We hear people compare Barack Obama to Franklin Delano Roosevelt quite a lot, usually in an unfavorable manner. We also hear people talk about 1937 as an object lesson on what not to repeat about the latter Roosevelt administration. In 1937, FDR embraced budget-balancing and stalled the recovery the country had been enjoying from the Great Depression. I just want to put things in some context. The 75th Congress, which served from 1937-1939 had 76 Democrats and 16 Republicans serving in the Senate. It also had two members of Minnesota’s Farmer-Labor Party, one member of the Wisconsin Progressive Party (Robert M. La Follette, Jr.), and one progressive independent (George W. Norris of Nebraska). In other words, the U.S. Senate had an 80-16 margin against the Republicans. The House of Representatives was similarly stacked 347-88 against the GOP.
These numbers can be very deceptive. The Democratic Party of the 1930’s was dominated by Jim Crow-supporting Southern segregationists. And they were even more culturally conservative than their modern-day Republican counterparts. In the 75th Congress, the only Republican senator serving anywhere south of the Mason-Dixon line was John Townsend of Delaware. Still, President Roosevelt could count on his party members to support him in most things. He had immense power. You simply cannot compare the kind of power he had to any other president in history.
Imagine if Barack Obama was operating with more than 80 Democrats in the Senate, more than 340 seats in the House, and that his party controlled the entire South and all of Appalachia. Do you think he might behave a little differently than he is behaving now? Why, he might even try to stack the Supreme Court!!
Comment from Yglesias’ blog. That’s why FDR was so effective, Booman. He pitted people’s interests against one another so that they’d WANT to support his policies.
well, the biggest difference is obviously that the South is now Republican. That changes everything.
Maybe, but he could have made it so it was shitty for Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins and Arlen Specter to oppose the deal, and made it outright suicidal for them.
The stimulus wasn’t a Lucy moment; those three Republicans voted for it after making it more shitty. There was no need to accommodate their demands.
Do you even listen to yourself?
It’s like you are arguing that you can go to the drive-thru and order twelve whoppers, and when they ask for the money to pay for them, you offer them a dollar. Why accede to their demand for $40? Just give them a dollar and wait for them to hand over the meat.
I did this before, actually. When leaving a parking garage, I thought it was only $5, but they wanted to charge me $10.
“$5 is all I have…what are you going to do?” (it really was all I had)
They let me leave.
Senators especially in this day and age of the 24 hour news cycle. Specter was the only one of those three with an election in two years. Snowe is up in 2012 and Collins up in 2014 – 4 and 6 years out respectively from the stimulus. What is the leverage for shaming them there? They know as well as I do that the stimulus will be ancient history by the time they are up for re-election.
Also from Yglesias:
http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/08/05/289623/executive-order-6102/
why we are not living in 1937: US policy is not changing NEARLY as much as it did then.
In 1936 the US Federal Deficit as a % of GDP was 4.76%, in 37 it was 2.84% and in ’38 it was 1.42%.
The cuts being contemplated in FY 12 and FY13 are nothing CLOSE to those that were enacted in ’37 (the decline in the deficit in ’37 and ’38 in part is related to the start of social security).
Moreover, the US has run deficit to gdp numbers far higher in the last 3 years than FDR ran in any year before 1942. In 2009 the deficit to GDP ratio was 10, and in 2010 it was 8.62. The largest piece time deficit that FDR ever ran before was in ’42 was the 4.76%.
In classic income accounting, fiscal stimulus (“G”) is measured by the federal deficit. By that measure Obama has pursued a more Keynsian policy than FDR.
And you will never see this fact discussed.
It is worth noting that Reagan ran a larger deficit in 1983 than FDR ever did before 1942.
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/downchart_gs.php?year=1900_2016&chart=G0-fed&units=p#usg
s101
What is driving the debate is not the deficit but the fact that the debt is 91% of GDP, and GDP is not growing.
