Trouble is, it’s all false. Hoover was the most interventionist peacetime President America ever had. FDR’s policies were continuations of the same themes. Those interventions upset entrepreneurs and delayed recovery for years.

Bush’s $700 bailout and other programs were anything but Laissez Faire. Obama’s “stimulus” programs continue the same failed policies. Obama rightly faults Bush for doubling the federal deficit, but then proposes to double it again.

I hope the American people are too smart to fall for the same trick twice.

Interesting and thought provoking article. As you might expect I have a couple of issues with it.

Let’s start with bipartisanship. I’m consistently amazed that people use the fact that not a single House Republican, and only three Repubican senators, voted for the stimulus as evidence that Obama is behaving in a partisan, or an ideological, way. The American economy is gasping for oxygen. Any credible economist will tell you that a fiscal injection is necessary to avert full-on economic collapse. And yet the GOP were perfectly happy to dig in and try to grind proceedings to a halt on the grounds of an outdated ideology of ‘government-is-bad-always’. When they did deem it worthy of their time to get involved in the debate all they could was bang on endlessly about the need for ever greater tax cuts. 1) The single largest portion of the $787bn is in tax cuts, roughly $282bn or over a third 2) the Republican created deficit is not going to be shrunk, let alone solved, nor any sort of stimulus package paid for, by tax cuts 3) tax cuts for the wealthy, as advocated by the Republicans don’t stimulate the economy. Rich people spend a much higher proportion of their money on foreign goods and they are also more likely to just put in the bank. Refusing to vote for the bill until there’s nothing in it but tax cuts? That’s partisan.

Obama expended a huge amount of political capital on trying to woo Republicans over and they threw it back in his face. He made regular consultation visits to the Hill, upped the proportion of tax cuts, shaved nearly $100bn off the original level of spending and ignored extremely credible voices, like economist and Nobel Prize Laureate Paul Krugman, who called for a much higher level of spending. All of this in an attempt to reach a compromise. He nominated Republican Senator Judd to the position of Secretary of Commerce, again only to have it thrown back in his face.

If you can give me even one example of the GOP leadership being prepared to act in a bipartisan way, I’ll be impressed.

All of which is a (very) long way of saying: I don’t agree with you that it’s Obama who is being partisan, nor that it’s his policies that are likely to lead to grid lock. The Republicans aren’t interested in helping.

Much more briefly:

“His Tuesday night plan involved raising taxes on the wealthy, revamping health care and reversing climate change.” I would hope we can agree the last two are hardly ideological. As for raising taxes – he said he would during the campaign, he has a mandate to do it, taxes are no higher now than they were under Clinton. That the Republicans are unhappy with it is unsurprising but hardly a sign that he’s a raging partisan.

Disapproval ratings: they’re on 24%. I think we can live with that and I hardly think it’s a sign of a desperate president. 67% approve in general and 57% of those who watched his speech feel more confident in his ability to manage the economic crisis http://www.gallup.com/poll/116125/Obama-Speech-Bolsters-Confidence-Americans.aspx Next question.

“However, Obama arrived on the scene as the average American was still reasonably confident in the banks and private sector as a whole.” Really? If you’re worried that 24% disapprove of Obama, I can promise you it’s a lot worse for bankers. Economic confidence is at zero, let’s not pretend otherwise.

Balancing the budget: I’m sceptical also, but cutting taxes, as the Republicans want, is absolutely not going to do it.

Long-term: I think there are few governments in the world who are taking as long-term a view as the Obama administration. Investing in green technologies, education to help Americans compete in a globalised economy, upgrading infrastructure, beginning to reform Medicare and Medicaid (something that no previous administration has been brave enough to do even though the cost explosion that is coming with the Baby-Boomers has been there for everyone to see since the 1950s) that is the long-term. And it’s going to cost money.

Will the stimulus package work? I have no idea. But if, as you seem to be advocating, Obama did nothing until he had the GOP on board for fear of being called ‘ideological’ or ‘partisan’, we’d be nowhere at all.