Michelle Bachmann Embraces Ignorance, Reverse Causation
Raising trade barriers as a response to an economic downturn isn’t a very smart idea. That said, I’ve rarely if ever seen a serious economic historian attribute the Great Depression primarily to the Smoot-Hawley tariff. The timing doesn’t add up right, and the United States just isn’t a particular trade-dependent country. Milton Friedman, for example, is a pretty hard-core right-winger but that’s not what he thinks. Naturally, since this explanation lacks intellectually respectability it’s commonly heard from conservative pundits and politicians. Michelle Bachman, however, gives it a special partisan twist arguing that “FDR applied just the opposite formula, the Hoot-Smalley Act which was a tremendous burden on tariff barriers” and that this is what caused the Great Depression.
TPM’s Eric Kleefeld has a feeble effort at a rebuttal:
Here’s what really happened: When Franklin Roosevelt took office, unemployment was already about 25%. And the tariff referred to here was actually the Smoot-Hawley bill, co-authored by Republicans Sen. Reed Smoot of Utah and Rep. Willis Hawley of Oregon, and signed into law by President Herbert Hoover.
Kleefeld needs to read Michael Dummett on reverse causation. It’s true that Bachmann is making an unfortunate error about the names of Messrs. Smoot and Hawley. But her contention is simply that Roosevelt, though he took office in March 1933, was actually able to cause events in the past precipitating the very years-long Depression that led to his election. It’s a bit confusing, yes. And somewhat metaphysically controversial. But not at all something she deserves to be mocked for.
[no, not really—she should be mocked]
49 Responses to “Michelle Bachmann Embraces Ignorance, Reverse Causation”
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April 29th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
I love Michelle Bachman.
But what I love even more is that the Republicans can’t quit her.
There isn’t going to be a single comment along the lines of “Man, Michelle Bachman is embarrassing. I wish she’d shut up, because she makes us look bad” from any conservative on this thread, or on cable news.
Nope, they’re going to look at this numbskullery, and defend it, and defend her.
April 29th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
Actually, I think they’ll just pretend she never said it.
April 29th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
The time travel joke isn’t one that Matt should be making, given his repeated insistence recently on the same sort of thing.
April 29th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
She’s at least as smart as President Smush, but not quite so as President Omaba.
April 29th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Actually, Hoot and Smalley were anticipating the rise of FDR, and therefore passed legislation that, while not to their liking, would (they hoped) fall short of what dastardly FDR would have done had Hoot Smalley not been on the books. They were forwardlooking, and it was preemptive legislation, pure and simple.
April 29th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
At least she’s consistent — she also blames the 1976 swine flu outbreak on President Jimmy Carter, who somehow caused it when he took office …. in 1977.
April 29th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Matt, the significance of Hawley-Smoot (which, you’re right, most economists would not say single handedly caused the Depression) lay in the fact that the US was the worlds leading creditor by the end of WWI. And the US lent in dollars, so for other countries to pay back their loans to the US, they needed to accumulate dollars by, for instance, selling stuff to the US or having their citizens move to the US, work, and send dollars back home. But GOP policy in the 1920’s, including immigration restriction and tariff increases even before Hawley-Smoot, made the acquisition of dollars, and hence debt repayment, more difficult. And that led to defaults, which led to US bank failures, which led to a drying up of international lending, which led to business failures around the world, which depressed global demand, and onward down the spiraling path to doom.
Also, FDR and the New Deal Democrats substantially cut tariffs in the mid 1930’s.
April 29th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
I think we should listen to her and “do an expose” on her. Wonder what she is inhaling?
April 29th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Bachmann let loose the crazy this past fall and managed to get re-elected. Unfortunately, she seems to have taken this as a sign that she needs to be even more crazy. I swear before she was just moderately crazy, but when she realized that there was nothing she could say that would cause her to lose her job, she became absolutely fearless.
April 29th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
This is the party line among Republicans now. I believe it is the new “Austrian School” of economics – named for Steve Austria.
April 29th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
I definitely had “Smoot-Hawley Was A Major Cause Of The Depression” beaten into me in (public, urban) grade school, whatever the well-informed people may now believe.
I’m not saying that excuses her errors of terminology or especially of chronology (or even, given her responsibilities, her ignorance of modern economic thought), but (using its correct name and not assigning responsibility to FDR) blaming the Smoot-Hawley tariffs at least didn’t used to be a fringe belief.
April 29th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
I think you’re failing to engage Bachman’s argument. You’re referring to Smoot-Hawley, but she’s talking about Hoot-Smalley. Can’t you liberals even understand the question?
