“If it wasn’t for gravy and coffee, we’d starve to death”

A 1937 interview with a cowboy, in part:

"The usual ride was sixteen hours per day. No Union hours for them. It was from daylight until dark with work, and hard work as that. One cowboy complained of having to eat two suppers, so he quit, packed his bed and left. In about three months he returned, carrying only a bull's-eye lantern, saying that where he had been working he needed only the lantern and had no use for the bed.
... "In the late 80's and early 90's came the covered wagons and then the sheepman.

..."No cowpuncher ever talked much. Ride further and talk less, few words and fast action, were rules which they followed pretty close

1890's that is. But even this old cowboy in the Depression-era 30's had an appreciation for union featherbedding. And less talk.

Well, WWII got us out of the Depression, not the New Deal, no, not that. Obama has been compared to FDR, but what of his successor?

Michael Barone has a piece on an Obama-Truman comparison:

In addition, Truman's victory was due to two "F factors" -- the farm vote and foreign policy -- the first of which scarcely exists today and the second of which seems unlikely to benefit Obama in the same way.
When the nation went to war in the 1940s one out of four Americans still lived on farms.

Today's it's 2%. Farm prices are high, and nobody's starving there.

So what's Obama doing in the heartland? Well, we know he desperately needs these first two swing states of IA, and I would argue MN, but is he afraid to go home to Chicago, IL?

And foreign policy helped him bash Bush but outside of getting Osama it's hardly a winner.

As for the American pioneering spirit, or the American exceptionalism of give 'em hell, the buck stops here Harry--we've seen no evidence of that in Barack Obama.