Since the TARP and auto-industry corporate fellations forcible wealth-redistribution programmes bailouts, I’ve been hearing a lot about Bush 43’s purported “strong free-market principles” and “fiscal conservatism”.  I suppose the principle behind this bare-faced idiocy is that his legacy isn’t based on what he did, but rather what people think they remember of what he did, and the actors behind it are simply channeling Göbbels* and the Big Lie theory, but I can’t imagine that anyone with even a grade-school education could actually fall for this happy-assed bullshit fantasy.  Of course, my optimism is legendary.

There is one bright side to the “strong free-market principles” lie: a whole fuckload of left-progressive bloggers have picked it up, mixed it with Obama 44’s cult of personality, and come up with a Great Depression analogy.  “Bush == Hoover”, they proclaim, pleased with themselves, thinking they’ve scored a cutting point.

Well, actually, yes.  Bush 43 and Hoover 31 have quite a bit in common when it comes to economics — but not what you might expect if your only brush with history was in a public school.

• Five myths about the Great Depression (Wall Street Journal)

Myth: Herbert Hoover, elected president in 1928, was a doctrinaire, laissez-faire, look-the-other way Republican who clung to the idea that markets were basically self-correcting.

Far from a free-market idealist, Hoover was an ardent believer in government intervention to support incomes and employment. This is critical to understanding the origins of the Great Depression. Franklin Roosevelt didn’t reverse course upon moving into the White House in 1933; he went further down the path that Hoover had blazed over the previous four years. That was the path to disaster.

Hoover, a one-time business whiz and a would-be all-purpose social problem-solver in the Lee Iacocca mold, was a bowling ball looking for pins to scatter. He was a government activist fixated on the idea of running the country as an energetic CEO might run a giant corporation. It was Hoover, not Roosevelt, who initiated the practice of piling up big deficits to support huge public-works projects. After declining or holding steady through most of the 1920s, federal spending soared between 1929 and 1932 — increasing by more than 50%, the biggest increase in federal spending ever recorded during peacetime.

Sound familiar?

Now we come to the issue that pissed me off in the first place, a parting shot from Bush 43 that’d make Hoover grin and nod enthusiastically, FDR rub his hands together with undisguised glee, and — if this was a just or fair world — would send the spirit of Adam Smith into such a rage that he’d claw his way out of his grave and beat Dubya to death with his crumbling zombie fists:

• Bush war on Roquefort raises a stink in France (Washington Post)

(Hat tip: Marginal Revolution)

In its final days, the Bush administration imposed a 300 percent duty on Roquefort, in effect closing off the U.S. market. Americans, it declared, will no longer get to taste the creamy concoction that, in its authentic, most glorious form, comes with an odor of wet sheep and veins of blue mold that go perfectly with rye bread and coarse red wine.

The measure, announced Jan. 13 by U.S. Trade Representative Susan C. Schwab as she headed out the door, was designed as retaliation for a European Union ban on imports of U.S. beef containing hormones. Tit for tat, and all perfectly legal under World Trade Organization rules, U.S. officials explained.

Import tariffs.  Yeah, that worked out really well last time.

Fucker.

Update: Of course, if Bush 43 is another Hoover, Obama 44 must be another FDR, no?  He’s certainly trying:

• Trade Wars IV: The Democrats Strike Back (Megan McArdle)

McArdle offers this analysis of the “buy American” provisions in the stimulus plan:

By the standards of Smoot-Hawley, this is paltry stuff.  And by the standards of setting yourself on fire, sawing off your own leg with a nail file isn’t so bad.

(Link is mine.)

Facile populist bullshit in precisely the same mould as the previous government’s facile populist bullshit.  Tell me the story about the two-party system again, will you Nanny?

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* Yeah, I went there