And it is being stoked by folks who are projecting entitlement obligations and interest on the national debt parts of the deficit infinitely into the future and coming up with wild exaggerated numbers.
If fiscal stimulus the year after “Morning in America” is 5.04% and given the current growth rate, that argues that the 10.91% for FY 2011 is insufficient to restart job growth.
I would suggest that the reason is that most of the deficit is going in the form of tax credits and reductions that are general, not targeted, and that the major recipients of those credits and reductions are not putting money back into the economy but playing asset swap gains on Wall Street. And that that not the deficit and debt per se is what is driving the markets down as they look to the absence of increased economic activity.
Consumers can’t spend, businesses won’t invest in stuff that requires consumption, government is now legally prohibited from spending, and the balance of trade is in the toilet and not likely to climb out, given a general global recession.
And there is a political crisis in which Congress (and other parliaments) and central banks are disconnected from reality in the way they are handling what started and still is a bank insolvency crisis.
From a comment I made this morning on the “Book Proposal” thread: another mistake so many of today’s progressives make is to compress time, making struggles that took years seem like a short time period because they are contained in one chapter of a high school history book. The failure to see that FDR, MLK and LBJ accomplished what they did over time, in increments, is what’s causing so many progressives to prematurely bail on Obama, and it’s hurting the greater cause.
No, MLK, FDR, JFK and LBJ announced clearly and repeatedly what their goals were. That is something we would like to hear from OHB. Or have I missed something? Of course it takes time but we’re more than two and a half years into this administration and a lot of people are panicking. You see, Obama is perfectly beatable if the unemplyment numbers and the economy don’t turn around some time soon. What’s you’re guess?
Who the hell is OHB?
He is BHO.
FB, I think you misunderstand the essential leadership qualities of people like FDR, JFK and MLK. By and large they operated with bold strokes and went for what they could plausibly get with a view to making a considerable immediate impact with their policies.
MLK didn’t ask if they could at least be able to sit in the back third of the bus for right now or be served at least take-out food and drinks at the lunch counters of the south. He didn’t ask for the right to accommodations in only the cheapest of roadway motels or for his people to have the right to vote starting in 5 years provided they had proper ID and a $10 filing fee.
JFK didn’t say let’s try to put several astronauts into earth orbit for several days by the end of the decade, and he didn’t say let’s give blacks just an incremental improvement on the tepid 1957 civil rights bill to keep them happy so they’ll maybe stop bothering me. He didn’t tell Khrushchev, let’s try to be a little more decent and understanding with each other so that by the time my successor has finished his two terms even if we’re still enemies we’ll have nonetheless perhaps reduced our nuclear arsenals by 10%.
These leaders instead tried to achieve what was achievable when the time was right and always with a bold positive vision for a better world, not a timid defeatist outlook that only considered the difficulty of each obstacle in the path as an excuse not to act boldly.
But then, I thought Obama was the guy who was all about honoring transformational, as opposed to incremental, leadership.
is flawed from the get go. The comparison should be could FDR be FDR in today’s political and economic environment?
Yes, Congress greatly favored Dem FDR back then and Obama not so much today or even in 2009. Still the parallels between than and now are several, including how O seems to be eerily reliving the befuddlement and frustration of Roosevelt in 1937 as month after month the economy got worse and the suddenly weak-looking president appeared to not know what to do.
Both had the advantage, one would think, of being able to look at the past (FDR, his first term, Obama the first and second FDR terms) to see what worked and, for Obama, what seemed to make the situation worse (the 1937 pullback to economic orthodoxy), yet these lessons appear not to have been learned.
It took a previous adviser to FDR coming out of sick bay where he’d been for many months to finally wake up Roosevelt and get him back on track with his thinking, which til then had been dominated by his orthodox Treasury Sec’y Morgenthau.
Obama seems still enthralled by his similarly situated guy Geithner, and doesn’t have a trusted liberal aide like Harry Hopkins to come to the WH and persuade the president. Non-aide outsider Paul Krugman hasn’t been able to influence Obama — possibly for political/temperamental reasons having to do with Obama’s almost obsessive need for “bipartisan” governance — and I don’t see who would.
