The Next Herbert Hoover

Who wants to be the next Herbert Hoover? Just line up over there on the right. See where all those chairs are arranged in a circle? Now here is what you do. Just join the others and after you all are standing behind a chair; you see there is one chair for each of you; you wait for the music to start playing. Then you start walking around the chairs, clockwise of course. When the music stops, you sit down in the chair that is in front of you. See how easy it is. Oh, there is one more thing. While the music is playing we are going to take away one chair. So, each time the music stops, there will be one person without a chair. That person gets to go home. We will do this until there are only two of you left and just one chair. And then, when the music stops, if you can sit down in the chair, you are the next Herbert Hoover. Much fame will come your way.

So far, we have had five or six players already go home. Let’s see where is that list with their names. Oh here it is. Christina Romer went home. Peter Orszag went home. Larry Summers went home. Rahm Emanuel is going home. So is David Axelrod. Five have already gone home. They don’t get to be the next Herbert Hoover. Too bad. They don’t know what they’re missing out on. Lots of fame. Invites to the Sunday talk shows. Lots of security protection. Heck, probably around the clock for the rest of their lives. The next Herbert Hoover is going to be getting a lot of attention.

Now here is what else is going to happen. In a few weeks there will be an election. You will notice that a lot of the people running for office are still trying to have a chair to sit on. They also want to be the next Herbert Hoover. Here are some of their names: Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank and Henry Waxman; John McCain, John Boehner and Harry Reid are all there around the chairs hoping that they will have a seat when the music stops. Others didn’t seem to be so anxious to stay in this fun game. Chris Dodd walked away. He would have had a good chance to be the next Herbert. So did Evan Bayh and the senators from NDakota, Kentucky, Kansas, Delaware, Missouri, New Hampshire and Ohio. We wonder why? A bunch of them were associated with places and events like FNMA and FHLMC and making sure everyone, mostly those important speculators could buy as much real estate as they wanted. And they were always voting for giveaway programs and new ideas they called stimulus and TARP and all sorts of fun ideas they had. They walked away too. They don’t seem to want to play the game either. Why not? Are they seeing something the rest of us who want to play are not? We doubt it. It’s not every day you can get to be the next Herbert Hoover, huh?

Some people haven’t shown up for the game yet but they sure want to play. As a matter of fact two of them are so busy trying to get outside support to be named the next Herbert Hoover that we think they might just fix the game when they show up. A lot of the current players are worried that the fix is in. In one case they think some of the Chicago boyz who left early may have already pulled a fast one to make sure that their favorite is going to win this game. Who are these two you ask? Well here are some clues.

The first one should be odds on favorite. He studied Herbert Hoover in school and he claims to know more about good old Herbert and his economic policies than almost anyone ever. He says he studied Herbert very carefully so that, when the time came, he would know exactly what to do to not be like Herbert. What? That doesn’t make sense. Why would someone who didn’t want to be Herbert now work so hard to become Herbert? Boy, oh boy. It sure is hard to figure out how the minds of these really smart people work, isn’t it?

The other one, the kid from Chicago, probably has the inside track because he does get to say yes or no or maybe to almost everything so he can probably fix the game so that he is in the right spot when there is only one chair left and the music stops. He has been working real hard to be the winner. Some even say that the fellow who studied Herbert has been writing the scripted, teleprompter speeches for this kid from Chicago to keep him in the game to be the next Herbert. That sure would be very nice of him to help out the kid with all these great “Herbert” ideas, wouldn’t it?

Boy oh boy oh boy. We can’t wait. How about you? Pretty soon we will have a brand new Herbert Hoover. As Yogi Berra might say, "It's déjà vu all over again". Yogi also said something else that is guiding us as we watch the Herbert Hoover candidates do their thing. He said, "You can observe a lot by watching."