Amity Shlaes, Columnist

A Stimulus Package Conservatives Could Support: Amity Shlaes

September 6, 2011 at 5:53 PM UTC

Amity Shlaes, chairman of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation, is the author of "Great Society" and co-editor, with Matthew Denhart, of a new edition of Coolidge's autobiography.

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No doubt, President Barack Obama will call for stimulus when he talks about job creation in his speech Thursday. Since many of us by now recoil at the word, perhaps it helps to ask, once again: Which Obama stimulus would be the least bad?

The answer, as it happens, is neatly framed in a recent photo of young women posing as Rosie the Riveter, the symbolic female factory worker from World War II. They were snapped on the occasion of Obama's Labor Day visit to the Detroit area (unemployment 15 percent). Defense spending is the key: More hiring and spending by the Army, Navy, Air Force and affiliated departments, such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the high-end military technology developer known as DARPA.