February 7, 2007
YOU'VE GOT TO EAT A LOT OF RUBBER CHICKEN TO LEARN TO BE A GREAT LEADER:
Becoming Reagan (NICHOLAS WAPSHOTT, February 7, 2007, NY Sun)
[T]homas W. Evans, an American lawyer who has dabbled in Republican politics, has made a genuine breakthrough in "The Education of Ronald Reagan" (Columbia, 302 pages, $29.50) by uncovering the influence upon Reagan's political thinking of Lemuel Ricketts Boulware, the General Electric executive who employed Reagan when acting work dried up in Hollywood. Neither Lou Cannon, in his magisterial life of Reagan, nor Edmund Morris, Reagan's official biographer, make mention of Boulware, yet Mr. Evans makes a strong case that Reagan would not have made the leap from Democrat to Republican in 1960 had it not been for Boulware's proselytizing of free markets and low taxes.Until now it has been assumed that Reagan was the source of his own conversion. He was born into a Democratic family, his father was active in New Deal good works on behalf of the unemployed, and he remained a liberal in Hollywood. By his own account, he made the slow journey from left to right through personal experience. During the Depression he noticed that federal bureaucrats were often more devoted to maintaining their own jobs than finding work for others, and when he began making a movie star salary he begrudged the confiscatory taxes he was obliged to pay. Above all, as president of the Screen Actors' Guild, he found himself in fear of his life as he battled communists in the movie industry. Like Margaret Thatcher, Reagan found his political philosophy not through reading dusty tomes of political philosophy but by following his own instincts.
Mr. Evans does not dispute this account, but by sifting through the GE archives at Schenectady and Boulware's papers at the University of Pennsylvania he has unearthed a seam of influence on Reagan's thinking which no one else has mined. He makes a convincing case that in his years traveling as the public face of GE to its 135 factories, where he addressed hundreds of thousands on the shop floor, Reagan imbibed the wisdom of Boulware's promarket, anti-trade union, conservative thinking, which ran through the company's voluminous literature aimed at keeping employees safe from creeping socialism.
Reagan was already much in demand as a speaker, preaching the virtues of small government and low taxes. He had formulated an all purpose address, "The Speech," which laced homespun conservatism with telling anecdotes and which was to become the instrument by which he propelled himself onto the national stage in his rousing television appeal in support of Barry Goldwater's failed presidential bid. Reagan seemed unaware he was being employed to do anything other than keep GE employees content by offering them tidbits of gossip about their screen heroes. It was, perhaps, the genius of Boulware that Reagan was allowed to feel that he was sneaking politics into the mix.
Reagan himself was never bashful about giving credit to the GE job for three things that served him well in politics: (1) introducing him to the concerns of average people; (2) forcing him to hone his ideas in the crucible of the work-a-day wold; and (3) giving him endless opportunity present those ideas until he could do so in concise and intelligible fashion. You only have to read his later radio addresses to see the effect this experience had on him. He wasn't the Great Communicator just because he was our most affable president but because he had spent a lifetime developing the craft of communicating.
Speaking of great leaders, thank God for FDR and the New Deal:
Posted by: Lib at February 7, 2007 4:35 PMExcept that the depression did get worse. That's why it's called Great--Hoover and FDR made it last ten plus years.
DeLong makes the obvious mistake of assuming that the only alternative to the New Deal was to do nothing. It would have been better to take every dollar FDR spent on new programs and give them directly to the American people.
Posted by: oj at February 7, 2007 6:04 PMIt would have been better to take every dollar FDR spent on new programs and give them directly to the American people.
Where they would have bought roads, bridges, levees, schools, the TVA, etc. at Infrastructures-R-Us.
Posted by: Lib at February 7, 2007 7:50 PMPlenty of time for pointless boondoggles after we were out of depression.
Posted by: oj at February 7, 2007 9:09 PMGeez,
Doesn't anybody know history? Well, oj does because he recommened David Kennedy's "Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945"
wherein left of center historian Kennedy factually informs us that FDR, and the economic advisors he listened to, believed the Depression was due to "over capacity" of the industrial segment. Ergo, governments mission was to
control production while insulating employees against any negative financial consequence of said control.
As oj has often tried to instruct, security is the enemy of freedom.
RR understood this, and he is only known as the "great communicator" because the ideas and values he discussed were those that make individuals and Nations great.
Mike
RWR and FDR balance each other historically.
FDR saved capitalism by regulating it and checking its excesses.
RWR saved the welfare state by reining in its growth checking its abuses.
FDR defeated right wing totalitarianism.
RWR defeated left wing totalitarianism.
Both were master communicators and dominated the media of their day, FDR on radio and RWR on television.
Both had an essentially jocular personality and optimistic outlook on life.
Health problems plague both men in their last terms and effected their ability to be president.
FDR was/is hated by irrational right-wingers who were/are esentially anti-semitic (it was no accident that they refered to FDR as "Franklin Deleno Rosenfeld").
RWR was/is hated by irrational left-wingers who were/are essentailly bigoted against the unsophisticates of main street America (it was no accident that Reagan was often compared to Babbit and the "great unwashed" that voted for him).
We need a modern Plutarch to write a dual historical biography of these parallel lives.
Posted by: Lib at February 8, 2007 7:05 AMInfrastructure = boondoggle? Sorry that's an extremist point of view.
