Quotation of the Day…

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… is from page 68 of George Selgin’s brilliant forthcoming (in April) book, False Dawn: The New Deal and the Promise of Recovery, 1933-1947 (original emphasis; links added):

There are few more successful examples in history of the propaganda technique known as the “big lie” than the charge that Herbert Hoover was a “do nothing” president. In fact, Hoover was being perfectly truthful when, during the 1932 campaign, he said. “We might have done nothing…. Instead, we met the situation with … the most gigantic programs of economic defense and counterattack ever evolved in the history of the Republic.” For that matter Hoover’s Democratic opponent, who accused Hoover’s administration “of being the greatest spending administration in all our history” (Lyons 1948, 287), was also being truthful. On public works alone, the Hoover administration spent more than the previous nine administrations combined, notwithstanding that their undertakings included the Panama Canal. No previous administration, David Kennedy (1999, 48) observes, ever “moved so purposefully and so creatively in the face of an economic downturn.”