I see a continuation of the 1937 year for a while yet — until some negative outside event probably forces the issue and Obama’s hand is strengthened such that he can take on the GOP opposition or shame them finally into acting in positive ways for the country.
That outside event is occurring now. And it is not over. I can tell because there are places on the internet that I cannot get to. Most connected to what actually is going on on Wall Street.
I keep saying this but I guess it just needs to be said over and over again. The president DOES NOT HAVE THE OPTION of using Keynesian stimulus to get us out of this problem. Progressives know there is a solution and want the president to pursue that solution, but HE CAN’T.
“Well, he should at least spend all his time complaining about his impotence!!”
I have to wonder why this is such a seductive argument. What he has to do is TRY OTHER THINGS.
Add that to the indisputable FACT that he’s the target of a deliberate GOP strategy to undercut his support by rendering him ineffective, for which the unicorns and ponies wing of the progressive movement have fallen big time with the result that they target him instead of their natural enemies the GOP, and you’ve got a guy who is definitely not living in 1937. He hasn’t got leverage and he’s got people sniping at him from all sides, complete with a 24 hour news cycle and self-appointed pundits and commentators who micro-analyze and openly criticize every move as soon as he makes one. The coziness of the media with FDR was such that Americans for the most part not only did not see such criticism, but even knew very little about just how bad his physical condition was.
Add that to the indisputable FACT that he’s the target of a deliberate GOP strategy to undercut his support by rendering him ineffective …
And what does it say when the President negotiates with those looking to undercut him and admit so publicly almost every day.
It says that he needs their votes to get absolutely anything done.
No President in history has faced so consistently a united opposition willing to sacrifice the country to bring down a President. Not even Clinton had a GOP caucus this single-minded.
You miss the point. It’s about respect. And they don’t show him an ounce of it. And people can see that.
Well yes they can see that. But there’s nothing that he can do to make Republicans respect him. Aside from the partisan animus, there are enough downright racists in the Republican Congress that what he does is irrelevant to earning their respect. And that’s been true since the “witch doctor” postcards appeared in April 2009.
What’s the point that I’m missing? They don’t respect him and they earn brownie points from their racist constituents by dissing him.
He cannot exactly say, “Dammit, cut it out.” although he has hinted in that direction several times. But GOP flunks nuancs.
They control the House. They control the purse strings. So what is he supposed to do? Say to them you don’t like me, you are trying to bring down my Presidency so I am going to make believe you don’t exist and not deal with you.
with the House??
You have to get the appropriations bills passed, and you have to raise the debt ceiling.
What option is there?
It probably say, calvin, that this president fundamentally misunderstands and underestimates the nature of the opposition he is facing from the GOP.
He still thinks, nearly three years into his presidency, that he’s negotiating with reasonable people.
He fails to note that instead they are more like gangsters and you don’t really negotiate with gangsters except from a law enforcement perspective, and certainly being nice and reasonable and accommodating to their wishes only rewards and encourages them.
This guy needs to buck up and start kicking tail and naming names — people would finally respect him, even possibly his opponents who only know and are familiar with a certain style. Drop the detached professor persona once in a while and start drawing the line in the sand.
That and some bold jobs programs proposals, to go with his modest payroll tax and other slight measures, would begin to turn people back into his corner, perhaps with a passion — if only Obama himself could show some.
A-freaking-men. The left-er wing of the Democratic party can’t seem to stop helping the GOP destroy Obama’s presidency by jumping on the bandwagon of destruction with them…
Fortunately what the left-er wing says matters in only a few precincts. Most folks outside the Democratic establishment and the left blogosphere ignore them.
And a political crisis is a political crisis, and folks search for scapegoats anywhere they can find them.
Even grassroots conservatives are complaining about the GOP caucus being absent from reality.
