Biden flunks history in comment on FDR

[DaJudge]

Associated Press

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

WASHINGTON — Vice presidential candidate Joe Biden says today’s leaders should take a lesson from the history books and follow fellow Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt’s response to a financial crisis.

“When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened,’” Barack Obama’s running mate recently told the “CBS Evening News.”

Except, Republican Herbert Hoover was in office when the stock market crashed in October 1929. There also was no television at the time; TV wasn’t introduced to the public until a decade later, at the 1939 World’s Fair.

FDR was elected three years later when voters denied Hoover a second term. The Democratic challenger appealed to the “forgotten man” by promising a “new deal” to solve the Depression era.

Democrats usually like to remind the public that a Republican was president during the 1929 stock market crash. During the 2004 presidential election, John Kerry’s campaign repeatedly cited Hoover as the last president until George W. Bush to oversee a loss of jobs during his time in office.

Biden was commenting on the stock market crash when he said leaders should explain the current economic crisis and how to solve it to the public.

“Part of what being a leader does is to instill confidence, is to demonstrate what he or she knows what they are talking about and to communicating to people … this is how we can fix this,” Biden said.

Biden’s spokesman, David Wade, countered: “I’m proud to say that we Democrats aren’t experts at Herbert Hoover depression economics like John McCain and his pals. From Franklin Roosevelt to Bill Clinton, we just get elected to clean up the economic mess these Republicans leave behind.”

Imagine if Sarah Palin (or God forbid, Dan Quayle) had said this. What a moron.

[Mole_J]

Wow, I am speechless.

[one love]

Well look at what they did when they thought she did not know what "Bush Doctrine" was. Then he does something like this....Saying F.D.R. addressed people by television before there was television and I believe Hoover was President in the great Depression..... I assure you CNN will not destroy him as they have Palin.

Didnt he make a comment before stating that people must know their history

Kinda like a canidate correcting kids how to spell potato

[dawgs10]

he was right about the fact the FDR did fix the country. and they are right about the fact that anytime in the last 100 years a republican leaves office with a huge deficit and a whole to dig out of. the rest was off but he is a little off anyway!!

[DaJudge]

FDR did some good things. The TVA was a good idea. So was the CCC. He did an awesome job as Commander in Chief in WWII. The problem is, some of the social programs that he created that he said at the time would be temporary are still hanging around today, and costing more than ever. All those entitlements are dragging the economy down.

I think the best thing the gov'n could do for the economy would be to forget this bail out of the banks and investment bankers, and put all that money into infrastructure. Build new bridges, dams, nuclear power plants, mag lev trains, oil refineries, etc. That would create jobs, make us more energy self reliant, and replace some of the crumbling infrastructure in this country.