George W. Bush: the anti-F.D.R.

Paul Krugman: He's a pretty good foe of the Bush administration, a liberal and most importantly, he's an economist I'm not afraid to read. That has to mean something. In his column today for the New York Times, he expands on what Josh Marshall said about the likely results of Bush's "new deal."

...aside from the effect on the deficit - we're about to see the spectacle of tax cuts in the face of both a war and a huge reconstruction effort - this raises another question: how can discretionary government spending take place on that scale without creating equally large-scale corruption?

It's possible to spend large sums honestly, as Franklin D. Roosevelt demonstrated in the 1930's.

But George W. Bush isn't F.D.R. Indeed, in crucial respects he's the anti-F.D.R.