Editor:

I'm going to try to dazzle you with an account of how a previous administration faced a recession, tackled it and quickly turned it around.

My source is an article titled, "Warren Harding and the Forgotten Depression of 1920," as published by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.

Two years after World War I ended, unemployment had jumped from 4 percent to nearly 12 percent. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover recommended an array of interventions which Harding ignored.

Instead, Harding slashed all income tax rates, cut the government's budget almost in half by 1922, and reduced the national debt by one-third. In his Republican nomination speech in 1920 he said, "We will attack high cost of government" and "let us call to all the people for thrift and economy."

By late summer of 1921, signs of recovery were visible and by the next year, unemployment was back down to 6.7 percent and to 2.4 percent by 1923.

Today, Barack Obama's hero is FDR, who, forced with 25 percent unemployment in 1932 unleashed a torrent of spending. Six years later the unemployment rate had hardly budged. (Don't misunderstand me. I have boundless admiration for Franklin Roosevelt because he unwaveringly helped Britain in the early years of World War II.)

And I realize such a drastic program could not be considered today because most people -- not all -- have their hands out toward the federal government, asking, "What are you going to do for me?"

But at least I think the Harding story might give us pause before expecting anything good to come from the next stimulus. It won't.

DICK MILLS, Casper