April 29th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
The problem is that Bachmann’s unhinged, fact-free nuttiness is given very little play by Minnesota media. She’s free to do what she wants; no one here seems to care much.
April 29th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
I’m thinking she’s got Al Franken (a.k.a. Stuart Smalley) on the brain.
April 29th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
The time travel joke isn’t one that Matt should be making, given his repeated insistence recently on the same sort of thing.
Exactly.
Matthew insists that Richard Burr’s comments now could cause a bank run 6 months ago. How exactly is that different than Bachmann claiming that FDR could cause the Smoot-Hawley bill to be passed three years before he was elected? Same thing.
April 29th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
You’re missing the big story here as usual, Matt. It’s clear that Michele Bachmann hails from an alternate universe where FDR passed Hoot-Smalley in 1929 and where, as a consequence, Jimmy Carter was president in 1976.
We need to find some way to send Bachmann back home.
April 29th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
when she realized that there was nothing she could say that would cause her to lose her job, she became absolutely fearless.
To paraphrase Roman Hruska, crazy wingnuts are entitled to a little representation.
(I have been to the McMansion exurbs of St Paul in her district. All somewhat depressing.)
April 29th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
Hello Al,
The difference is that there is still the VERY remote possibility of Burr’s remarks about a situation in the past causing bankruns in the present. This is something Yglesias has generally suggested in his posts on that subject, (and yes Matthew Yglesias is just hyping it, but that’s because hyping things is his job).
In the case of Bachman, however, there was no way for Franklin Roosevelt to have applied the formula of Smoot-Halley (to say nothing of Hoot-Smalley) because that act had already become law and started to do its damage on the economy by the time Roosevelt became president.
April 29th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Would Hoot Smalley, have anything to do with Stuart Smalley who may be coming to the Senate from Minnesota?
April 29th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
Again with Michelle Bachmann? For recreation, do you put fish in a barrel and shoot at them? Box little girls? Take candy from babies?
April 29th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Thank you for giving me a new life’s ambition. I aspire to someday use the phrase “metaphysically controversial” in print.
April 29th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
Would Hoot Smalley, have anything to do with Stuart Smalley who may be coming to the Senate from Minnesota?
Different comedian. The H*****-S**** T***** guy is from Florida.
April 29th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
Sounds like the premise of the new Star Trek movie.
April 29th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
Doesn’t Bachmann have a staff to help her out on these type of things?
If she does, they’re likely graduates from some crazy Christian college.
April 29th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Well, Stuart Smalley was a hoot.
Sorry, that’s all I got.
April 29th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
Bachmann Time Turner overdrive.
She’s just ahead of her time (going backwards). Bradbury in the memo and Thiesen in the Washington Post claimed that the interrogation of KSM after his capture March 2003 caused the disruption of the West coast second wave (library tower) attack in February 2002.
April 29th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
That Hoot Smalley guy was a traitor, and I can’t believe any of you people still like him. Michelle Bachman is the next great leader of the Republican Party, and somebody like her and Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber can help save the Republicans from all the compromisers who hollow out its soul.
April 29th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
Smooley-Hawt
April 29th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
This may be becoming a trend. They (the repubs) are also claiming that torturing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in 2003 prevented a terror attack in 2002. We live in wondrous times indeed!
April 29th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
Hoot-Smalley? Really?
Okay, I’m going to say it. Michelle Bachmann is not who she claims to be. She’s really a fringe artist who is performing some Andy Kaufmann-esque piece of performance art.
Seriously. This woman cannot be real.
April 29th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
The metaphysical controversy is nothing new.
You see, Obama caused the federal deficit and the financial crisis even though they occurred before he was elected because he is a SOCIALIST.
And that is all you need to know.
April 29th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
[...] [...]
April 29th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
Michelle Bachman is a product of Gov. Ronald Regan emptying the loony bins.
April 29th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
Hoot Smalley was Stuarts Grampa!
He used to bounce little Stuart on his knee and tell him tales of causing interdimensional depressions and epidemics!!
April 29th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Since it all comes back to sex, may I point out that Reed Smoot was acceptable as a senator from Utah because he was a life-long monogamist, whereas the far more admirable and intelligent Brigham H Roberts was excluded from Congress for being a polygamist? I’m hardly qualified to speak to the issue, but in the one picture of Roberts that I’ve seen he looks mighty sexy, so maybe he was just doin’ what comes naturally.
April 29th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Somebody should send her a copy of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Ben Stein will give her a little history lesson.
April 29th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
James and Thomas–another possible explanation is that she had Roy Smalley on her mind, who was an infielder for the Minnesota Twins for several years and now does analysis for them on TV. Finished his career with a World Series title in 1987.
