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On October 25, 1929, the day after Black Thursday, one of the days signaling the start of the Great Depression, where the Dow Jones lost 9 percent of its value in a single day, Republican President Herbert Hoover announced to the American people: “The fundamental business of the country… is on a sound and prosperous basis.”
Sound familiar? In perhaps the biggest political gaffe since then, just three days ago on September 15, 2008– on the very day now being referred to as ‘Black Monday’, where the Dow collapsed by over 500 points– John McCain, seemingly channeling the restless ghost of Herbert Hoover, declared: “I think still — the fundamentals of our economy are strong.”
The parallels are so frighteningly uncanny that one can’t help but be reminded that history, when forgotten, does repeat itself. In fact, it appears to repeat itself nearly word for word.
And the wheels of irony don’t stop churning there. September 15th wasn’t the first Monday to earn the ghoulish title of ‘Black Monday’. In fact, that title originally belonged to October 19, 1987, where the Dow Jones collapsed, as it did three days ago, by over 500 points, which ended up signaling the start of a massive recession in the late 80’s and early 90’s.
Despite the eerie echoing of McCain and Hoover being quoted side by side, and despite the pun-worthy reminder that nobody likes Mondays, the ominous connections between these three days are perhaps best put into perspective by their most startling relationship. Namely: all three of these events happened at the end of long-held Republican administrations.
In the case of Black Thursday and the eve of the Great Depression, Herbert Hoover was the fall guy for 8 years of previous Republican rule. Republicans Harding and Coolidge held the presidency from 1920-1928, instituting many similar economic strategies as have been implemented by Republican administrations in modern times. Of course, the collapse which occurred in October of 1987 rests at the end of a Reagan administration which had unprecedented economic control, instituting policies occasionally referred to as “Reaganomics”, and which focused on massive deregulation and deconstruction of the social programs created by Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s. Roosevelt’s social reformation was called “The New Deal”– which is what incidentally pulled the country out of the Great Depression. Should we be surprised by an economic collapse instigated by a removal of Roosevelt’s policies?
Reaganomics were, of course, the primary economic inspiration behind the policies of the Bush Administration of the last 8 years, which has unfortunately led us down another doomed road, perhaps already signaling yet another Great Depression.
History has been very clear here: Every time Republican and conservative economic policies are implemented, the results are worse than disastrous: they’re catastrophic. And yet, at frequent historical turns, the American people continually get swindled by the right wing rhetoric. The myth of ‘trickle-down economics’ and the utter destruction of oversight and regulation has never worked.
In a political season supposedly themed by “hope” and “change”, it’s remarkable to me just how closely recent events are paralleled by mistakes and economic blunders of the past. Even in the midst of a monumental economic collapse, John McCain has the naivete to announce that the fundamentals of the economy are still strong. Yes, well, the conservative principles which he extols are certainly still firmly in place. But is anyone honestly still being fooled? Those principles have been convincingly falsified by history again and again.
This time, let’s remember history.
You’d think the Republican Party could find at least one competent female to be the Vice Presidential candidate; there’s got to be at least one viable, upstanding, experienced Republican woman who could exemplify the values of her party. You’d think. But as we now all know, in a transparent attempt to swing female supporters of Hillary Clinton, the GOP has instead chosen Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin.
We already know Palin is anything but experienced. Her only qualification in public office prior to being Governor of Alaska (a position she has held for only 20 months) was as Mayor of a town with less than 10,000 residents. But what we didn’t expect at first was that she’d be a perfect portrait for Right Wing hypocrisy too.
Now we also know that Palin, who has been billed as an almost-virginal, family-oriented crusader against sex education, and a proponent of abstinence until marriage, hasn’t even had much success with that platform within her own family. In near comedic fashion, only days after her Vice Presidential nomination was announced, it was discovered that Palin’s 17 year old unmarried daughter, Bristol, was 5 months pregnant.
At every turn, instead of exemplifying the values the Republican Party would like to portray, Sarah Palin seems to represent a complete parody of those values.
John McCain’s campaign must have considered Palin’s cavernous downsides before choosing her as his running mate. The question then remains, given these downsides, what were those campaign strategists thinking? How could Sarah Palin, of all possibilities, be their best candidate?
Well, the only explanations I can muster up are either that McCain is poorly organized and didn’t do his research (a poor prospectus for his qualifications as Commander in Chief), or perhaps the nomination of Sarah Palin represents a proverbial “freudian slip” for how Republicans really view the role of women in politics. That is, Palin embodies the Right Wing, “Fox News” strategy for employing women: so long as you’re young and attractive, people will tune in to watch, regardless of the substance. It doesn’t matter if you’re young and inexperienced. It doesn’t matter if your family life portrays perfectly the failure and hypocrisy of Right Wing “family values”. All that really matters, so assumes the Republican strategy, is if you’re a woman. Palin is so underqualified to be Vice President that her nomination is a near-perfect parody of this Republican facade.
To be fair, it’s possible that the GOP thought they were nominating Tina Fey:
But unfortunately, Tina Fey (who is more popular, doesn’t have any pregnant unmarried children, and is probably more intelligent than Sarah Palin) is a Democrat. Go figure.