July 8, 2007
PUTTING THE DIVIDE IN INDIVIDUAL:
FDR's Constituency of Dependency (George Will, 7/08/07, Real Clear Politics)
Some mornings during the autumn of 1933, when the unemployment rate was 22 percent, the president, before getting into his wheelchair, sat in bed, surrounded by economic advisers, setting the price of gold. One morning he said he might raise it 21 cents: "It's a lucky number because it's three times seven." His treasury secretary wrote that if anybody knew how gold was priced "they would be frightened."The Depression's persistence, partly a result of such policy flippancy, was frightening. In 1937, during the depression within the Depression, there occurred the steepest drop in industrial production ever recorded. By January 1938 the unemployment rate was back up to 17.4 percent. The war, not the New Deal, defeated the Depression. [...]
Before the 1930s, the adjective "liberal" denoted policies of individualism and individual rights; since Roosevelt it has primarily pertained to the politics of group interests. So writes Shlaes, a columnist for Bloomberg News, in "The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression." She says Roosevelt's wager was that, by furiously using legislation and regulations to multiply federally favored groups, and by rhetorically pitting those favored by government against the unfavored, he could create a permanent majority coalition.
Actually, Rooseveltian liberalism is individualist as well, depending for its existence on the destruction of any and all institutions that intervene between the individual and the State.
Excellent, including your closing remark.
Will could have added that the modern version of Roosevelts cynical exploitations is the permanent coalition of the aggreived, the other, the enemies of civil society and of permanent things.
Posted by: Lou Gots at July 9, 2007 3:09 AMWas FDR smart enough to be cynical? The man was an economic putz of incredible proportions.
Economics aside, the 'great wartime president' attached himself to Stalin while holding on to his policy of unconditional surrender based on anti-Germanism rather than anti-Naziism cost tens of thousands of civilian casualties for no good purpose while leading the country into the extended cold war. His insistence on running for a fourth term with or without Wallace says it all. The country is lucky he passed on when he did.
Posted by: laughing boy at July 9, 2007 6:51 AMThe big guy in the sky watches over children and idiots like us, or we wouldn't have survived Frankie and Joey's excellent adventure, the fading last vestiges of which we are still experiencing.
Posted by: erp at July 9, 2007 12:53 PMPosts like this just cry out for Harry's pathological defense of FDR and the brain trusters. But he could never explain the collapse in 1937, and any President serving over such a drop today probably would not finish out his term.
It is almost impossible for us to imagine the Depression today. Food lines, 20% plus unemployment, and the implosion of the marketplace - I'm sure FDR spent the first year just trying anything. And after the 1934 election, he had no opposition to speak of. But once the politics took over (probably when the NRA was tossed by the Court), the permanent federal power grab began in firm earnest.
Yes, the removal of Henry Wallace from the 1944 ticket is a miracle. Would any President today drop a V-P for anything less than a criminal matter (e.g., Agnew)? Probably not.
Posted by: jim hamlen at July 9, 2007 4:01 PMDivine Intervention is the only possible explanation for our continued prosperity and good health.
Posted by: erp at July 9, 2007 4:32 PMFDR would have run with Wallace, didn't seem to matter to him. The Party boys dumped Wallace not FDR.
Posted by: laughing boy at July 9, 2007 6:19 PM