The Bosque Boys

Farmer, do you think that FDR's actions in the first 100 days were good and necessary? In other words, how does a thoughtful conservative historian like yourself evaluate the presidency of FDR?

Thanks for the question, Gardener.

Not to be too self-referential--but I did weigh-in a bit on this subject a few months back:

"THE FIRST NEW DEAL. In the face of looming chaos and the potential unraveling of American society, Roosevelt and his "brain trust" acted with jarring alacrity and authority to seize control of the banking, industrial, and agricultural sectors of the American economy. Increasingly certain that the notion of the competitive marketplace had outlived its utility (and was, in fact, the cause of the massive crisis), the Roosevelt administration empowered the government to plan and coordinate the national economy.

"During the storied first "Hundred Days" of the Roosevelt presidency, a special session of Congress gleefully agreed to a long list of administration proposals, beginning with emergency banking legislation. As an afterthought, they then added the Glass-Steagall Act, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), and the SEC. Along with the rescue and reform of the financial sector, the President urged Congress to establish myriad "alphabet soup" agencies (NRA, PWA, FERA, AAA, TVA, etc.)--granting the New Dealers unprecedented authority to reshape the traditional relationship between government and business.

"How utterly epochal was this moment? One commentator observed that this brief period read like the first chapter of Genesis ("and FDR created"), allowing us to imagine the new president moving across the great void and virtually speaking modern government into existence.

"How well did it work?

"Undeniably, Roosevelt's swift action after the bleak winter of chaos and confusion saved the banking system and staved off national ruin. Moreover, the regulatory regime constructed to manage the financial sector paid off handsomely over the next seventy-odd years--and continues to insulate us in important ways, even today, from a catastrophe strictly analogous to the 1930s.

"On the other hand, the administration's expressed goals of dictating national standards for industrial output, prices, and working conditions proved less effective than originally advertised in terms of revitalizing the devastated economy. The initiative to impose production quotas on the agricultural sector raised commodity prices, but it also established the precedent of paying farmers not to farm, displaced legions of tenant families, and oversaw the intentional destruction of millions of edible farm animals during a moment of widespread hunger. And while the public works projects temporarily employed millions of workers, unemployment after two years of the Roosevelt administration remained astronomically high: just over 20 percent."

End quote--but much, much more here: http://bosqueboys.com/index...