[Guest post by Gabriel Debenedetti]
While working on a project that involves digging through TNR's voluminous archives, I stumbled upon a passage that struck a nerve, particularly given Thursday's momentous stock slide. In an editorial presciently titled "Curtain Call for Congress" (recent polls have our Congress at less than 20 percent approval), the editors write:
The biggest gap in the Recovery legislation of last spring was the failure to do anything final about the banks. It is frequently said that the President missed the greatest opportunity of his administration because, last March, he did not take over and reorganize the whole banking system. It still needs to be done.
So when was this apparently searing disavowal of Obama's economic policy published, 2010? Actually, it's straight from 1933, and FDR bears the brunt of the criticism. The piece goes on to set straight the magazine's early view of the New Deal, but based on that selection it might as well have expounded on the debt ceiling.
For what it's worth, only one intern was able to correctly guess the year of publication.