Paul Krugman, he of the Nobel Prize for Economics, is calling for a New New Deal and complaining that FDR didn't go far enough.
Meanwhile the redoubtable Amity Shlaes, scourge of Great Depression Romanticists, is noting the facts: that the New Deal left unemployment at cripplingly high levels. The reason? You can't encourage hiring by raising taxes on business and mandating higher wages.
If there's comfort in all this, it's that while Obama seems intent on imitating the style of FDR, the substance of his economic appointments suggests that he may well abandon his campaign promises in wholesale lots and do the right thing, keeping taxes low and letting people get back to the business of business.
If a President with FDR's style can govern with Coolidge's aplomb, a SWNIDish fantasy will be fulfilled.
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