Bachmann, by contrast, doesn’t look like championship material unless the contest is in dumbosity. If there were contests in that, she could have more rings than Yogi Berra.
April 29th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
I think shes talking about Floyd Smoot and Charley Pratt from the Cannonball in Hooterville.
April 29th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Oh, I get it! It all becomes clear to me now. Michelle Bachman wants to run as Sarah Palin’s VP, and she wants everybody to know that she hasn’t the brains for it either.
April 29th, 2009 at 6:31 pm
‘Give-that-woman’ said: “Smooley-Hawt”
No, I’m sorry – you’re probably thinking of the notorious 1920’s stripper-flapper and gun-runner Moms Smooley, who was generally known by her nickname “Hawt” (short for “Hawt Momma”, due to her penchant for setting rival gang-members on fire). Oddly enough, she was given the given name of ‘Moms’ as a tribute to the future “Moms” Mabley by her mother Bichelle Machmann, who briefly cohabitated with Aloysius “Bob” Smooley, of the Provincetown Smooleys, before marrying Theobald “Tas” Maniandevil after a whirlwind romance that destroyed most of downtown St. Paul. Ms. Smooley is also credited with inventing the Great Chicago Fire and causing the Civil War, although only by historians belonging to the “Wild-eyed Bachmann” school of Inventive History (members of this school are recognizable by the traditional wide, fixed smile (or “rictus”) and glassy, wide-eyed stare; rather similar to the effects of a lethal overdose of Amanita muscaria (or ‘Bachmann’s Delight Mushroom’).
The Hoot-Smalley Tariff Act was an entirely different type of flying altogether.
April 29th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
Milton Friedman, for example, is a pretty hard-core right-winger but that’s not what he thinks.
Matt seems to be under the impression that Milton Friedman isn’t dead.
April 29th, 2009 at 7:50 pm
If I’m not mistaken, none other than Ben Stein made this very claim about Smoot-Hawley in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”. Suddenly, that scene has much deeper meaning for me!
April 29th, 2009 at 8:57 pm
It is Michele Bachmann, not Michelle. One ‘L,’ not two. Just because names, dates, and facts don’t matter to ole “Crazy Eyes” doesn’t mean we should ignore them, as well.
April 29th, 2009 at 11:21 pm
Rich C in #7 is largely correct.
And of course, Smoot-Hawley is not responsible for the Depression, as it occurred after the Depression had started, but it did make the Depression worse. (And Hoover is very much to blame here – note that Smoot-Hawley is definitely not a laissez-faire policy, showing that Hoover was considerably less a free-marketer than he is often declared to be).
One thing that Rich C did not mention, however, is how the high trade barriers erected in the 1920s not only made it harder for European countries to pay off their debts to us, it also indirectly led to currency inflation, as the Federal Reserve expanded the money supply (through fractional-reserve banking, we had a gold standard but not a 100% reserve requirement gold standard) during the 1920s in order to help Europe to continually finance its debt to us. The credit expansion of the 1920s (which was caused by several factors, but trade barriers was one of them) is the reason for the start of the Depression.
Of course, it is not clear what this says about free trade in this day and age. While I am not inclined to tariffs in general, we have a trade deficit, not a trade surplus, so the effect of reducing imports might not be as harsh. This would certainly not, however, be a good time for China to erect further trade barriers.
Of course, Hoover’s single biggest mistake was likely his pressure on companies to maintain wage rates at a time of falling profits, leading to high levels of un- and under-employment.
April 30th, 2009 at 2:10 am
Heres why Michelle Bachmann is doing it:
By blaming the Great Depression on FDR rather than a decade worth of economic pressures – shes can then more easily blame Obama for the current recession. Deliberately misconstruing history to describe the present.
SIGH. And it could work, if people accept this nonsense. And some people actually wonder why proper education is important….
April 30th, 2009 at 4:54 am
Bachmann is carrying on in the great intellectual and elocutional tradition of George the younger, he of “bariffs and tarriers”.
April 30th, 2009 at 9:52 am
[...] a gift that keeps on giving. Yglesias has an amusing take on it: But her contention is simply that Roosevelt, though he took office in [...]
April 30th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
[...] http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/04/michelle-bachmann-embraces-ignorance-reverse-caus... [...]
April 30th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
HA! I thought perhaps she was a joint creative robot effort between Comedy Central and the Sci/Fi Channel.
As for shooting fish in a barrel…yeah, she makes it too easy. Doesn’t mean she should be in Congress, though. If we ignore her, will she go away…?