Bill Clinton may be leaving office at just the right
time. With OPEC once again squeezing America and
a wimpish American response, some say we could be
ready for a major economic downturn.
In other words, Clinton is leaving
office after two terms of unbroken peace and economic
prosperity, and just as he leaves office there is
an economic cloud on the horizon. The last time
this happened, the outgoing president was Calvin
Coolidge.
One thing that keeps people from comparing
those situations is that the two men, Coolidge and
Clinton, are so different as to make any comparison
seem hilarious.
Clinton tends to be fat, Coolidge
was always gaunt-looking. Coolidge never spoke one
word more than he had to. As a wild understatement,
let us just say that Clinton doesn't mind the sound
of his own voice.
Coolidge was absolutely moral and
monogamous. I think you may have heard otherwise
about our Bill. Coolidge slept twelve hours a day.
It is hard to imagine Clinton sleeping at all, and
certainly not with his wife.
It is certainly hard to make the intellectual
leap that is required to see Clinton and Coolidge
in any common category.
But in the two areas where the Federal
Government is pivotal, there are a number of chilling
parallels between the president who left just before
the last depression and the one who might be leaving
just before the next depression.
Today, international affairs look
a lot like they did when Coolidge left office. Both
Coolidge and Clinton served their terms when it
was assumed that The War To End War had ended --
World War I in Coolidge's case, the Cold War in
Clinton's.
During Coolidge's term, a treaty was
signed making war illegal.
Winning the Cold War seemed to make
the world safe for democracy, just as the 1918 defeat
of Germany made the world safe for democracy. All
that was left after World War I was to distribute
the lands of the empires we had defeated in World
War I and to establish a peaceful New World Order.
Sound familiar?
But in the 1920's, our defeated enemy,
Germany, was in one crisis after another. In fact,
our defeated enemy then looked a great deal like
Russia does today.
In Coolidge's time, Germany's next
ally, Japan, was a poverty-stricken underdeveloped
country, no real threat.
With a little imagination, it is not
hard to see Iran and the Arab countries, which we
do our best to alienate, as the Japan of our day.
As I pointed out on May 22, 1999 in
KINKY SEX, there is no
excuse today for having anything but a continuing
boom. But that doesn't mean that government policy
or international problems can't PRODUCE a depression.
One more thing to keep in mind: Coolidge
was never blamed for the Depression. He remained
a fondly remembered public figure until his death
in 1933. The shacks of the unemployed were called
Hoovervilles, not Coolidgevilles, even though Hoover
had been in office less than a year when the Depression
began.
In short, if the parallels hold, Bush
will take the rap.
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