History Isn't About Dates

Republicans have been running around for awhile now trying to blame the country's economic problems on Obama despite the fact that he has been president for a fraction of their existence. Perhaps the argument is that our collective intuition that he would become president set this downturn in motion.

But he is in good company. Apparently, FDR also had the ability to cause financial ruin preemptively. At least that's what Republican Representative Steve Austria said.

“When (President Franklin) Roosevelt did this, he put our country into a Great Depression,” Austria said. “He tried to borrow and spend, he tried to use the Keynesian approach, and our country ended up in a Great Depression. That’s just history.”

Most historians date the beginning of the Great Depression at or shortly after the stock-market crash of 1929; Roosevelt took office in 1933.

This seems like a pretty significant power that Democratic presidents have. You would think they might find a better use for it than ruining the economy. On the other hand, they do hate America so...

Via Matt Yglesias.