“The last time a president of the United States that did that was a guy named Herbert Hoover, protectionism and raising taxes.”

– McCain on Meet the Press with Tom Brokaw, October 26, 2008

McCain may be the first Republican ever to run against the negative stereotype successfully sculpted by FDR— Hoover the heartless, do-nothing president.

Every Democrat since Hoover has run against Hoover, with the exception of Barack Obama (youth has its advantages). Even Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden have invoked Hoover’s ghost…but McCain? This has not been once or twice, but is incessant, and as recently as yesterday.  McCain invoked Hoover in two of the three presidential debates and regularly refers to him on the stump.  Coming from McCain, it’s more than a cheap shot reinforcing 70 years of Democrat stereotypes. It is posturing at the expense of thoughtful analysis. With recent studies like Amity Shlaes’ The Forgotten Man showing that big government New Deal policies deepened the Great Depression, McCain ought to know better as a matter of policy and politics.

People forget that Hoover’s aggressive response to the economic tumult in his day had the New York Times concluding that no president could have done more to thwart negative economic effects of the October 1929 stock market crash.  Few remember that until the Bonus March in summer of 1932, most assumed Hoover would win re-election.

Hoover raised taxes twice during his Presidency. Smoot-Hawley raised international tariffs in the spring of 1930. In 1932 Hoover allowed President Coolidge’s income and corporate tax cuts to sunset in order to balance the federal budget. Income and corporate taxes went from 23% to at least 45%. Dick Morris tells me that on the high end, tax rates went from 25%-63%, though I’ve been unable to confirm these figures.

A reading of Hoover’s memoirs recalls the debate between the newly elected House Democrats and the President, to raise or not to raise taxes. Nowhere in the back and forth does either side acknowledge the net negative economic effect of raising taxes. In our recollection of this period in history we often forget the limited understanding of economies, markets, trading, taxes and tariffs that was available. Hoover’s Presidency is often measured with the benefit of the hindsight this period in economic history taught us — that increasing tariffs, corporate and income taxes amid economic downturn further depresses economic activity.

Over the course of 70 years, we’ve learned that raising taxes was part of the problem. To be fair to Hoover, his successor didn’t lower taxes either. What’s amazing is that FDR was able to secure three reelections in spite of presiding over the worst economy in the 20th century. Not until major war time investments in the mid-forties did the economy re-boot. The stock market didn’t recover until 1954.

McCain is correct in that we shouldn’t repeat the mistakes of Hoover’s tax hikes, but lazily continues to perpetuate the politically popular pejorative association of Hoover vilification—and he should know better.

The right says McCain needs to get mad—O’Reilly, town hall attendees, “the folks” want McCain to fight, stand up for himself, articulate the severe differences between he and his opponent. Republicans across America are pleading and praying that McCain will break the previous two debate stalemates tonight.

McCain needs to talk about Obamanomics—“spread the wealth” economics—Obama’s own revealing words to a plumber at his rally. He needs to articulate why taxing any income bracket in this economic environment will hurt our economy and why pro-growth economic policies work.

“It’s the economy, stupid” and McCain’s policy prescriptions are far superior to Obamanamics, which is a throwback to 1930s economic policy that was responsible, thanks to FDR for extending the Great Depression, not fixing it. Or, in the words of Mark Steyn, “Lots of other places – from Britain to Australia – took a hit in 1929 but, alas, they lacked an FDR to keep it going ‘til the end of the Thirties. That’s why in other countries they refer to it as “the Depression” but only in the US is it ‘Great’.”

Is McCain capable of articulating the differences between himself and Senator Obama without looking like a hot-head? Is he too wedded to being the guy in the middle that everyone likes, getting a free ride from the media because they love his buck-your-party nature? Does he know how to draw necessary contrasts that will help Americans understand why he’s the better candidate for this economic environment?

