Ron - Yes, I think the 1929 crash did do that, and things were steaming along pretty well, but two catastorphes happened. The first was, Henry Wallace was no longer the VP when Roosevelt died, and Harry Truman took us into the Cold War. And the second took place when the oil powers in the Middle East determined that they needed to get rid of Carter because he was trying to make America independant of foreign energy, so they saw to it that Ronald Raygun got elected.
                Eisenhower helped steer us back from the Truman fiasco. It's too bad he wasn't there to save us from Raygun. George W. Bush is a direct off-shoot of that bumbling idiot.