Jonah Goldberg, offhand, says this: "[I]t seems to the politically smart thing would have been to fire Brown and ask Colin Powell to run the entire relief operation Herbert Hoover style (note to those reared on a generation of Democratic rhetoric, Herbert Hoover saved millions of lives as perhaps this country's greatest crisis-administrator)."

True enough on the parenthetical. Besides, it's time to put an end to that "generation of Democratic rhetoric." Hoover was accused, by John Nance Garner, of setting America down the path of socialism for very good reason: among other things, he levied one of the largest progressive tax increases in history, cracked down on Wall Street, and initiated a series of large public works programs that eventually set the stage for the New Deal. The man, let's face it, was a left-winger at heart. Besides, in the context of America's already-staggering tariffs at the time, the Smoot-Hawley act didn't make that big a difference. So there. If Mark Schmitt plans on resuscitating Jimmy Carter's image, well, then I'll throw down for a revisionist take on Herbert Hoover.