Rumor is that McCain will confront Obama—about what? Bad economic policy prescriptions, associations from his past that tell voters legitimate things about Obama’s world view—that he doesn’t think America is a force of good in the world—or worse, that he’s chosen to associate with people of that world view for the purposes of political opportunism?

Rush says we’re going to have to drag McCain across the finish line… I don’t believe it. McCain has to do it himself, and tonight he has another shot at it.

During the debate I’ll be streaming live from FoxNews.com’s Strategy Room—email us at strategyroom@foxnews.com.

For an entertaining and accurate analysis on the first Presidential debate last night, check out S.E. Cupp’s article published in the New York Daily News.

She’s also the co-author of the newly published, Why You’re Wrong About the Right: Behind the Myths: The Surprising Truth About Conservatives.

Here’s the article:

Archie Manning, the great patriarch of the Manning clan, quarterbacked the first national, prime time broadcast of a college football game for Ole Miss in 1969, and threw 436 yards and three touchdowns. In the end, Mississippi lost 33-32 to Alabama, but he is nonetheless sacrosanct in Oxford. His uniform number, 18, is the official speed limit on campus.

That close game, and Manning’s heroics in it, was mirrored in the presidential debate held at this historic university, founded in 1848, more than a decade before the start of the Civil War. And in a campaign season of hail mary passes by McCain, he was the quarterback that came out the victor.

Even though this biggest of games almost didn’t happen, it was filled with a litany of expected plays, the usual teeter-tottering between offense and defense, and had a number of key touchdowns that McCain arguably needed to erase the memory of what was without question a shaky week for the Republican candidate.

Throughout the debate, which focused on both the economy and foreign policy, McCain had facts, figures and names at his fingertips, speaking from decades of experience in the trenches – literally and figuratively – and repeated the phrase, “Senator Obama doesn’t seem to understand . . .” He called Obama naive, dangerous and inexperienced, and his attacks, which seemed to frustrate Obama, put him on the defensive for the majority of the night.

Obama’s expectations here were low. Foreign policy is McCain’s strength and Obama merely had to hold his own to come away from this unscathed. He did – in the first third of the night, devoted to the economy, Obama performed well, invoking the clauses that Democratic voters want to hear. But he seemed at times too cool, even verging on arrogant.

In an early stumble, he couldn’t give any concrete examples of how the current economic crisis would affect his budget were he to become President, even when pressed repeatedly by the moderator, Jim Lehrer. McCain proposed spending freezes and defense cuts.

When the debate turned to foreign policy, McCain pressed him on his failure over a long period to visit Afghanistan, though Obama repeatedly stressed that this was where he would focus his foreign policy efforts in the war on terror. And here, Obama awkwardly brought up his running mate Joe Biden, seeming to suggest that what Obama lacked, Biden would make up for.

But McCain’s biggest score was when Obama relayed the lesson he’s learned from Iraq: that we never should have gone there in the first place. McCain rightly pointed out that the job of the next U.S. president will not be to ruminate over why we went or whether it was a good idea, but to determine how and when to leave. Obama had a difficult time dancing around the success of the surge, which he has long been reluctant to admit.

And on Iran, Obama’s past embrace of conditionless diplomatic meetings with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and other leaders of rogue regimes came back to haunt him. McCain effectively cornered him, asking, “We’re going to sit down with Ahmadinejad, and he says he wants to wipe Israel off the map, and we say, No you’re not?”

This was not a rout. Obama had some moments that will probably please his supporters. But in all, it was not his best night. Obama vacillated between a desire to appear merely antithetical to McCain and Bush at all costs and a desire to position himself as a prescient and independent thinker on foreign policy. His responses essentially alternated between “I wouldn’t have done that,” and “I argued to do that months ago.” But Monday-morning quarterbacks have an uncanny way of knowing all the answers.

McCain may not be, as he put it, Miss Congeniality in the Senate or with the current administration. But in this game at least, he made the case for captain of the football team.