This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, March 11th, 2010.

I'm Caleb Brown.

At least we don't have stagflation yet.

The 1970s paralleled the 2000s in several ways so what might those parallels

mean for the public's appetite to limit government. John Samples director of

Cato's Center for Representative Government addresses that and other ideas in his new book, The Struggle to Limit Government.

What parallels should we draw between the 2000s and the 1970s?

We had recessions,ending it the decades both started with

surpluses going into deficits we had wars an economy that was not particularly strong.

What parallel should we draw?

Oh, the other thing I would say is you had a Republican president

through part of the 70s that was in many ways a lot like what

one expects Democrats to be.

Richard Nixon in my book, The Struggle to Limit Government, I see Nixon as a continuation of the Johnson

administration and in many respects actually Johnson administration was more

liberal and more radical in their use of government, I think, than the Johnson

administration ever intended to be. So you have that, and the parallels I

think between Richard Nixon and George W Bush are actually quite clear.

I would add that Bush continued the tendency towards social conservatism that Nixon pioneered as an electoral strategy.

He was much, that is Bush, was much more intense about it, but times had changed too, I think.

So I think you've got that.

I think the important thing here is, as always with politics, big things like the state of the economy and war are going to be the big issues.

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