I only occassionally read Bob Shrum’s column because it tends to be such unrelenting talking-point hackery. So I missed this. Fortunately a reader pointed it out to me. Shrum writes:

History does repeat itself—its central plot is recognizable even if the details of the drama are different. In a classic New Yorker cartoon of 1936, a gaggle of the affluent, including women in fashionable fur, stop outside a tony Manhattan residence where a tuxedoed butler is serving drinks. They tell their friends inside: “Come along. We’re going to the Trans-Lux to hiss Roosevelt.”
The legendary cartoonist Peter Arno perfectly captured the ideological frustration of the right wing as it watched an activist government, led by a president on course for a second electoral triumph, usher in economic recovery and major reform, including Social Security, which was enacted without a single Republican vote in the House. (Yes, the more things change, the more they stay the same: See this year’s vote on the economic stimulus bill.)

Um. The Social Security Act was passed in the House on April 19, 1935 by a vote of 372 yeas, 33 nays, 2 present, and 25 not voting. Eighty-one Republicans voted for it, fifteen against. Fifteen Democrats also voted against it. That’s over 80% Republican support. It’s also a cliché in Washington that sweeping legislation should have bipartisan support. The example everyone begins with: Social Security.

Shrum’s a very, very partisan guy. But he’s also smart enough to know that Republicans in the 1930s weren’t synonymous with conservatives, just as Democrats weren’t synonymous with liberals. So, what can explain the error (never mind the fact it made it past editors)?

Update: From a reader:

Subject: ah, the great recovery of ‘36
“the ideological frustration of the right wing as it watched an activist government, led by a president on course for a second electoral triumph, usher in economic recovery”?
How smart is this guy?