That's the trouble with extremists, they only see half of reality. Extremists of the right who would do away with government essentially want the game played with out referees. Extremists on the left who would do away with business want the game played without players. Both are necessary as they both cover each others weaknesses: governemnt ineficiency and corporate corruption.
Posted by: Lib at February 8, 2007 7:26 AMMike,
Security and freedom are complementary, you can't have one with out a degree of the other. You may as well claim that a police force or fire department are enemies of freedom.
Posted by: Lib at February 8, 2007 7:32 AMOh goodie, a new troll.
Posted by: erp at February 8, 2007 8:47 AMTop down infrastucture is always a boondoggle and a mistake, because inorganic. Bottom up has a chance to be worthwhile.
Posted by: oj at February 8, 2007 11:49 AMIf demand is bottom up, what matters if it's the federal government that meets the demand instead of state or local government? Would you have prevented any infrastructure project that cost state lines (canals, railroads, highways, air ports)?
Except that the depression did get worse. That's why it's called Great--Hoover and FDR made it last ten plus years.
Not according to Bernanke:
Once taking office in 1933, Franklin Roosevelt quickly removed America from the gold standard. Recovery followed. According to Bernanke, industrial output in America grew 5% per quarter from 1933-37. Per quarter. Real wages grew substantially. Productivity grew substantially. Unemployment dropped. Bernanke says that Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal era of 1933-37 achieved strong economic growth by several different measurements. FDR reversed the contraction in 1933, so technically the depression ended in 1933. GDP grew over 50% in four years. This period of high growth was interrupted by a severe recession in 1937-38, which was followed by more high growth. According to Bernanke, "Quarterly growth rates for manufacturing employment, hours, and input in 1938-40 were 1.8, 2.8, and 4.9 percent, respectively."
Posted by: Lib at February 8, 2007 12:27 PMCapitalism wasn't going anywhere. The whole bit about FDR saving us from totalitarianism comes from elites who are terrified of the American people.
FDR beat half the totalitarian Left but saved the other.
FDR's affability was a front. In reality he was bitter and vindictive. He was also a racist and an anti-Semite, which is why he put Japanese-Americans in concentration camps and told Jewish leaders to shut up and be thankful he was doing anything about Hitler.
They were both excellent communicators.
The big difference is Reagan would have been a great president in '32. FDR would have been lost in '80 too.
Posted by: oj at February 8, 2007 12:27 PMThere was no demand. That's the point.
Posted by: oj at February 8, 2007 12:33 PMThe paired biography idea a la Plutarch is a good one.
Posted by: Jim in Chicago at February 8, 2007 12:34 PMThe economy went right back into a vicious recession in '37 and didn't come out again until we started arming the combatants in WWII. Hitler saved FDR's chestnuts.
Posted by: oj at February 8, 2007 12:36 PMAllan Bullock's of Hitler and Stalin is very good, though the Left yelps about the pairing.
Posted by: oj at February 8, 2007 12:37 PMWhat Bernanke is citing there is what we call the business cycle. Having gutted the economy as badly as we did with tight money it had to grow. What's remarkable is that FDR managed to kill it again.
Posted by: oj at February 8, 2007 12:40 PMYou didn't ned to be a member of the "elite" to worry about hungry, homeless and unemployed Americans becoming politically radicalized. "It could happen here".
Nazism and fascism are on the LEFT?!?!?! Since when?
I can't speak to FDR's personality, except to say that racism and anti-semiticism were as common as the air Americans breathed in teh 1940s (FDR was in tune with the rest of the nation in this regard). The treatment of the Nisei and the failure to even try to stop the Holocaust was unpardonable - but what does either have to do with the Depression? I beleive these are what are known as "red herrings".
I'll leave any speculations of Reagan vs. FDR to the fantasists.
There often isn't a demand for a new product or service until it has a chance in the market place (personal computer, the light bulb, ipods, transcontinental railroad, etc.). A good product creates its own demand.
What Bernanke is citing (as he expressly states) is the direct effects of getting off the gold standard. The recesion of 37 was an example of the business cycle in action. You can't tell the difference?
I've read Bullock's book, it was very good. Who on the Left objects to it?
Exactly. All Americans were concerned about hunger. Only the intellectuals think Americans were about to forsake Christianity for fascism.
Nazism is just Nationalist Socialism. In both its applied Darwinism mode and its command economy mode it is of the Left.
No one was speaking of the Depression. You were comparing a racist anti-semite to Ronald Reagan.
As you point out, good companies create demand for their products.
Loosening money was good. A better president wouldn't have immediately led us back into recession. Luckily the war came, though we obviously should have just armed the sides rather than fighting ourselves.
People like you who don't understand Nazism.
Posted by: oj at February 8, 2007 1:22 PMNazism and fascism are on the LEFT?!?!?! Since when?
Since always.
Posted by: erp at February 8, 2007 1:43 PMLib:
Doesn't it make more sense to assume that the economic recovery was largely a product of the Fed finally taking the breaks off of the money supply? Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz studied almost a hundred years of American monetary history and said the 1929-33 period was the worst monetary contraction they had come across. I remember reading once about evidence that antisemitism caused the board members to reject the advice of a Jewish member who advocated expansion.
Most economic historians now agree that the performance of the Fed during those years was substandard, and I think the 1933 reversal explains the subsequent recovery better than the New Deal does.
Posted by: Matt Murphy at February 8, 2007 2:40 PM