Gerald R. McCain

Reason has a sadly uninspired cartoon showing Gerald Ford as McCain and Jimmy Carter as Obama. But insofar as McCain is in the Ford tradition, that's mostly a good thing. I'll quote briefly from my recent Research piece on the seventies:

President Gerald Ford inherited a dilapidated economy and a demoralized nation. As he took office, inflation had moved into double digits, and economic growth was stalled. Early in his tenure, he held an economic summit, getting advice from various experts and asking the public to send him ideas on how to conserve energy and restrain prices....

In early 1975, the stock market started moving up, and by the second quarter the economy was growing again. Inflation, which had peaked in late 1974, was back in single digits, though still high by historical standards. In early 1976, the Dow pushed above the 900 line, and before long it was sporadically closing above the 1,000 level. Inflation continued to fall, dropping to the vicinity of 6 percent. The administration’s focus on restraining federal spending seemed to be doing some good.

UPDATE: A few blog posts later, Nick Gillespie has the nerve to criticize somebody else for running a rotten editorial cartoon.