The blog Living on Tulsa Time recently published a series of graphs showing financial indicators over the last few years, with an X marking the spot when Democrats regained control of the U. S. Senate and U. S. House. For example, here's a graph of unemployment since 2002:

In the February 18, 2010, Wall Street Journal, Omar Fadhil al-Nidawi, an Iraqi political blogger, and Austin Bay, who served with the U. S. Army in Iraq in 2004, debunk Vice President Joe Biden's claim of success in Iraq as an Obama administration achievement:

The defeatists have finally acknowledged that Iraq is well on its way to establishing a peaceful democracy. But that recognition comes with a catch: The public is asked to forget everything these strategically benighted cads said and did—or didn't do.

We are referring, of course, to Vice President Joe Biden's recent comments on CNN. "This could be one of the great achievements of this administration. You're going to see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer. You're going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government," he said in an interview with Larry King.

Less than three years after Sen. Harry Reid (D., Nev.) declared the war lost, less than three years after then-Sen. Barack Obama—with the usual fierce moral urgency—opposed the Bush administration's military surge, and within three years of Mr. Biden's own recommendation that Iraq be divided into three parts, these Democrats are laying claim to Iraq's extraordinary victory. ...

Mr. Biden, here are the facts. The Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), which former President Bush and Prime Minister Maliki signed, orchestrated the homecoming of U.S. troops. Mr. Obama didn't do it.

The Bush plan called for a phased transition from "more" coalition security operations to "fewer," based on the demonstrated improvement in the capabilities of Iraq's military and police forces. "Rheostat" warfare is the term Gen. David Petraeus used in 2007, after the device that varies the strength of electrical currents. Securing and extending the authority of Iraq's national government was an integral part of the process. Mr. Biden pushed his partition plan and relentlessly opposed the tough decisions and heroic efforts that created the conditions for SOFA.

Victory has a thousand fathers and Mr. Biden is but one of the many phonies. Historians may credit the Obama administration with a degree of reluctant follow-through on SOFA. But even this is a change from Mr. Obama's own 2008 cut-and-run campaign platform, which, if implemented, would have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.  

In the February 2, 2010, Wall Street Journal, Amity Shlaes reviews Franklin Delano Roosevelt's war on business, a war that began in 1935 and didn't end until World War II began. Our current president, she argues, should learn from FDR's mistake:

You get the feeling President Obama is girding for battle with the financial sector. In last week's State of the Union address, he promised to regulate the industry. On Jan. 21, he was blunter, warning that he would not let companies that enjoyed "soaring profits and obscene bonuses" block his financial reforms. "If these folks want a fight," he said, "it's a fight I'm ready to have."

This declaration of war echoes that of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In 1936, late in his campaign for a second presidential term, FDR spoke of the challenges of "business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking." Wall Streeters and businessmen hated him, he said, adding that "I welcome their hatred.

Then Roosevelt escalated: "I should like to have it said of my first administration that in it the forces of selfishness and the lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second administration that in it these forces met their master."

Mr. Obama might want to stick to a moderate approach. FDR's war against business played to the crowd, but it hurt the economy. While monetary policies impeded recovery in the late 1930s, it was the administration's assault on companies and capital that ensured the Depression's duration....

The result of it all was the Depression within the Depression of 1937 and 1938, when industrial production plummeted and unemployment climbed back into the higher teens. Even John Maynard Keynes chided FDR for his attitude about businessmen: "It is a mistake to think they are more immoral than politicians."

 

 

Terry Miller, director of the Center for International Trade and Economics at the Heritage Foundation, writes in the January 19, 2010, Wall Street Journal, that the United States suffered the greatest drop among major economies in the measure of economic freedom in 2009 and that Canada is now the freest economy in North America.

The United States is losing ground to its major competitors in the global marketplace, according to the 2010 Index of Economic Freedom released today by the Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal. This year, of the world's 20 largest economies, the U.S. suffered the largest drop in overall economic freedom. Its score declined to 78 from 80.7 on the 0 to 100 Index scale.

The U.S. lost ground on many fronts. Scores declined in seven of the 10 categories of economic freedom. Losses were particularly significant in the areas of financial and monetary freedom and property rights. Driving it all were the federal government's interventionist responses to the financial and economic crises of the last two years, which have included politically influenced regulatory changes, protectionist trade restrictions, massive stimulus spending and bailouts of financial and automotive firms deemed "too big to fail." These policies have resulted in job losses, discouraged entrepreneurship, and saddled America with unprecedented government deficits.

In the world-wide rankings of economic freedom, the U.S. fell to eighth from sixth place. Canada now ranks higher and boasts North America's freest economy. More worrisome, for the first time in the Index's 16-year history, the U.S. has fallen out of the elite group of countries identified as "economically free" by the objective measures of the Index. Four Asia-Pacific economies now sit atop the global rankings. Hong Kong stands in first place for the 16th consecutive year, followed by Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. Every region of the world maintains at least one country among those deemed "free" or "mostly free" by the Index.