This article seems uniquely inappropriate for the point it is making as to the importance and uses of Presidential charisma. Not that its assessments of FDR or Obama necessarily are wrong, but the main anecdote seems to make precisely the opposite points.

Specifically, bank runs (as shown in It's a Wonderful Life) are indeed a self-perpetuating crisis of confidence, and can stop as suddenly as they start once confidence is restored that claims on the bank will be honored. A great Presidential speech, such as the one given by FDR, can be useful in creating such confidence. But it helps even more if it can be conclusively demonstrated that such claims would, in fact, be honored. And that is exactly what Congress did prior to FDR's speech, in creating federal deposit insurance [UPDATE - I erred here, see below].

The article doesn't deny that the Congressional action helped, but it gives most of the credit (via the Robert Caro quote) to FDR's speech and then uses that assignment of credit to build an argument as to the uses and limits of Presidential charisma generally. That seems strange to me, given that the specific problem of bank runs (a) is more susceptible to matters of confidence than most other issues (does anyone think that more confidence in our health care system would solve its problems?) and (b) were solved by a legislative action that did more to guarantee the necessary confidence than any Presidential speech possibly could.

Maybe it was a "you had to be there" moment. But those of us who weren't there often have a leg up in analyzing such moments, for that very reason.

UPDATE: It also would have helped to get the facts straight. The "legislation securing the banks" cited by the article's author was not the creation of federal deposit insurance, as I erroneously stated, but the Emergency Banking Act, which infused enough capital into the banking system to avert the crisis. I think the general points remain true, namely that (a) FDR's famous speech only came after legislation fixing the problem (albeit not in as permanent a fashion as the FDIC) and thus may be given more credit than it deserves, and (b) bank panics are more susceptible to these type of fixes, making them of limited utility for assessing the usefulness of Presidential charisma. But I did err, and thanks to commenter Spencer for pointing it out.

Sort of.

Maybe baseball doesn't naturally translate to the agenda of today's Republican Party, but there is little question that the way the game is played (as opposed to its business context or other aspects) is more akin to a classically liberal, lassiez-faire society than to any alternative.

Specifically, the game is primarily played as a series of individual contests: pitcher v. batter (even fielder v. ball), to which there is no alternative (a player can't pass his at-bat to a teammate). In these contexts, the participant virtually always benefits his team the most by achieving maximum individual success. A home run is always a better outcome than a single - full stop.

While there are certain situations in which a player is called to refrain from maximum individual success, such as a sacrifice bunt, those are marginal events (and the sabermetric scholarship has demonstrated the limited extent of their benefits). Truly, a baseball player promotes the good of (his team's) society by pursuing his own self-interest. When the baseball powers that be were inventing a false creation myth, they should have used Adam Smith rather than Abner Doubleday.

(I note that Fred Barnes argued the opposite in an old Weekly Standard article ($$). That in and of itself might becounted as evidence in favor of my argument. But also - to put it mildly - he didn't really engage the nature of the game. I think making fun of Fred Barnes is the definition of a worthy bipartisan initiative.)

Incidentally, much of what you need to know about baseball and politics, at least at the ownership level, is contained in the following statement: George W. Bush practically counted as a progressive as the Texas Rangers' owner. Showing foresight that he didn't bring to Washington, he consistently dissented from the owners' war on the players' union in the early 1990s that culminated in the strike that wiped out the 1994 World Series (he was only one of two owners to vote against requesting the resignation of commissioner Fay Vincent, the event which set the owners' course for war). And he was far from the most conservative owner when it came to politics, either. In fact, his predecessor as Rangers' owner, Eddie Chiles, was an oilman who doubled as a conservative radio commentator. His broadcasts always started with the words "I'm mad."

Hi.

It's been a while.

This blog started six years ago (give or take a few weeks). In honor of that anniversary, let's see about restarting. No guarantees, but I'll try.
I have never been able to stick to my blogging plans before. That being said, I'm not sure how much I'll focus on the daily news cycle, or even the quadrennial election cycle. I have a long-running list of topics I've been meaning to blog about, and I'll try to focus my limited energies on that list, even if the topics therein aren't in the day's headlines.

Over the years, some people have told me that I should allow more personal details to come through on the blog. For the few readers who don't know me personally, here's a minimal start: I am a lawyer in NYC, who represents funds and other actors in the investment management industry. (Yes, this does place some limits on what I can post about, notwithstanding my thin pseudonymity.) The topics I write about are summed up in this blog's tagline, though I hope to branch out a bit. (Yes, I am a recovering comics geek, in case the pseudonym didn't make it obvious.) On that note, I have a son who is severely autistic, which is - put mildly - a black hole to time and energy. And why blog? It starts with narcissism and goes downhill from there.

I actually dipped a toe back into the blogosphere last summer at the Baseball Crank, and continue to make regular appearances in the comment threads of the blogs belonging to the three real friends I have made through the blogosphere. I hope to make more (such friends). (I also may or may not have made an appearance at this super-anonymous blog over the summer - I fear being hunted down and silenced if I am any more explicit.) Also, I regularly e-mail various bloggers with ideas for posts - which they often take up. Once you go that far, it seems silly to not blog.

And who knows - this blog may eventually have some new-fangled features like an RSS feed and a sidebar that is not four years out of date. But please note that there likely is no blogger out there who is less of a techie than I. (Technology is one of the only areas in which I am not a geek.)

Thanks for coming by.