You can’t look at columns like Paul Krugman’s in The Times yesterday about “Franklin Delano Obama” and not see the new interest! Everyone is asking why doesn’t Obama simply emulate FDR? Why don’t we pick up and start a New Deal? Straight down the line, they have been comparing this recession with the Great Depression. The thing is, there is a substantial difference between now and then. Even Wall Street types were perfectly willing to give FDR dictatorial powers if he would cope with the financial crisis. Nobody’s mentioned that with Obama, and you won’t see it.

You cannot imagine how people were affected. People walked to work; the subway was a dime—John D. Rockefeller Sr. going out to the streets on 5th Avenue and handing out dimes to people. It was ludicrous. To put it in simple terms, parents would go to sleep at night hearing their children crying from hunger in their beds. And what could you do? You have not eaten yourself. That’s what I mean about the Great Depression. We are in a deep depression, but not like that.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty continues to relish his own weekly hourlong “Good Morning, Minnesota” radio show every Friday on WCCO-AM, a carryover from Gov. Jesse Ventura, and presumably will continue his radio reign under new WCCO boss Mick Anselmo.

Today I tuned in to WCCO to hear if T-Paw would take back the slams on Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and the integrity of the state’s election canvassing process that he aided and abetted during a Sean Hannity interview. (Repeating the phony car-ballot legend was enough to make Pawlenty one of Keith Olbermann’s “worst persons” on MSNBC last night.)

But Pawlenty’s communications honcho and radio sidekick Brian McClung said the boss was en route from the Republican governors conference and would miss the show today. Pawlenty’s stand-in, WCCO’s Jeanette Trompeter, proposed a ”Be Nice to Someone You Really Don’t Want to be Nice to Today” — which would have made the perfect segue to a gubernatorial mea culpa.

Pawlenty also missed an opportunity to salvage Minnesota’s reputation as a clean-election state during a nearly 10-minute interview with Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s “Hardball” last night. Instead the segment focused on Pawlenty’s take on the Republican Party’s future, and particularly Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s place in it. Sample exchange:

MATTHEWS (exasperated): Was [Palin] a drag on the ticket or not?

PAWLENTY (dodging): You look at politics like postmodern art.

Here’s the video: