The Broadway musical “Annie” is enjoying another revival on Broadway. The show opened during the Carter administration, when America was in need of some optimism. “The sun’ll come out tomorrow,” Annie sang, and with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, for a while, it did.

Now we’re back in “Hooverville,” the name given to shanty towns that popped up during the Great Depression. It isn’t that bad yet, though the Obama administration is forecasting gloom and doom if Republicans don’t cave on another tax increase.