A Progressive Ride
Interesting discussion over at American Thinker this morning about an article titled “Is BHO the New FDR?” by Jack Cashill. The answer is a resounding “maybe,” or perhaps even an “in some respects, but not as much as this other President.” You should definitely read the article, but before you go popping off to visit, a few words about why I’m referring to it.
We Americans are notorious for our gaps in historical knowledge, a fact which greatly complicates our politics, because we never know to what extent a candidate was elected out of popular ignorance. One of the historical figures that nearly every American feels they know at least something about is Franklin Delano Roosevelt (I spelled the full name, once, for the benefit of those who might be baffled by ‘FDR,” God help us). The conventional wisdom is that he saved us from the Great Depression and saw us through WWII.
Cashill seems to disagree, at least with the first part, as does economist-historian Amity Shlaes, author of The Forgotten Man. Based on his presidential decisions, it would be hard not to describe FDR as an authoritarian fool who hadn’t the first clue about basic economics but loved to play with the economy (including the money supply) as if he did. He lived in a period during which Fascism was considered a Third Way between Capitalism and Socialism, and, until the war, Russia, Germany and Italy were looked upon as models of innovation and efficiency in government.
Cashill explains a great deal of why, in such a context, Obama behaves a great deal like FDR, and seems to consider him a role model, even as he publicly proclaims his real model to be FDR’s cousin Teddy. I was intrigued by the Comment section of the article for the many different historical perspectives presented. Here’s a commented-upon snippet from near the end of the piece that quotes Roosevelt administration Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morganthau, Jr. :
For all the sound and fury of FDR’s reign, and for all the soothing charm of his style, the New Deal did not deliver. And no one knew that better than a bummed Morgenthau.
“We are spending more money than we have ever spent before, and it does not work,” he told a congressional hearing in 1939.
“I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get jobs. We have never made good on our promises. I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started and an enormous debt to boot.”
FDR was at war with his own (upper) class. He hated bankers, and was determined to bring them to heel. (Glass-Steagall was enacted purely to punish J.P. Morgan, a man who, in the absence of a Central Bank, had saved the economy more than once.) He thought the banks had too much power, just as our Democrat friends (and Socialists the world over) feel about the modern corporation.
The question we need to ask, is: what power? Is the ability to conduct their own business without the government’s permission a usurpation of government power? In that era, sans Central Bank, it looks like any vacuum in ability and influence was due to the ineptitude of government, not Capitalist rapacity. And it should be worth noting that our country had the same disease then that South America in general, and Argentina in particular has today: politicians with control of the money supply.
And Morganthau’s remarks tend to demonstrate that economic stimulus (Keynesian economics) didn’t work any better then than it does now, but the notion that you can spend your way into prosperity seems to be timelessly irresistible to the political class.
So, for those who might not get to the Comments, here is a quick survey of all or part of my favorites:
On Morganthau and modern entitlements (by dh):
Morgenthau’s words remain an apt description of the democrat party as carried by their party’s favorite standard bearer. Many of today’s problems, being further perpetuated by Obama are directly related to the entitlements started with FDR’s New Deal. These unfunded programs are an absolute disaster. When is this country going to accept and acknowledge the democrats’ progressive policies are abject FAILURES? Their great success is in keeping people dependent and creating the permanent underclass, their voting block, who only wants more and more freebies with nothing in return. It’s disgusting to watch these dems continue to punish success –success they had nothing to do with creating, but seemingly have no compunction in taking from hardworking people; its an amazing level of disrespect, while they destroy self-reliance and ingenuity. There are no strings attached to those receiving the entitlement monies yet the providers are punished at every turn. People take for granted that which they do not work for or pay for.
Good read, but I had always thought that the seeds of the 1929 Crash were planted by Woodrow Wilson.Wilson, arguably the grandfather of our modern Progressive movement, was another idiot “know it all”, same as Obama. Wilson was hailed as brilliant, and recieved the Noble Peace Prize as he ended the “War to End all Wars”. At the time, of course it was refered to as the “Great War”, because, with such brilliant Progressives such as W. Wilson, how could we ever have a sequel, a part Two?
One of the programs that Wilson thought critical to preventing further world instability was increased farm production. To this end (i.e. folly), he strongly encouraged American farmers to highly leverage their operations (sound like the Community Reinvestment Act?).
Of course Wilson believed that he was so smart that free markets would not challenge his brilliance. If he told farmers to leverage their operations, commodity prices would comply and rise. But instead commodity prices fell. And American farmers as a group went bankrupt. Farming was such a large portion of the American economy, it lead to the Wall Street Crash.
The 1920′s is mostly ancient history. Few people are alive to tell the anecdotes. But in the folklore, true to life characters like Bonnie and Clyde were abundant. That stuff did happen. The 1920′s farmers blamed the banks for their woes, but it was really Woodrow Wilson who engineered the disaster.
I usually agree with Mr. Cashill,but this time I don’t agree at all. I have studied the great depression and its’ causes. I believe Mr. Obama
resembles Herbert Hoover, who was a progressive, and advocate of distributive justice. One needs to study the life of Herbert Hoover,
to see he was a tool of the progressives and was part of an orchestrated plan. Just as Hoover was a one term president, Obama will also be a one term president.
I am a conservative, and have voted republican my entire life. However, I think the comparison of Obama to Roosevelt is too easy. My gut is telling me that the ultimate demise and socialization of this country is going to come from the right and a RINO. Examine Roosevelt’s history and the history of the republicans. Roosevelt was actually a DINO of that time.
I will not argue FDR was the best, or one of the best, but he DID advocate building the war machine up before most Americans saw WWII coming, or Hitler as a threat. He did determine himself to rally the nation to fight a war after Pearl Harbor. This was important. A classical “old leftist”, he wanted to Unionize everybody,to save America, so according to his ilk, we needed his tyrannical Marxist policies. Today, the “old leftists” are nearly all gone , the “new leftists” want to make individuals all disappear in a Malthusian NON-Man future. I would make the case, the devil is in these details, and that the new left is more anti-man than the old, thus, much more dangerous. Obama is the spawn of the new left, an ideology sprung from the mud at Woodstock in 1969. The old left, imported from Germany & renamed “Progressivism” wanted a bustling socialist man – inhabited labor utopia. Demeaning free exchange between individuals, but not obliterating it. The New Left, The Obama-Zombies, want to rid us of the very concept of free exchange between individuals, and replace it with the civil discourses of cave man clubs and rule by force & decree. They renamed it “Regulation”…
They do this BECAUSE IT WORKED FOR THEM. There is nothing surprising about it – propaganda does work. Creating a dependent class does work. Saying he is a Marxist goes in one ear and out the other, because most Americans have no clue what you are talking about. Most people do not remember SDS and Mark Rudd and Kathy Boudin and have no idea of what happened in the Soviet Union. What do you expect when the Columbia School of ‘Journalism’ is 99 percent socialist nitwits.
