Is the American economy ready for a new New Deal?

A beleaguered Republican administration with an unpopular president can't pull the U.S. economy out of its funk. That allows a popular and engaging Harvard-educated young Democrat from Hyde Park (and his bright, activist wife) to sweep into the White House promising to replace the environment of fear with the audacity of hope.

That's not a prediction. That's history.

Seventy-five years ago, Franklin D. Roosevelt took the oath of office March 4, 1933, and launched his New Deal -- a sweeping government reform that put people to work and established safety nets for the poor and unemployed.

That history hasn't been lost on Kevin Corry, a retired teacher and political junkie of sorts from Bartlett who e-mailed me months ago suggesting a new New Deal.

"I am baffled by the fact that none of the candidates is beating the drums for a 1930s type of stimulus to the economy," Corry wrote. "The CCC, WPA, PWA, et al, would surely provide a real stimulus to the economy by creating jobs and in turn creating more taxpayers. Fixing the crumbling infrastructure of the cities, states and nation could be the first priority. The effects of such programs would be much longer-lasting than tax rebates and would likely take no more time to implement."

Since the time of Corry's complaint, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley publicly pined for a return to a New Deal jobs program -- suggesting that would be a better economic stimulus than tax rebate checks.

Earlier this month, Barack Obama -- he of Chicago's Hyde Park rather than FDR's New York Hyde Park -- unveiled plans for a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank that promises to pump $60 billion into construction and create 2 million jobs in the coming decade.

The idea picked up steam Monday when the nation's governors met with President Bush.

"We owe it to the people of America to join together and rebuild our country," California Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger proclaimed.

That sounds like a call for a new New Deal-like plan that FDR saw as a way to escape the Depression.

"In his mind, the best way to do that was not to put people on the so-called dole as he called it but to give them jobs," says history professor Margaret Rung, director of the Center for New Deal Studies at Roosevelt University, which has campuses in Schaumburg and Chicago. (Originally named Thomas Jefferson College, the school was renamed in 1945 in honor of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt's "democratic ideals and values.")

"People would much rather have a job than take handouts from the government…," Rung says. "It gave people hope and investment in the federal government."

President Herbert Hoover had tried modest government programs to jump-start the economy, but "Roosevelt undertook it in a much more aggressive way," Rung says.

FDR's first 100 days in office saw a record number of bills creating a plethora of federal agencies that aided the poor and unemployed. The Civilian Conservation Corps, Public Works Administration and (later) the Works Progress Administration gave millions of Americans jobs rebuilding roads, parks, hospitals and even public art projects.

Some New Deal programs, such as Social Security, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Securities and Exchange Commission, are still around.

While the New Deal certainly restored hope and raised moral, Rung says most experts agree that, even with all the positives the New Deal brought to this nation, the Depression really didn't end until we got into a war.

Today, we already are waging a war or two. Perhaps the best way to pull out of this recession is to pull out of those wars.