There are things he can do with out getting the permission of Orange Julius, and he isn’t doing it. Besides, it speaks of piss-poor leadership to go around saying: “Waaaa!! Mean Orange Julius won’t let me do anything to improve the economy!” You’d never hire someone like that to run your business(if you owned one). Adapt. Improvise. Overcome.
Oh really? There’s something else this really smart, highly motivated man and his really smart, highly motivated advisers have missed? Something simple and obvious which he should be doing? Do tell. Perhaps you’d consent to lay out the substance of this improving and adapting you’re recommending. How about some examples for the poor nitwit in the White House? Apparently you believe all he really needs is a better imagination.
These are good points if your are a business not a President constrained by the Constitution and three co-equal branches of the government.
But I would love to hear what you think he could do that does not run him afoul of Congress.
I steer away from most of these conversations most of the time, because first I would like to know which of us is the political historian who really knows the FDR period.
Case in point… I read this recently:
Matthew Yglesias on Executive Order 6102
http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/08/05/289623/executive-order-6102/
I get so tired of hearing the mantra, ‘bit business is afraid’. For cripes sake, we’re talking here businesses that are so gigantic, so powerful, so cash heavy and yet we’re supposed to believe Exxon and Walmart are cowering in their respective corners?
Obama is decidedly limited in options he can invoke with any success but these wussy assed arrogant corporations could decide they’re tired of this economy and want more in the purest capitalistic sense and start their damn engines to pull us out of the mud any time. It’s their CHOICE.
Scared, frightened, yeah right.
.
A number of FDR’s New Deal proposals were declared unconstitutional by the Hughes Supreme Court. Due to his 3rd and 4th term, FDR outlasted in the end all but two of the sitting judges. The make-up of the SC changed profoundly. FDR failed to complete the New Deal because the economy fell back into a self created recession.
Cross-posted from BooMan’s fp story – We’re Not Living in 1937
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."This argument reminds me of the people who keep saying Iraq and Afghanistan aren’t a bit like Vietnam because Vietnam has jungles and Iraq and Afghanistan have large deserts. Desert or jungle, we’re still chest deep in the Big Muddy.
The point of the 1937 comparison is is not that the Great Depression and social conditions in the U.S. are the same now as then. It doesn’t even matter who controlled Congress back then. It’s that cutting government spending during a precarious economic time, when recovery might be just beginning (I don’t think it is, actually, but it could be; it certainly was in 1936 before the legs were cut from beneath it), has proven disastrous when it was done before, and so will undoubtedly be disastrous when it’s done again under similar conditions.
Further, I don’t really think, economically, Obama would be doing much different if the Dems were in control. He’s said from the very beginning he wanted to cut entitlements and he’s still talking about it now, even as the stock market tanks due to fears that government austerity will lead to something a lot more like the Great Depression that what we’re seeing now. The one thing he’d probably do differently is eliminate the Bush tax cuts for rich people, but the rest of the stuff that’s being cut are things he put on the table.
That is a persistent lie. What he said was that entitlements needed to be put on a sounder basis.
And it conflates Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Of those, health care costs need to be cut in order for Medicare and Medicaid to be supportable. That is a reasonable position as long as it means cuts in health care costs to patients instead of cuts to providers that are passed on to patients as copays and deductions.
And there are some entitlements that do need to be eliminated entirely — retirement pay for ex-presidents is a good example.
ex presidents should be means tested for any retirement benefits.
Gotta disagree with that one. Presidents get retirement pay so they won’t be (so) tempted to make corrupt deals while in office to provide for their retirement. See Michael Dobbs’ The Final Cut (the last part of the House of Cards trilogy), in which the lack of retirement pay for British ex-Prime Ministers figured prominently.
Delaware is north (and east) of the Mason-Dixon line.
Just a minor nit-pick, but it makes your point slightly stronger.
I guess you’re right. Oops. I actually live less than twenty miles from the line, but I forgot that it takes a right angle at the Delaware border.