Pat Buchanan's advice to Obama: Reagan bet on private sector & succeeded, FDR bet on gov't & failed

Obama's choice — FDR or Reagan
Buchanan: The president and his Democrats are taking a historic gamble

By Patrick Buchanan
Political analyst
MSNBC
updated 9:26 a.m. PT, Fri., Jan. 9, 2009

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28579400/

Harding, Coolidge, JFK and Reagan all bet on the private sector as the engine of prosperity. All succeeded. Franklin Roosevelt bet on government. And the New Deal failed. It was World War II that pulled the United States out of the Depression ditch of the 1930s.

Comes now the financial collapse and economic crisis of 2008, inherited by Obama, with 40 percent of all stock values wiped out in a year, foreclosures pandemic, and unemployment near 7 percent and surging.

In crafting his solutions, Obama seems to be brushing aside the Reagan, JFK and Harding-Coolidge models, and channeling FDR and the New Deal Democrats.

Already staring at a $1.2 trillion dollar deficit for the year ending Sept. 30, about 8 percent of the entire U.S. economy, Obama intends to add a stimulus package of $700 billion to $1 trillion, yet another 5 percent to 7 percent of gross domestic product. The resulting deficit would be twice as large as Reagan’s largest, 6 percent of GDP, which was the largest since World War II.