Brain Trust

It’s amazing to me that the angry left is so hysterical about President Bush using his constitutionally valid war powers in a time of war, when FDR explicitly usurped those powers in peace time, greatly expanding the powers of the executive and the size and intrusiveness of the federal government. And once liberals gain power, they never give it back. Of course, the faces have changed, but 75 years later we’re still having to deal with many of the boneheaded ideas and policies put into place by FDR and his "brain trust." Naturally, not all of the ideas were bad, but that is purely accidental, since no one gave a thought to the long term consequences of FDR’s radical experimentation with the economy.

Speaking of which, this was also the first time professional "intellectuals" played a dominant role in a president’s policy making, to the detriment of us all. In science or business, bad ideas are quickly eliminated, but in government, the beloved abstraction of some academic pinhead can live on forever — for example, price supports for farmers, i.e., paying them to grow fewer crops in order to keep prices artificially high. That’s just one of hundreds of New Deal ideas that seems impossible to eradicate.

- Robert Godwin