Basic Principle of the New Deal

President:  We will now pivot and act resolutely to overcome the serious problems presented to us in these past months and years.

Reporter:  What is your plan?
President:  We will be resolute in our various policies.

Reporter:  Can you give some examples?
President:  Each problem will be solved as required, with a solution tailored to each situation.

Reporter:  Then, what is your guiding principle?
President:  Our principles will emerge as we solve each problem in turn.

Reporter:  I see. You are a big picture, idea type of leader.
President:  Yes. I would not want to limit our problem solving by committing prematurely to particulars.

"Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning" by Jonah Goldberg   (via Ed Driscoll)

[edited]  Today in 2007, many liberals subscribe to the myth that the New Deal was a coherent, enlightened, unified endeavor encapsulated in the largely meaningless phrase “the Roosevelt legacy”.

This is poppycock. Raymond Moley was FDR’s right-hand man during much of the New Deal:

To look upon these programs as the result of a unified plan was to believe that the accumulation of stuffed snakes, baseball pictures, school flags, old tennis shoes, carpenter’s tools, geometry books, and chemistry sets in a boy’s bedroom could have been put there by an interior decorator.

Alvin Hansen was an influential economic adviser to FDR. He was asked in 1940 whether the basic principle of the New Deal was economically sound, and he responded, “I really do not know what the basic principle of the New Deal is.”