Area #6: Valuable Lessons and High Hopes

I mentioned earlier that the only other times in history Democrats took the White House and controlled the Congress were 1932 and 1964.

1964 saw Lyndon Johnson elected due to the shock, just one year before, of the JFK assassination. The strength of a one-party system allowed the passage of Medicare, which, along with other entitlement programs, now threatens to strangle the economic life of our country.

The 1932 election of FDR and a solidly Democratic Congress is by far the more interesting and certainly more apropos comparison in 2008 as we face the worst economic catastrophe since the 30s.

Herbert Hoover, who is still vilified today as the man "responsible" for the Great Depression, is believed to have sat back and let the chips fall where they would. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Hoover believed that government SHOULD intervene in employment and propping up incomes. He raised taxes to do it.

FDR merely picked up the game ball where Hoover was forced to drop it and, in his first hundred days, ran frantically towards the goal line, building on Hoover's innovations which were the foundation blocks of the New Deal.

Public works stimulus plans, forcing companies to keep wages high as the consumption of goods fell, bailing out struggling consumers and shutting down free trade with the Smoot-Hawley act were Hoover's babies, not FDR's.

The Great Depression came after a decade of excessive easy credit; the Crash of 2008 started with the same catalyst.

Yes, Hoover and Roosevelt tried to stem the tide with some of the same ideas that are being bandied around Congress today.

We know where that got us.

I bring up all this "ancient" history now because I fervently hope that, just because the electorate has repeated the first part of this historical event (election of two branches of government from the same party) that President-elect Obama and the Cabinet that he will soon choose will remember this history so that we don't repeat it.

We pray that President Obama will, in fact, "put his arms around chaos" and squeeze the life out of it by making the tough decisions while adopting the Hippocratic Oath of, "First, do no harm."

On this historical day after, we enthusiastically say, "Mr. President…we have high hopes, as you do, for America's future. Let's use this unique opportunity for change to get our great country back on track for this, and future, generations."

Time will tell.