republicans now were very similar. Back in the 1920's, they paid only lip service to the progressive ideals that had come to define the Roosevelt wing of the GOP. Instead, they courted the intolerant extremists on the far right of the political spectrum (today it's religious fundamentalists, back then it was the Ku Klux Klan).
Both Republican parties espoused and fomented economic policy that supported their core belief of trickle-down economics, as I mentioned at the top. And both were home to that quaint anti-intellectual politics that we see to today in George W. Bush and Sarah Palin (and we saw then in Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge).
Now, campaigns were very different back before the rise of television. Roosevelt demolished Hoover both in the electoral college and in the popular vote. Although FDR was the first handicapped President, few voters knew he was, because most never saw him live (either on a screen or in person). And - again - while the times today are difficult, 1932 was an incredibly harsh time.
But, still, Barack Obama has a historic opportunity at this time. Another time when people are clearly hungry for change, and have an extraordinarily clear set of alternatives. And, now - as of today - another moment when the party in power has clearly demonstrated not only a lack of willingness, but also a lack of understanding that ordinary Americans want and need that change to have a shot at the American Dream. John McCain has met Herbert Hoover. Now let's see if he meets his political fate.
UPDATE x1: On Countdown tonight, Keith Obermann discussed the connection now between Herbert Hoover and John McCain with both Paul Krugman and Eugene Robinson. This is more than just a trivial parallel to history. Obermann made the point that comparing any Republican to Hoover is hanging and albatross around his neck, and - of course - that it's something anybody with a basic education in American history would know.
Will the Obama campaign put this into an ad? We can only hope...