Early this morning interviewed on CNBC, I was questioned about an e-mail from a listener in the United States who said that finding lessons from FDR in the 1930s was futile. Only the defense spending associated with World War II brought the country out of Depression. I agree with Julian's point that the New Deal had multitasked objectives - many achieved in terms of long-term reform and the infrastructure even if the purely economic record could have been better. I also feel that stopping things getting worse and enabling ordinary Americans, the unemployed and the farmers to survive the 1930s until the war provided 17 million jobs was a not unimportant achievement.

Incidentally, the most hostile comments that I have received about essays on the 30s in the British media that I have been asked to write come from Americans who either argue that recovery was simply about World War II or demonize FDR as a crypto-socialist.

Speaking at a panel on the inauguration at a gathering of corporate media executives last night, I was struck how this overwhelmingly white audience had such high expectations of Obama. International expectations of Obama are enormous. A BBC international poll showed that respondents in 15 out of 17 countries expected relations between themselves and the U.S. to improve. Over two-thirds of individual respondents were optimistic. Young people in particular throughout the world have been excited by American politics, usually for the first time. In 1933 international expectations of FDR were similarly high. European leaders rushed to Washington to lobby FDR before the World Economic Conference. When Roosevelt refused to support currency exchange stabilization and scuppered the conference, they bitterly blamed him. Yet they themselves were reluctant to give up the competitive advantages that devaluation and protective tariffs had given them. Economic diplomacy would never be an effective measure, as a result against Hitler, in the 1930s. Obama needs to be aware that other nations will be quick to blame the U.S. for the breakdown of international accords when, in fact, those nations had no intention of making meaningful sacrifices themselves (e.g. on climate change).

I am grateful for Allan, Don and Julian's generous comments. Like Don, I am much taken by Allan's observation that bold successful leaders make the center come to them rather than govern from the center.

Was I alone in thinking in the inaugural that when Obama talks about the need to make hard choices, the offer of tax cuts AND increased spending is scarcely a hard choice? Echoing Julian, are the sorts of infrastructure spending programs that Obama suggests sufficiently imaginative?